While today's #stampoftheday pictures two extraordinarily (almost scarily) wholesome youth, the story behind the stamp leads me to some of my favorite lyrics from West Side Story (with a brief …
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
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 …
“Roshi’s Laundromat Blues,” the last short story I wrote in the spring of 1980, had a simple premise. What if you were at a laundromat, waiting for your clothes to …
"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 …
The third wave of the great 1918-1919 influenza pandemic peaked early in March of 1919. Although the third wave wasn't as deadly as the apocalyptic second wave in mid 1918, …
"Break on through to the other side," the Doors' hit song from 1967, was an important part of the soundtrack of my last semester in college, in the spring of …