NBC STAR: If you caught NBC’s Today Show on Wednesday, Feb. 1, you would have seen UW staffer Gretchen Bakamis, along with her sister and her 84-year-old mother, on a segment dealing with elder care. Bakamis, who is marketing director for UW Medicine, said the guest appearance came about through serendipity. She had lunch with the host of Seattle KVI radio’s Patient Power with Andrew Schorr (Sundays at 8 a.m.) to discuss future talk show topics. They had a casual conversation that drifted into a discussion of aged parents and their medical issues. This became a topic for a segment of the radio show sponsored by UW Medicine, with Bakamis as one of the guests. A friend of the host who heard the show contacted a friend who is a producer for the Today Show, working on a series on elder care challenges, and the rest is history.
The Today Show segment was filmed in Pullman. Bakamis’ mother, Shirley Kiehn, is a former professor at WSU and the University of Idaho; Bakamis’ sister, Christine Sodorff, teaches and is the director of field experience and student teaching at WSU. The family discussed the challenges that elder care poses for older adults and their children.
Bakamis said that before her mother considered assisted living as an option she visited with a geriatric specialist at UW Medicine’s Neighborhood Clinic in Issaquah. “The doctor listened to my mom, spent time with her, researched all her medications and figured out what to recommend to our family doctor,” Bakamis said. “It’s that kind of research you get at an academic medical center. It’s the kind of research that may have saved her life.”
COMPUTER STAR: Daniel Weld, professor of computer science & engineering, has been named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. Fellows are chosen for making significant advances in computing and information technology that have lasting effects on the lives of citizens throughout the world. Weld was recognized for contributions to planning algorithms.
MAGIC REALISM: Bruce Taylor, a mental health specialist at Harborview Medical Center, has recently had a collection of his stories, titled Kafka’s Uncle and Other Strange Tales, published. Taylor will be celebrating the release of the book, which he describes as magic realism, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8 at Madison Market. There will be a book signing and reading from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, at Epilogue Books in Ballard.
BOOK DISPLAY: To celebrate the forthcoming Forest Resources Lecture Series, “Sustaining our Northwest World,” a display of books and articles has been organized at the Natural Sciences Library. The display is located just inside the glass doors of the library and focuses on both the subject areas of the lectures and the participants, Linda Brubaker, Robert Gara, and Tom Hinckley.
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