“The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar,” sings Paul Simon at the start of “Graceland,” his marvelous 1986 song. “I am following the river, down the highway, through the cradle of the Civil War. I am going to Graceland, Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee.” That road, presumably, was the Great River Road (GRR), which […]

After a much needed heavy rain, today is a brilliant day here in New England. The trees are at their peak; the sky today was a brilliant blue; and the air tonight is clear but cold. It’s beautiful but it’s a poignant beauty because of the cooler temperatures, the soon-to-fall leaves, and the increasingly short

Before email and smart phones, I would always send my mother a postcard whenever I travelled abroad. I’m reminded of that habit by today’s #stampoftheday, which was issued on October 9, 1952 by the United Nations to honor the in honor the Universal Postal Union (UPU) on the 78th anniversary of the treaty that created

Does anyone still learn – or use – Morse Code anymore? I ask because Samuel F.B. Morse, the who is (incorrectly) credited with inventing the telegraph, is the subject of today’s #stampoftheday, a 2-cent stamp issued on October 7, 1940 as part a series of 35 stamps honoring “Great Americans.” Born in Charlestown, MA Morse

Stifled in his job in Boston (and probably chafing at the city’s restrictive culture), a young man moves to New York, where he thinks he can find a job (and probably enjoy a less restrictive culture). This story (and its opposite) is a familiar one for almost everyone I know in greater Boston. But while

Today’s #stampoftheday, which I’ll describe at some point in this post, has me thinking about the rules we establish when we set a challenge for ourselves. I’m thinking about it because I’ve had to decide which rules apply – and in what way – for today’s offering. Some background: When I started this #stampoftheday “misadventure”

It’s late in the evening after Yom Kippur and I’m sitting outside on an unusually pleasant night watching over the lingering flames and dying embers from the fire we made in our fire pit for a small socially distanced break-fast we had with a few neighbors to mark the end of an unusual but deeply

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. I open today’s #stampoftheday post with these famous lines that start T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” because Eliot was (somewhat amazingly) honored on a 22-cent U.S. postage stamp issued on September 26, 1988, 100 years after he

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 25, 1939 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Stephen Daye Press – the first printing press used in Colonial America. In addition to being

The death of loved ones is always painful and, it seems to me, the death of your child is particularly painful because, as my father said to me after my brother died, it seems to violate the natural order of things. The power of such a loss is driven home by today’s #stampoftheday, which honors