Maybe it's something in the water or perhaps it's the famous fog but San Francisco, apparently, has a thing for name changes. One hundred and seventy four years ago today, 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
In the fall of 2015 and spring of 2016, when I regularly showered Harvard's Hemenway Gymnasium after biking to work, I thought surprisingly often about Senator Ted Cruz, who graduated …
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 …
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 …
I grew up singing many of Stephen Foster's well-known songs, particularly "Oh Susanna," "Camptown Races," and "Old Folks at Home" (aka "Swanee River"). But I don't remember ever thinking about …
About a year and a half ago, when I first started going through my late father's stamp collection, I was delighted to find a 3-cent stamp, issued in 1957, honoring …