With the calendar turning to July, it seems appropriate that today's #stampoftheday honors school teachers (and other educators), who hopefully are getting a well-deserved break after an especially tumultuous spring …
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 live close to Concord, Massachusetts which means that whenever I'm feeling too adequate, I can recalibrate by taking a modest bike ride past the homes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, …
The 1840 Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system, is today's #stampoftheday. The stamp, which features a profile of Queen Victoria, was issued …
A medical expert employed by the U.S. government who more than a century ago used data and experiments to help address a major public health crisis is the focus of …
About a year and a half ago, when I first started going through my late father's stamp collection, I was delighted to find a 3-cent stamp, issued in 1957, honoring …
"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 …