Today, on the 19th anniversary of four coordinated terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 airplane terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center (WTC), the #stampoftheday, is reminder that 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
Since early Tuesday morning when I got an appointment get a vaccine at 6 pm tonight, I've known that today was going to be meaningful. , Getting the shot would be …
While today's #stampoftheday honors a decision made in 1898, it also connects directly the inflammatory tweets about fair housing made by Donald Trump earlier this week. The stamp itself, is a …
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story ," is a saying falsely attributed to Mark Twain that I've often jokingly quoted in my work as …
"If only my uncle, the general, was here." Those were the magic words that allowed my parents to get married in Baltimore on August 1, 1944. And they were the words …
With the calendar turning to July, it seems appropriate that today's #stampoftheday honors school teachers (and other educators), who hopefully are getting a well-deserved break after an especially tumultuous spring …