Today's #stampoftheday features Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took office in the midst of an unprecedented crisis and provided much needed leadership through the Great Depression and most of World War …
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
We've all been there. Asked to say meaningful and appropriate remarks at some important occasion, we blow it. Maybe we went on too long. Maybe we said something we shouldn't …
Believe it or not, chicken is the focus of today's #stampoftheday, which is a posting I've been looking forward to since I first saw this stamp in my late father's …
"We bring you 'Voices from America,'" said announcer William Harlan Hale at the start of a 15-minute shortwave radio broadcast that was transmitted into Germany on February 1, 1942. "Today, and …
Why do we hold onto and cherish artifacts from the past, particularly artifacts connected to our ancestors? That's the question raised by today's #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp, issued on September …
I was struggling to find a good #stampoftheday for today when I realized that May 8 is the 75th anniversary of V-E Day, the end of WW 2 in Europe. …