My late brother Neil was very smart and talented. But I find it doubtful that he actually wrote a letter – in exemplary cursive handwriting, no less – to 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
Like many of my generation, I learned that Robert E. Lee was special. Yes, we were taught that Lee fought for the Confederacy, which wanted to preserve slavery. But that …
"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 …
In the 1970s, when people travelled and airlines served something resembling real food, my mother decided that the silverware used by Braniff Airlines looked almost exactly like her silverware at …
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 …
As the great gospel song says, I "woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom." I didn't realize that was the case until late in the day but looking …