Stamp of the Day

Sometime in the mid-1960s, my mother and I drove over the then-new Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which opened on November 21, 1964. As we crossed over "the Narrows," which separate Brooklyn from Staten Island, I vaguely recall my mother telling me that the crossing was the world's longest suspension bridge, which impressed me. And as we descended into …

“Roshi’s Laundromat Blues,” the last short story I wrote in the spring of 1980, had a simple premise. What if you were at a laundromat, waiting for your clothes to finish the wash cycle, when you heard that John F. Kennedy had been shot and was dead? The idea was at this emotional moment, Roshi, which …

As the nation lurches towards a presidential transition, it seems oddly appropriate that today's #stampoftheday pictures a one-term, 19th century president, who, one of his obituaries contended, "possessed...none of the attributes of greatness." The president in question is Franklin Pierce, who was born on November 23, 1804 and served for one term, from 1853 to 1857. …

Another day, another obscure 19th century president. But, thankfully, Zachary Taylor, who may have died from eating too many cherries, was born on November 24, 1784 (thankfully, because I couldn't find another stamp in my late father's collection that is plausibly connected to today). Taylor, who served for only 16 months before unexpectedly dying in …

Seemingly odd juxtapositions of wealth and poverty as well as power and powerlessness are offered by the two stamps that collectively are today's #stampoftheday. While there is much truth to those contrasts, it also turns out that the stamps, which also are separated by more than three decades, are more connected than they appear. On the …

Here's a pop quiz for a rainy Thanksgiving morning: how many Catholics have received a major-party nomination for president? The question is inspired by the subject of today's #stampoftheday, a 1945 stamp, issued on November 26, 1945, honoring Al Smith, the "happy warrior" who was the Democratic nominee in 1928 when Herbert Hoover won the presidency …

"Have you gotten to the part where Beth dies?" my wife innocently asked her younger sister, who, many years ago, was eagerly reading "Little Women." Her sister, of course, hadn't and the knowledge of what was coming detracted (to say the least) from her experience of the book. To be clear, my wife didn't do …

In December 1941, a few days after the United States declared war, Winston Churchill secretly boarded a British battleship, which made a dangerous 10-day journey to the United States. The journey was so secret that Eleanor Roosevelt later wrote that while President Franklin Roosevelt told her "that we would be having some guests visit us," in …

Although I hadn't heard of Ephriam McDowell before today, in turns out that I might owe my life to him. It also turns out that I can learn a lot from him as well. For others who also had never heard of him, McDowell was a surgeon in the late 1700s and early 1800s who was …