Six years ago today, I got on an airplane in Boston to head to Los Angeles. Later that day, the National Weather Service officially reported that the winter 2014-2015 was …
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
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. …
What, exactly, are we remembering when we "Remember the Alamo." I used to know the answer to that seemingly simple question. We remembered a heroic stand by a vastly outnumbered group …
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 …
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 …
Today, when violent right-wing fascists have attacked the US Capital, I find it heartening to see that on January 6, 1941, at a time when the Nazis and other fascists …