Stamp of the Day

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

"Have you gotten to the part where Beth dies?" my wife innocently asked her younger sister, who, many years ago, was eagerly reading "Little Women." Her sister, of course, hadn't …

A seemingly banal, classic mid-20th century image of a white mail carrier that is today's #stampoftheday turned out deliver a timely lesson about the ways that the government, particularly the …

A postcard sent by one of my mother's friends to my father postmarked May 19, 1944, is today's #stampoftheday. I found it among the cancelled envelopes in my dad's collection …

Oddly enough, today's #stampoftheday, which features flora from four different parts of the US, captures a thought I had in the shower last night, not long after I posted yesterday's …

Two offerings for today's #stampoftheday which, as seems increasingly be the case, will take on digressions that will include 26,000 lightbulbs, the Grateful Dead, an unsuccessful effort to monopolize the …

The #stampoftheday for Sunday, April 26, is the 10-cent 1940 stamp honoring Jane Addams was a social reformer who was the co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. She …