Ducks, Little Orphan Annie, and a once-famous but now obscure Indiana writer take the stage as today's #stampoftheday, a 10-cent stamp, issued in 1940, featuring James Whitcomb Riley, a writer …
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 ended yesterday's #stampoftheday post by asking "What were they thinking?" when they issued a stamp celebrating the forced relocation of Native Americans. Today, however, it's clear "what they were thinking" …
A 5-cent stamp picturing Ulysses S. Grant that was issued on June 11, 1895 "should" be today's #stampoftheday. But since Grant was the subject of the May 28 #stampoftheday I'm …
"If only my uncle, the general, was here." Those were the magic words that allowed my parents to get married in Baltimore on August 1, 1944. And they were the words …
Like many people, I cried more than once today. I cried so much, that I can't remember everything that caused me to tear up. I cried when I watched the videos of …
Another rainy day in Maine so I'm again sitting on the screened in porch thinking about how to write about today's #stampoftheday, which, because it honors the Boy Scouts of …