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 the 100th anniversary of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

I originally planned to make it the #stampoftheday on February 23, the anniversary of the day 13 architects met in New York City to establish an organization that would “promote the scientific and practical perfection of its members” and “elevate the standing of the profession.” (At the time, there were no schools of architecture or architectural licensing laws in the United States, which meant that anyone could claim to be an architect.)

But February 23rd, turned out to be one of those days when I had more than one interesting option to write about. So I wrote about an 8-cent airmail stamp, issued on February 23, 1955 to honor the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Rotary Club International. And I sent the AIA stamp to the bullpen, happy in the knowledge that I could bring it into the game on April 15, which not only is the anniversary of the day that its founders signed its constitution but also will be the third to the last piece in my year-long #stampoftheday odyssey.

Now, you might wonder, why might I be so excited about the chance to write about architects and the AIA. I’m definitely not an architect: a building designed by me would, at best, have a 50 percent chance of not falling down. In fact, I was very proud of the fact that last spring I was able to put up a chicken-wire fence around my garden that not only kept out the voracious rabbits that had been decimating my spinach and kale but also didn’t look horrible. (At the time, I felt like an Elmer Fudd, who, for once, had bested a “pesky wabbit”.)

But it turns out that a fair bit of my professional life has involved (and continues to involve) architects and other design professionals. I sometimes dealt with architects when I was a reporter who wrote about development and politics in Boston in the 1980s. I have vivid memory of listening the Philip Johnson speaking in – and gushing about the huge amounts of marble in – what I think is the massively overbuilt lobby of One International Place, a major building he and John Burgee designed in downtown Boston, that opened in 1987.

To be fair, Paul Goldberger, the New York Times’ Pulitzer-Prize winning architecture critic, once wrote that at International Place, Johnson and Burgee’s “historical gamesmanship seems to have run amok.” However, he added, “the best thing about [the International Place] complex is the lobby…a grand, curving space, with pilasters and engaged columns of rich red marble supporting strong marble cornices…Both the shape of the space and the details give this room, for all its formality, a startling sense of exhilaration.”

In the late 1980s, when I did a brief stint as an writer/editor at the entity formerly known as the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), I spent a fair bit of time with some talented architects. Most of the time, I was trying to get them to explain things to me in plain English that could be used in a major plan for downtown Boston that I was wordsmithing for the BRA director named (at least according to most press accounts) “the brilliant but mercurial” Stephen Coyle. (He definitely was both.)

My connections with architects and designers deepened in 2000, when my mentor, Alan Altshuler, asked if I would co-teach his course on “Urban Politics and Land Use Policy,” which I had taken when he first came to Harvard in 1988. Since the course was offered jointly by the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), I was appointed a lecturer at GSD, a fact that befuddled my pre-adolescent daughters who believed (accurately) that I have virtually no design sense at all.

I think this was around the time they loved to watch a TV show called “What Not to Wear.” They would often ask me to join them. I would reply: “why should I watch it, when I live it every day,” and then point to my usual work outfit of khakis and a blue button-down shirt. Sometimes, I would “upgrade” this outfit by switching to dark wool pants, a red tie, and a blue blazer. And sometimes, I’d go all out and “dress up” in a suit maybe even with a blue tie and white button-down shirt. I was, in short, “living the life.”

The summer before I was to start teaching we went to Italy, which was our first big family trip abroad. One day in a market, my daughter Becca dared me to buy a keychain with a small gorilla, who was wearing a cap and cape. Of course I accepted the dare.

Over our picnic lunch, I showed it to my wife Jody who, in a moment of sheer inspiration, began a brilliant riff in which figure explained that he not only was a gorilla but he also was the Pope and a professor of design at Harvard. I can’t do the moment justice but I will tell you I was laughing so hard that I was practically in pain. “Popo Gorllio,” as he became known, quickly became a leading player in the pantheon of mythical characters that were part of our family lore.

I did co-taught that course for several years. But then Alan and I both moved on. However, in in early part of the last decade, my professional path brought me back to GSD, first via some freelance projects and, for the last five years, at the Joint Center for Housing Studies, a semi-autonomous entity that officially is part of GSD.

Because of those connections, and other work I’ve done, I’ve occasionally been asked to be a guest speaker in some GSD classes. When I accept these invitations, I wear my usual “dressed up” garb, which I’ve taken to describing as a style called “Massachusetts politician, circa 1986.”

I’ll often start by saying to students, “as you can see by the way I’m dressed, I am not an architect or a designer.” They usually stare at me blankly and I imagine them thinking, “who is this guy?” But I have fun and usually (but not always) the students do too (at least I think they do).

And that’s why I have a special feeling for the AIA stamp: it reminds me of who I am and who I am not.

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