Courtney, Gina, Michele, and I went to Michele’s family cabin in Olympic Valley last week. Part of it was that Michele just wanted to spend some time at her childhood home but what triggered the trip was a semi-retrospective show of Michael Moore paintings at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. We left for Olympic Valley, the new name for the place formally known as Sq**w Valley just after a shooting in Chicago that killed seven people and wounded 47 other people and got back to Portola Valley just before a shooting in Downey, California that killed three people*. In between, there were probably other shootings that we missed which is the good news. In today’s United States of America, that’s one of the nice things about traveling; missing shootings.

Mike’s show was small but striking and the centerpiece is a picture I knew as Another Enigma of the Sheldon Range when it hung first in my office in Cupertino and then in our bedroom. Now it is just called Enigma of the Sheldon Range and it is good company.

The Nevada Museum of Art in Reno is a jewel. It is designed by Will Bruder Architects, a firm from Portland, Oregon, which, for some reason seems to design a lot of buildings in the desert. The facade is painted a dark greyish-brown and is said to echo rock formations near the Black Rock Desert although it looks more like the columnar basalt formations in western Oregon to me. The museum itself is about 70,000 square feet. When we were there, the museum had a show of Judy Chicago’s fireworks – I had no idea that she did fireworks – and a large wall labeled Custom Wallpaper.

We also went on a nice walk near the Donner Party Picnic Area. Considering that this is where several people starved to death, the name seems a little macabre but the hike was lovely.

*As an aside, why do newspapers print the name of the killers? It seems to me that giving these poor, disturbed, people publicity is counterproductive. Publicity just makes getting famous by killing more attractive to these losers. We should know the victims’ names, not the killer’s. End aside.