In 1993, when it grappled with fundamental questions the state's educational finance system, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court used language from the state's more than 200-year old constitution as the …
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
"A History of Ranching," Buck Winn's largest painting, is a 280-foot-long mural commissioned in 1950 that hung for decades in the "Corral Room," at Pearl Beer's brewery in San Antonio. …
Before email and smart phones, I would always send my mother a postcard whenever I travelled abroad. I'm reminded of that habit by today's #stampoftheday, which was issued on October …
Maybe it's something in the water or perhaps it's the famous fog but San Francisco, apparently, has a thing for name changes. One hundred and seventy four years ago today, the …
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 …
"From a distance the world looks blue and green And the snow-capped mountains white." I don't know if the iconic picture of "Earthrise" taken from Apollo 8 on December 24, 1968 inspired …