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 …
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
Before email and smart phones, I would always send my mother a postcard whenever I travelled abroad. I'm reminded of that habit by today's #stampoftheday, which was issued on October …
The 1840 Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system, is today's #stampoftheday. The stamp, which features a profile of Queen Victoria, was issued …
Although I'm 63 and not yet eligible for the COVID vaccine, I've been watching as people I know have started getting the vaccine. The roll-out, of course, hasn't been handled …
"Our long national nightmare is over," said Gerald Ford, moments after he was sworn in as president after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. "Our Constitution works; our great Republic is …
Political leadership, for good and for ill, is one of the messages I receive from today's #stampoftheday, a 10-cent stamp picturing Daniel Webster, who in the first half of the …