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

In 1975, like many in the cast, I grew a beard for our high school's production of "Fiddler on the Roof." (I played the rabbi.) Except a few brief interludes …

Why do we hold onto and cherish artifacts from the past, particularly artifacts connected to our ancestors? That's the question raised by today's #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp, issued on September …

"I need not tell you that the world situation is very serious," George C. Marshall said at the start of a short remarks, given at Harvard's commencement in 1947. After laying …

A multi-year effort to find a vaccine and treatment for a much-feared disease is the subject of today’s #stampoftheday, which was issued on June 15, 1957. The disease was polio, a …

For me, and many other people, today is the one-year anniversary of when I not only started working from home but also began to actively avoid as many face-to-face interactions …

The country of Israel’s first stamps are today’s the #stampoftheday. Israel declared its independence on Friday, May 14, 1948. However, Israel Post, the Israeli postal operator, waited until Sunday May …