Officially, I voted for the first time, in 1976. Unofficially, I had been voting for years. My mother used to bring me with her when she voted in the gymnasium at …
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
While today's #stampoftheday pictures two extraordinarily (almost scarily) wholesome youth, the story behind the stamp leads me to some of my favorite lyrics from West Side Story (with a brief …
The third wave of the great 1918-1919 influenza pandemic peaked early in March of 1919. Although the third wave wasn't as deadly as the apocalyptic second wave in mid 1918, …
"A visit to Dr. Thoreau" is the journey I'm going on with today's #stampoftheday, a 5-cent stamp picturing Henry David Thoreau, author of "Walden or Life the Woods," which was …
I spent the better portion of today cooking and trying to remember to think about freedom. I was cooking - and trying to think about freedom - because Passover starts tonight …
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, …