On April 18, 2020, I wrote a short, paragraph-long Facebook post that started: “though I’ve had them for years, it’s only in the last year that I started to look at my late father’s stamp collection.” I explained I was posting two images of first-day covers. One from April 18, 1958 with a stamp picturing Paul Revere; the other from April 18, 1960, for a stamp encouraging water conservation.

Then, in a sentence that could win the “understatement of the year” award, I wrote: “I think I’m going to periodically post more in the coming days, weeks, and maybe even months.”

Within a few weeks, I started writing longer posts that not only explained what was portrayed on what I started calling the #stampoftheday but, increasingly my reflections on the stamps. These ranged from personal stories and memories to how the stamps illuminated the many difficult issues we as a nation have been grappling with in the last year on a host of topics, including democracy, leadership, science, racism, and leadership.

And rather than writing for the “coming days, weeks, and maybe even months,” I’ve done this for exactly a year. That unexpected odyssey ends with today’s post. One year is a good milestone for such an obsession. In addition today would have been my father’s 95th birthday. And it’s his stamps that have provided the foundation for these posts. The #stampoftheday offering that ends this strange trip is an oddly appropriate series of 16 stamps, issued on April 4, 1958 by the United Nations Postal Administration to mark the opening of the 1958 Brussels International Exposition, the first world’s fair held after World War II.

The journey that has gotten me to these UN stamps has been extraordinary, not only because of what I’ve gotten to write about but also for the many people it’s helped me connect with over the past year, who have included many long-lost acquaintances from high school and college, as well two of my high school teachers and a wide array of people I’ve gotten to know via my work and activities for the last few decades.

Looking back, I can’t really explain why I started doing this. In early April 2020, when it became clear to me that the pandemic lockdown was going to last awhile, I asked my sister to mail me the box full of letters my parents had exchanged in 1944 and 1945, many of them sent from Europe by my father who was a radioman for a reconnaissance unit on the frontlines in France and then Germany. I thought I would organize these letters, which we’d first looked at in February 2020, when we were in North Carolina for the unveiling of my mother’s headstone, and, perhaps regularly post excerpts from the letters on the anniversary of when they were written.

But the letters are still sitting, unopened, in my dining room because a day or two after they arrived, I unexpectedly decided to start posting items about stamps from my late fathers’ collection. I’d had these stamp for almost a decade but I had never even looked at them until the fall of 2019, when I met with three experts to see if the collection had any (monetary) value.

I hadn’t given much thought as to why I started doing writing about the stamps until December, when I got a late-night call from my cousin Greg Nathan, who has been living in Vietnam for about a decade. We were once were very close but we haven’t spoken in years. As we were wrapping up our wide-ranging conversation, Greg, who had been quite fond of my father, suggested that perhaps, the #stampoftheday posts were my father’s way of taking care of me during the pandemic. Whether real or not, I’ve found solace and meaning in that idea. I know we’re not out of this mess yet, but with vaccinations and spring, it feels like there actually is a light at the end of the tunnel – and that it’s not the light from an oncoming train.

Today’s stamps are especially appropriate for this last post because, together, they embody so many of the themes that have recurred in these posts. For a start, the subject, like many things I’ve written about, is delightfully odd. Over 40 million people attended the Brussels Expo, which celebrated (according to its official slogan), “a world for a better life for mankind.” The almost 500-acre site, which had pavilions from 41 countries, featured a host modernist buildings, a tangible sign of mid-century faith in the power of modernism. The most prominent of these was the Atomium, a 335-foot high, 59 foot wide model of how nine iron atoms would join to create iron crystal magnified 165 times. The structure, which renovated in the mid 2000s, is so big that the spheres were used as exhibition spaces and the connecting tubes served as walkways.

Another notable, now-demolished building on the site was the Phillips Pavilion, which was designed by Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis. It featured “Poème Žlectronique”, a piece commissioned specifically for the location that was played back from 425 loudspeakers, placed at spots specifically selected by the two designers.

The fair also is yet another illustration of how deeply racist ideas were embedded in the mid-century world. Amazingly, the portion of the fair devoted to the Belgium’s colony in Africa, featured a “human zoo,” where 700 educated people from what was the Belgian Congo were forced to dress in native dress in a recreated village behind a bamboo fence. According to a 2018 piece aired by NPR, they were “on live display for Europeans, some of whom made monkey noises to get their attention” and, horrifyingly, also threw bananas and peanuts at them. Even more amazing, the exhibit was lauded by many visitors and the international press. However, in mid-July the Congolese protested the condescending treatment they were receiving from spectators and demanded to be sent home, which abruptly ended the exhibit and finally elicited some sympathetic coverage in European newspapers

The stamps also embody the many topics that I’ve gotten to explore over the past year. Almost every stamp honored a different part of the UN. For example, the 5-franc airmail stamp, which, like several of the stamps in the series was designed by Jean Van Noten, a Belgian artist and graphic designer, honors the International Civil Aviation Organization. It features a “ground marshaller,” the person who directs planes on the ground using hand signals, giving the “straight ahead” signal. Other stamps honor such entities as the International Labor Organization, the World Health Organization, the World Meteorological Union, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

I love the breadth of topics covered in these stamps because they reflect the many things I’ve gotten to write about in the last year – everything from the complicated legacies of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln to more amusing vignettes, such as how Smokey the Bear got to have his own Zip Code and the special challenges of shipping live chickens and baby alligators. As Johnny Cash once sang:

I’ve been everywhere, man.
Crossed the desert’s bare, man.
I’ve breathed the mountain air, man.
Of travel I’ve had my share, man.
I’ve been everywhere

But now, as Jim Morrison noted, it’s “The End,” for, as the Van Trapp Family famously sang: “There’s a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall and the bells in the steeple too. And up in the nursery an absurd little bird is popping out to say ‘cuckoo.’ Regretfully they tell us …But firmly they compel us…to say goodbye.”

“So long, farewell…Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu.”

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

And thank you to the many people who have read and commenting on these posts. Although it’s only been electronic (for the most part), it has helped sustain me in these challenging times.