It is oddly appropriate that I am writing today's #stampoftheday while sitting on my back patio, having just returned from a wonderful and bucolic week on a lightly settled pond …
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
Drive into many towns in America and you'll see familiar sight: a gold and blue circular sign that says, "Rotary International." While I've seen these for years, I confess I don't …
A multi-year effort to find a vaccine and treatment for a much-feared disease is the subject of today’s #stampoftheday, which was issued on June 15, 1957. The disease was polio, a …
"Everyone," Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously s said, "is entitled to his own opinion." "But, he added, "they are not entitled to their own facts." Moynihan's words are particularly appropriate in the current …
Maybe it's something in the water or perhaps it's the famous fog but San Francisco, apparently, has a thing for name changes. One hundred and seventy four years ago today, the …
Officially, I voted for the first time, in 1976. Unofficially, I had been voting for years. My mother used to bring me with her when she voted in the gymnasium at …