The radical idea that the federal government can and does use science and facts to address potentially fatal threats to people's health is the message sent by today's #stampoftheday, which …
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
We never spoke about it, but I suspect that my father had a particular soft spot for Joseph Priestly. As someone trained as a chemist, my father would have known of …
Two timely policy questions—"make or buy?" and "can public-sector employees innovate?" - are conveyed by the two seemingly prosaic stamps that make up today's #stampoftheday offerings. The stamps are a 6-cent …
For at least two reasons, it seems appropriate that my father's collection lacks the stamp I want to highlight as the #stampoftheday on Juneteenth, which marks the fact that the …
Bliss. For the moment, I am in a state of bliss. Indeed, I even feel a bit like Francis Scott Key, who saw that "the rocket's red glare...gave proof through the night …
Today's #stampoftheday features Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took office in the midst of an unprecedented crisis and provided much needed leadership through the Great Depression and most of World War …