Commentaries

January 9, 2020
Northweaster by Winslow Homer 1895

How This Collection Came To Me

It’s simple, really. My mother died in 1991. Thirteen years later my father died. My brother and I fixed up the house in New York, where […]
January 8, 2020
Vladimir The Great

Vladimir the Great Finds a Faith

From The Russian Chronicle 10th Century A.D. Only a lust for conquest exceeded Prince Vladimir’s lust for women, which, they say, rivaled Solomon’s. Vladimir had four […]
January 6, 2020
A Girl with Geese by Vladimir Makovsky 1875.

Polya and The Geese

January 25, 2019
Country Club Sun Park

FahnTAHstic

This photo was taken by my father, Warren Gardner, at some point during the 1950s. It was his way of expressing his idea of a country […]
July 28, 2018
Mark Twain's Polecat

Mark Twain’s Response to Massacres in Kishinev

The plight of Russia in the early twentieth century did not escape notice by Mark Twain. Mark Twain wrote in response to dispatches regarding the 1903 […]
July 28, 2018
Bezalel Business Card A

Business Card of Bezalel 1913

This is a business card for Bezalel, who repaired sewing machines. It is written in Yiddish. This was found among the letters of Polya’s collection. Most […]
July 28, 2018

A Portrait of Mrs. Siddons as The Tragic Muse

  Grandmothers can have long lives before we know them. And mine was around sixty when I first came into the world. Now, I say around […]