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

As I write this #stampoftheday, I'm sitting on a screened-in porch watching it rain on a lake in Maine and I'm remembering a long-ago trip that I believe was my …

My father never said this specifically, but I'm sure he'd agree that, in general, when faced with a choice between live chickens and deceased white men, it's best to go …

Every once in a while, I find myself reflecting on what I wrote in a #stampoftheday post and wondering if I went down the wrong path or, at least, missed …

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 thought this was supposed to be a work of fiction," a member of my book group wrote just before we met to discuss Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America." …

Edgar Allan Poe, author of "The Masque the Red Death", makes a bizarrely timely appearance as today's #stampoftheday. Poe, who is known today for his chilling tales of horror and …