I've been looking back at my initial #stampfotheday posts, which began in April when I decided, on a whim, to see what would happen if I wrote a daily post about a stamp in my late father's stamp collection. (I've been doing so because my daughter Rebecca has offered to build a website to host …
All Essays
Growing up, Shea Stadium was almost a religious shrine for me. Little did I know, that the really important - and still quite timey—shrine was less than two miles away. My feelings about Shea were so strong that I would get excited when we went past it as we drove from our home in New Jersey …
"Is this heaven?" Shoeless Joe Jackson asks in "Field of Dreams." "No," Ray Kinsella replies. "It's Iowa." I know the line - and the movie - are hokey. But I love them anyway because they touch on many things I love and value including the power of love and hope; having the faith and strength to follow …
"A History of Ranching," Buck Winn's largest painting, is a 280-foot-long mural commissioned in 1950 that hung for decades in the "Corral Room," at Pearl Beer's brewery in San Antonio. At the time, it was the world's longest mural. His smallest painting was the basis for today's #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp, issued on December 29, 1945 …
"You got to be able to laugh at the Gadsden Purchase. It's what life is all about." So said Mike DiCenzo, a longtime writer for Jimmy Fallon, who played an audience member in a delightful bit that aired in March 2009. "Look at all the comedic possibilities," DiCenzo added. "You've got [President] Franklin Pierce. Hello? And …
"I need not tell you that the world situation is very serious," George C. Marshall said at the start of a short remarks, given at Harvard's commencement in 1947. After laying out the dire situation in Europe, Marshall, a former general then serving as US Secretary of State, discussed the broad outlines of a massive aid …
My family moved to Summit, New Jersey in the summer of 1963. Six years later, Summit, celebrated the 100th anniversary of its incorporation as a separate township. Today's #stampoftheday, which isn't a stamp, marks that celebration with a special envelope that was cancelled by the post office in Summit on January 1, 1969. While the logo …
Do kids still learn about Betsy Ross and the first American flag? When I was a kid, I learned that Betsy Ross, a woman in Philadelphia, made the first American flag. I don't recall learning how she came to have that job or how we knew that she carried it out. I just knew it was …
In the fall of 2015 and spring of 2016, when I regularly showered Harvard's Hemenway Gymnasium after biking to work, I thought surprisingly often about Senator Ted Cruz, who graduated from Harvard Law School, which surrounds three side of the gym. For some reason, I was obsessed by the thought that Cruz, a particularly distasteful Republic …