Around the time she turned 60, writer Nina Shengold decided to walk the path around New York’s Ashokan Reservoir every day for a year. Last spring, she published “Reservoir Year,” an edited account of the journals she wrote after each walk.

I heard about the book this summer when, thanks to Facebook, I reconnected with a college friend (David van Biema) who was about to interview Nina (who I also knew in college) about the book in a Zoom session sponsored by a branch of the New York Public Library. It was a wonderful conversation, particularly when other attendees, who included many writers, began asking questions.

I share this because one of the many things that struck me in that event was a discussion about how some of Nina’s daily entries were quite short, while others were much longer. That point comes to mind because I don’t have much to say about today’s #stampoftheday, a 2-cent stamp, issued on November 16, 1908 that pictures George Washington (though my post is still longer than some of Nina’s very short entries).

The stamp was part of a series of 12 stamps issued in 1908 and 1909 that replaced a series of stamps issued in 1902 and 1903 that featured a variety of people, mainly presidents but also a few other 19th century notables. When that earlier series was issued, many collectors complained about the stamps’ poor design, particularly the depiction of Washington, which was based on portrait painted by Gilbert Stuart. Many collectors apparently preferred an earlier design that was based on a bust by Jean Antoine Houdon.

The Post Office Department agreed to this request and to the idea that, similar Great Britain, where all the stamps featured a profile of King Edward VIII, all the stamp (but one) would portray George Washington. (The exception was a 1-cent stamp featuring Benjamin Franklin, whose picture was also based on a statue). The new Washington stamp also featured a simpler and more modern-looking border design, which greatly reduced production costs and extended the life of the printing plates used to create the stamps.

While the new 2-cent stamp was generally well received, postal aficionados noted that it didn’t follow Universal Postal Union regulations requiring stamps to have their denominations in numerals. Some expected the new stamp would be withdrawn from sale, but the Postmaster General George von L. Meyer (there’s a great name) announced the Post Office would keep using the stamp. However, the Post Office Department did use numerals on all the other stamps in the series.

Another problem was that the Post Office didn’t have enough different color inks to make each stamp a different color. Instead, it used various shades of each color. The 1- and 8-cent stamps, for example, were both printed in green; the 3- and 50-cent stamps are both purple; and the 5- and 15-cent stamps are blue. Nevertheless, postal clerks complained that the stamps were too similar, which made them difficult to distinguish, particularly because they generally worked in poorly lit facilities and often were in a hurry.

After experiments showed that the Post Office couldn’t fix the problem by using different inks printed on colored paper, in 1912 postal officials decided to split the series in half and have Washington’s picture on the first seven stamps (which ranged in price from 1 cent to 7 cents) and have Franklin’s picture on seven higher priced stamps.

And that, as Forrest Gump said, is all I have to say about that.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.