I ended yesterday's #stampoftheday post by asking "What were they thinking?" when they issued a stamp celebrating the forced relocation of Native Americans. Today, however, it's clear "what they were thinking" …
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
Ducks, Little Orphan Annie, and a once-famous but now obscure Indiana writer take the stage as today's #stampoftheday, a 10-cent stamp, issued in 1940, featuring James Whitcomb Riley, a writer …
Though I've had them for years, it's only in the last year that I started to look at my late father's stamp collection which goes from the late 1800s until …
"Baker shut up. Able isn't who you think he is," was the "punchline" of one of the few stories my father would tell about being a soldier in World War …
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 …
"The Goldberg Variations" That's what Nisa, my amazing sister-in-law said has been helping her through the past, difficult several months. It wasn't a random comment. Every Passover, over dinner, we go around …