Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. I open today's #stampoftheday post with these famous lines that start T.S. Eliot's "Four …
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
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 …
Seeing a fair number of American flags, several Trump/Pence signs (but no Susan Collins signs) and an occasional Black Live Matter placard as we meandered home from mid-coast Maine today, …
On a strange day when it's hard to know how to react to the news, it's heartening that the #stampoftheday project makes me pause and ponder Mahatma Gandhi, who was …
In August 21, 1945, my father, along with almost 15,000 other soldiers, was on the Queen Mary, which was one of the first ships to bring soldiers back from Europe …
In my 50s, I started playing goalie in the wonderfully named "Over-the-Hill Soccer League," Over the years, I relearned some important lessons not only about sports but also about life. …