My father, Samuel Holliday, had deep-set blue eyes that were the kind that threw you off. You never knew what he was thinking. Statistically only 8 percent of the world’s population has blue eyes, and it is believed that all blue-eyed people have one common European ancestor. These rarities fit well with the mercurial and […]

My understanding of inheritance has evolved over the last few years. This evolution began in July 2017 when I lost my mom and confidante to cancer. Soon after, my dear dad passed away, in November 2018. If that was not enough, I also lost my brother suddenly, on Jan. 1, 2020. With my recent life […]

As an anthropologist, I am keenly aware that there are at least two different kinds of inheritance: biological and cultural. I inherited my strawberry-blond hair and blue eyes from my WASP-y ancestors who came from Scandinavia and Great Britain. My younger son inherited these same traits from me, along with my allergy to penicillin (poor […]

On April 17, my mom, Rhoda Schneider, 97 years old, passed away due to COVID-19. She had been living in an assisted living center in Michigan near my youngest sister. It has been very surreal as I could not fly out to visit her when she first got sick and we had a Zoom funeral […]