Andrew Davidson

I only wish I had seen this wonderful production of “Our Town,” the classic American play by Thornton Wilder, before closing night so that I could have recommended it in time for people to go see it.

It was produced by Strawberry Theatre Workshop, a small, award-winning Seattle theatre company now based in the brand-new arts space on Capitol Hill called 12th Avenue Arts. Almost every one of their recent productions I have seen, including the brilliant “Breaking the Code,” about Alan Turing, has been excellent.

It is no wonder that this Pulitzer Prize winning play, written almost 70 years ago by Wilder, is still one of the most performed plays in America. Its examination of ordinary lives is poignant and still resonates today.

And Wilder’s “form of expressionism that demanded an audience collaborate in the creation of the story without the aid of production elements of any kind” is supremely effective in Strawshop’s modern telling of this American classic.

Gaetano Boriello

The UW lost a great educator, researcher, and scholar this weekend in CSE Professor Gaetano Borriello. He succumbed to cancer on Sunday, February 1, 2015.

Others will write extensively and eloquently about his contributions to the field and the world. Gaetano was my introduction to the DUB community at the UW, when I first started teaching part-time in the Division of Design. He was a great inspiration to me, having taken the time to get involved in a project I was doing with design students that was related to his research in public transportation systems.

Having lived in Italy for a few years and learned enough Italian to be conversant, I was always trying to use that in our interactions. Curiously, he always answered me in English, though. I guess I wasn’t as conversant as I thought, or maybe my accent was like fingernails on a chalkboard to his ears. He was born in Italy, but his English was flawless and unaccented whatsoever. Like so many Italians, he was kind enough to appreciate my efforts and never said anything about them. On the contrary, in fact, especially when others were around.

And curiously also, it was only as he got sicker that I noticed him replying to my butchered Italian in Italian. Un uomo molto gentile, veramente.

In the Spring 2015 quarter, I will be offering a DRG to develop a “UCD Charrette” outreach effort to promote HCDE to high school students and teachers. For more details, see Outreach DRG.