When we moved to Lexington in 1996, I knew that Patriots' Day, the annual celebration of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, was a big deal. After all, I had been living in the Boston area for 16 years. But, it turns out, I had no idea what a big deal it was in Lexington, …
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I have been looking forward to writing about Booker T. Washington, who was born on April 5, 1856. But it seems especially timely to be writing about him today. In some ways, Washington, who founded the Tuskegee Institute and was the dominant Black political leader in the late 1800s and early 1900s, has been on my …
It is fitting that the American Chemical Society (ACS) comes to the fore as my #stampoftheday "project" (obsession?) is coming to a close. For chemistry, in general, and the ACS, specifically, were incredibly important parts of my father's life. It's odd then, that his sometimes meticulous stamp albums doesn't include today's #stampoftheday. A 3-cent stamp issued …
The World Health Organization (WHO) is far from perfect. Nevertheless, it's still worth paying attention to what its head said today. "While we have all undoubtedly been impacted by the pandemic, the poorest and most marginalized have been hit hardest - both in terms of lives and livelihoods lost," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a biologist, public …
"Moral force can be a bulwark against aggression and that it is possible to make aggressive forces yield without resorting to power," said Gunnar Jahn, chairman of the Nobel Committee, at the December 1957 ceremony honoring Lester Pearson, who is still the only Canadian to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Pearson, then Canada's secretary of state …
Over the course of this almost year-long #stampoftheday odyssey, I've learned some delightful trivia, unearthed some amazing stories, and become more educated about stamps and the wonderfully odd world of stamp collecting. But what's made it especially interesting, entertaining (to me), and worth continuing are the many ways that these daily stamps have given me …
About a week ago, I got a cryptic message on Facebook's Messenger app from Ed Symkus, a longtime arts journalist who had been a colleague in the 1980s when I worked at The Tab. "I've recently been searching through stuff I've accumulated, giving it away, and making room for new stuff," he wrote. "I just found …
My father never said this specifically, but I'm sure he'd agree that, in general, when faced with a choice between live chickens and deceased white men, it's best to go with the poultry. That was the "choice" I had when deciding what to write about today. One option was to write about a stamp, issued on …
"It is a sobering thought," Tom Lehrer famously said, "that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years." Lehrer's line, which I've loved and quoted for years, came to mind in the course of developing today's #stampoftheday post, which marks the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia on …