Stamp of the Day

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

Why do we hold onto and cherish artifacts from the past, particularly artifacts connected to our ancestors? That's the question raised by today's #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp, issued on September …

There's something poignant about the image and subject of today's #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp issued on August 29, 1049 to commemorate the last (and 83rd) annual encampment of the Grand …

Are you old enough to remember paperboys? I am. So I smile when I look at today's #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp, issued in 1952 in honor of America's newspaper boys. …

I live close to Concord, Massachusetts which means that whenever I'm feeling too adequate, I can recalibrate by taking a modest bike ride past the homes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, …

"Valor is a gift," Carl Sandburg once said. "Those having it never know for sure whether they have it until the test comes." The four chaplains on the SS Dorchester displayed …

I've been thinking a lot about my father, who died 20 years ago this week. As has been obvious from these #stampoftheday posts, he was, for a time, an avid stamp …