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

Stop! Read this #stampoftheday post! Or maybe just speed through this post to get to whatever is next in your Facebook feed... I'm sorry, but who can resist such a lede when …

For about two decades, maybe longer, we've ended our Passover Seder by singing "Amazing Grace." It's always late and we're full - of food, spirit, love, and hope, and other …

  Two timely policy questions—"make or buy?" and "can public-sector employees innovate?" - are conveyed by the two seemingly prosaic stamps that make up today's #stampoftheday offerings. The stamps are a 6-cent …

My late brother Neil was very smart and talented. But I find it doubtful that he actually wrote a letter – in exemplary cursive handwriting, no less – to the …

On April 18, 2020, I wrote a short, paragraph-long Facebook post that started: "though I've had them for years, it's only in the last year that I started to look …

Did Frances Elizabeth Willard, the long-time president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), ever go to a Seder? If she went, did she follow tradition and drink four glasses of …