Growing up, Shea Stadium was almost a religious shrine for me. Little did I know, that the really important - and still quite timey—shrine was less than two miles away. My …
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
The death of loved ones is always painful and, it seems to me, the death of your child is particularly painful because, as my father said to me after my …
"And now for something completely different" - a postage stamp encased in metal, complete with advertising on one side. This is not a commercial oddity. Rather, during the Civil War, …
Seminal political debates featuring two of the country's most skilled orators delivered provocative, reasoned and (occasionally) morally elevated arguments on issues that were tearing the country apart are the focus …
A 3-cent stamp issued in 1952 on the 125th anniversary of the granting of a charter for the B&O Railroad brings Tom Thumb, Cooper Union, and McSorley's Old Ale House …
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 …