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

Oklahoma, "where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain" (and where many strange and unsettling things also have happened), takes center stage as today's #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp, issued on …

In 1975, like many in the cast, I grew a beard for our high school's production of "Fiddler on the Roof." (I played the rabbi.) Except a few brief interludes …

"I need not tell you that the world situation is very serious," George C. Marshall said at the start of a short remarks, given at Harvard's commencement in 1947. After laying …

You would think that after writing 337 #stampoftheday posts, that a stamp could no longer surprise me. While you'd usually be right. Today you are wrong. The stamp that surprised me …

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. …

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, …