Checking The WELL for email from Carl. Dialing. Beeps. A connection screech. A logon screen, and there it was: email from artcomtv. Carl sometimes took his Academy of Art Contemporary Art class to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at its venerable location in the War Memorial Veterans Building on Van Ness. The email he sent to cayso@well.com read as follows:

"The stairs in the icon are The War Memorial building steps that lead to SFMOMA. Wayne Thiebaud's "Display Cakes" (oil on canvas, 1963) is in SFMOMA's collection. I know this because one of my students is writing a paper on Thiebaud's paintings of desserts.

You might like to know that a few weeks ago, that student lost his keys at the museum. They showed up in the museum's lost and found. Among many other keys, he says he saw a gold key, that from his description, might be the key you seek.

It is a sunny day, and I'm drinking Rainier Ale."