My family in healthier times Back row: Rosalie and Keith Front row: Eddie, Jenni and Gareth
Today, Sunday 15 March 2026 (the Ides of March) marks the 43rd anniversary of my late father’s first (of three) subarachnoid brain haemorrhages, shortly after he delivered the IEE Faraday Lecture, entitled “The Photon Connection“, in his hometown of Nottingham.
It was an event that overwhelmed us at the time and defined almost every aspect of our lives afterwards, up to and beyond his death in January 1998.
It marks the moment that we effectively lost our father. I often used to describe that a man who looked like our father returned from England, but he was never the same. Over the next fifteen years his health declined, the brain damage and subsequent dementia slowly picked away at his memories and personality and he eventually succumbed to kidney failure.
I often wish I’d had more time with him, learned more about who he was, listened to more stories about his childhood and his adventures in India, where he met our mum.
I often wonder what the other ‘sliding doors’ life would have looked like. The one where he didn’t collapse during a post-lecture interview with the BBC. The one where he returned home healthy after the lecture tour.
But today, I will hold on to the good memories, remember his hugs and the happy tears of joy in his eyes whenever I returned home from university.
For the last few days, I’ve been reeling at the news of the sudden and untimely death of former Mastodon guitarist and co-vocalist William Brent Hinds.
By all accounts, he was a force of nature. A wild character. And a fabulously inventive guitarist and vocalist. I feel thankful that I have stood in the same room as him on a couple of occasions and marvelled at Mastodon’s unique brand of rock n’ roll.
When big characters who have burned so brightly in life are suddenly and cruelly extinguished, life suddenly feels fragile. But now is the time to rage against that darkness and live life to the full. This week I have been doing that to soundtrack of Mastodon.
There’s an open wound placed upon my heart in anger’s rage If we open up a spirit, it’s a spirit that can bleed
— “Seabeast”, Mastodon from Leviathan (2004)
Sending love and condolences to his family and friends.
Molly Miriam Esther Holzschlag (1963–2023) died on this day one year ago.
Even if you don’t know who Molly was, without doubt you have benefited from her work, her expertise and her unrelenting dedication to ensure that the world wide web that we know and love today was built on open and accessible standards, adhered to by the major web browser developers.
Her obituary in the Tucson Sentinel reported that “more than once, she challenged [then Microsoft boss] Bill Gates face-to-face to fix problems with Internet Explorer”.
Molly was nicknamed the “Fairy Godmother of the Web” and for good reason. Aside from her work as a lecturer and advocate for open standards, she wrote or co-authored 35 books on web design and open standards, including The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web with Dave Shea and Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design with Andy Clarke.
I don’t remember when I first became aware of Molly’s work, but I guess it was in the early 2000s through .net magazine, to which I subscribed. She was then firmly on my radar as I navigated my transition from church work to web work at the University of St Andrews.
During my final years as the web architect at St Andrews, in the digital communications team, I managed to get one of our sprints, which were being named after influential women, named in her honour.
I sent Molly a message on Twitter about it. She was touched and we kept in touch.
I also made initial enquiries about how to get Molly rewarded with an honourary doctorate from St Andrews, Scotland’s oldest university, in recognition of the extraordinary work she had done through the years. But, sadly, I left the University before I got much further than the preliminary steps and then my personal spectacularly fell apart.
It was during what would turn out to be Molly’s last few years that I got to know her a little better. Although I sadly never got to meet her in person, I did spot her at a distance at the www2006 conference in Edinburgh and we communicated on Twitter. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t follow through with a request from Molly for us to connect on a video chat. She was going through a lot with the death of her husband and her own health concerns (for which the web community raised around USD $70,000 for medical treatment), and I was going through my own daily nightmares.
Something that I really admired in Molly was her authenticity, her raw humanity—something that comes across in much of her writing and throughout her work. She fought for web standards, she fought so that people of varying abilities had no (or fewer) barriers to access this extraordinary global resource, the world wide web.
I remember the “browser wars” of the mid-2000s. Having to write different code for different browsers to make them work. Molly Holzschlag helped to eradicate that in favour of web standards—write the code once so that it runs everywhere.
Molly often wore her heart on her sleeve very publically as she railed against the cruelty of humanity, the unfairness of disease and personal loss. She went through more than anyone should be expected to endure. But she did it with authenticity and passion.
It was to these tweets that I would often respond with love and gentleness.
And throughout her personal trials, there were moments when she still embodied the strapline on her Twitter account, “It is the true teacher who leaves the class knowing they have learned the most.”
After Musk bought and started stripping the soul from Twitter, I dropped off the platform for almost a year. When I returned, earlier this year, I went to look for Molly to see how she was doing. Which is when I learned the sad news that she had been found dead at home in Tucson, Arizona on Tuesday 5 September 2023, aged 60 years.
I felt both a deep sadness that Molly had died, but in some way also a relief that her suffering has come to an end. I will miss our wee chats.
The world and the world wide web is a poorer place for Molly Holzschlag’s death. But what a legacy she has left!
My dad with me a few days after I was born in 1971
Today marks exactly 26 years since my father, Keith J Saunders, died. I still miss him every day. What I would give to have one last hug from him.
Dad died from kidney failure aged 52 years, 10 months and 23 days . I reach the exact same age as him this autumn. That has been a sobering thought as I approached my 52nd birthday in November.
Today my thought, however, have been on the happy moments that we had together. Those ordinary every day interactions and conversations, before the dementia started stripping away large chunks of what made him who he was.
On Thursday 6 August, two days after her 81st birthday my beautiful Mum, Rosalie Jean Saunders was found dead at home.
She had had an amazing birthday, she felt so blessed by people’s love and kindness. She had her hair dyed pink in celebration. Two days later, it appears that her heart gave out, but oh! what a heart she had.
The last two weeks have been a roller coaster of emotion. Most days when folks have asked me how I am, I’ve said that I’ve been like a typical day of Scottish weather: I’ve had a bit of everything.
Today, restricted by Covid-19 guidelines, a few family and friends gathered in the church grounds at St John the Evangelist, Selkirk (Mum’s spiritual home since 1974) and then in the Auld Kirk Yard to give thanks for the life of Mum and commit her to God’s keeping.
Mum was buried in a family grave, alongside my father.
My sister, brother and I worked collaboratively on her eulogy (below) using notes that she had left herself (thanks Mum, they were really helpful!). Mum left a lot of papers and writings and photographs which we will go through over the next few weeks, months, years and I’d like to compile them into a book to remember Mum by. But that is for another day.
Today we rejoiced for her life, her love, her faith in the God she adored.
