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 our …
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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 attended …
Today's #stampoftheday honors a pianist, a composer, a prime minister, a political activist, a philanthropist, and a noted vintner. Amazingly, though, they're all the same person, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, who, among other things was prime minister of Poland, a concert pianist who once packed Madison Square Garden and is still the only Pole to have …
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 …
In this time, when we get frustrated if an email doesn't appear within a few seconds, today's #stampoftheday reminds us that communicating over long distances used to take days, even months. In doing so, it also underscores the importance of a functioning and timely postal system that hopefully will be deliver mail-in ballots in a …
Although she died almost 60 years, Eleanor Roosevelt still offers important wisdom and guidance for those trying to address our current concerns. Roosevelt, who was born on October 11, 1884, was pictured on today's #stampoftheday, a 5-cent stamp issued in October 1963, about 11 months after she died. Roosevelt's story has been told by many people …
Like many of my generation, I learned that Robert E. Lee was special. Yes, we were taught that Lee fought for the Confederacy, which wanted to preserve slavery. But that uncomfortable fact was downplayed in favor of a narrative that instead highlighted both Lee's military prowess and his strength of character, particularly his efforts to …
When the young "future farmer" portrayed on today's #stampoftheday gazed over the bucolic farm and valley shown on the stamp do you think he was thinking that many decades later the owners of those fields would receive record amounts of politically motivated federal aid? That's the question that comes to mind when I examine today's #stampoftheday, …
While yesterday's stamp, which celebrated the Future Farmers of America, presented a bucolic picture of agricultural life, today's honors a man who played a key role in the mechanization of agricultural, a shift that in many respects fostered the decline of family farms and the industrialization of America. The honoree, who is pictured on a 3-cent …