Family History

Obama's hurdles Re "Obama takes Olympic gamble," Sept. 29 I find the phrase "leaving healthcare and foreign issues unresolved" in your front-page article misleading. President Obama is not taking a vacation or resigning his presidency. He's taking a one- day trip to promote not only his hometown but his country as the host of the 2016 Olympic Games. To imply that this means he is ignoring healthcare and foreign policy is just wielding a political ax. The healthcare bill, with which he is intensely involved, and other issues don't go down the drain because he is physically absent, not to mention the fact that he is famously reachable wherever he is. Isaac Weingart Northridge It appears Obama is acting more as the Olympic Committee chairperson rather than our commander in chief.

SCOTLAND Fantastic guide We had a fantastic tour guide named Bill Webster who was very knowledgeable, took us all over Scotland, told about history, played Celtic music and even did research on my family history. It was the best travel experience ever. Real Scottish Journeys , 01-44-1764-682767, www.realscottishjourneys.com . Private tours begin at about $415 a day for a small group, including transportation. --Susan Friedman, Oak Park

For Dinara Safina, it is time. Lil' sister deserves her own picture over the fireplace. No more hand-me-downs. No tennis rackets with man-sized grips. No more keys to big-brother's old convertible. Safina is now four tennis-match victories away from not having to pass the potatoes first at the dinner table at home. If she gets to the final of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells next weekend, she will become the No. 1 player in the world.

A good friend of mine was approaching her 49th birthday with trepidation. Why, I asked her, was she so afraid of 49? "My mother died at 49 of a heart attack. The same thing will probably happen to me," she said. Not likely, I replied. And we started to talk about her mother. Her mother was a child of the age before genetics, before cholesterol, before we knew the dangers of smoking, fat and salt. Her mother and her mother's mother cooked with bacon grease, lard and other ingredients that many of us eschew today.

Rob Walker is 28, and his brother, Michael, is 23 -- young enough to dream of life away from home but old enough to know they don't want to end up anywhere else. The Walker men are farmers, just as their father was before them, as his father was and so on back to the early origins of Illinois. Seven generations of Walkers have farmed this land that hugs the Indiana border in southeastern Illinois, a familial thread that spans 222 years of American history. The first Walker, Thomas, laid claim to the fertile property along the winding Wabash River in 1786.

When the paper trail that Raymond A. Winbush followed in search of his African roots ended at a slaveholding Kentucky plantation, he turned to a combination of modern technologies: genetic testing and online social networking. It worked. A DNA test traced his ancestry to tribes in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, and an online forum set up by the company that scanned his DNA put him in touch with other African Americans who share similar genetic markers.

At age 35, Jessica Queller was the kind of woman it's hard not to envy. Bright, funny and attractive, she was a TV writer with a great Hollywood gig and many friends. Yet one sunny morning, Queller faced an overwhelming decision. A few months earlier, without much forethought, she'd taken a blood test for the BRCA "breast cancer gene" mutations. She was so confident she'd test negative that she skipped any genetic counseling beforehand. On that morning in 2004, Queller called the lab from her desk at "Gilmore Girls" and was told by a gruff voice that she'd tested positive for the BRCA1 mutation.