Very few stamps were issued during first years of World War II and most that were issued related directly to the war and the war effort. But one of the …
Be well. Stay safe. Fight for justice.
Work for peace.
In April of 2020, not long after the COVID-19 pandemic began, I had an inexplicable urge to dig into my late father’s stamp collection, which had been sitting unexamined on my shelves since about 2012. I created a challenge for myself: each day find a stamp that was somehow connected to that day, write a short blurb about it, and post it on Facebook with a picture of the stamp. I thought I’d do that for a few weeks. But the pandemic continued and what started as short blurbs became a year of daily essays that not only discussed historic events, famous people, and obscure Americana but also recounted personal and family stories and examined how these decades-old stamps shed light on a host contemporary challenges. Thanks to my daughter Rebecca, every one of those 365 essays – from the early succinct ones to the later rambling ones – are collected on this website, where you can view them by date, by broad category, or by whether they were my “personal favorites.” I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.
Historical Figures & Events
Delving into the people and events that shaped history
Culture & Society
Exploring Americana artifacts and other obscure areas of US history
Contemporary Issues
Discussing the pandemic, 2020 politics, and other recent happenings
Personal & Family Lore
Recounting stories from my childhood, “adulthood,” and family’s history
Featured Essays
Author favorites
"A History of Ranching," Buck Winn's largest painting, is a 280-foot-long mural commissioned in 1950 that hung for decades in the "Corral Room," at Pearl Beer's brewery in San Antonio. …
Another rainy day in Maine so I'm again sitting on the screened in porch thinking about how to write about today's #stampoftheday, which, because it honors the Boy Scouts of …
I'm sure that there many of the people who defended the Capital were former Boy Scouts. I'm also sure that many of those attacked the building also were former Boy Scouts. I …
Every once in a while, the #stampoftheday marks something odd. Today is one of those days, as the #stampoftheday is a 3-cent stamp, issued on November 20, 1948, that commemorated …
A 5-cent stamp picturing Ulysses S. Grant that was issued on June 11, 1895 "should" be today's #stampoftheday. But since Grant was the subject of the May 28 #stampoftheday I'm …