The story behind Scott Colom's name

 

Main Street of Columbus, Mississippi

Congratulations to Scott Colom, Senator-elect of Mississippi. 🙌

Why is Scott Colom's surname pronounced Co-LOM? 

That accent on the second syllable raised questions in my mind. 

It sounds French, I thought. Could the name Co-LOM be connected to Columbus?

Well, Artificial Intelligence confirmed my guess, in a way, with a lot more detail.

For one thing, Scott was born in Columbus, Mississippi, and many of us carry surnames from the city where an ancestor once lived. For example, consider Jack London or John Denver. Also, cities are often named for the family who once lived there.

Here's what AI said about the name Colom.. (Take everything AI says with a grain of salt.)

Scott Winston Colom (pronounced kə-LOHM) carries a name rooted in both deep Mississippi family heritage and European linguistic history. Born in Columbus, Mississippi, on December 24, 1982, he is a seventh-generation Mississippian and the U.S. senator-elect from Mississippi. [1, 2, 3, 4]

His name's background breaks down across his personal family lineage and general surname etymology:

Family & Middle Name Origins

• Maternal Heritage ("Winston"). His middle name, Winston, is the maiden name of his mother, retired Judge Dorothy (née Winston) Colom. She made local history as the first African American elected to serve on Mississippi's 14th Chancery District Court. [1, 2]
• Paternal Heritage ("Colom"). His surname comes from his father, Wilbur Colom, a prominent Mississippi attorney, founding partner of the Colom Law Firm, and the 1987 Republican nominee for Mississippi state treasurer. [1, 2]
• Mississippi Roots. Colom identifies as a proud seventh-generation Mississippian from Columbus, passing the family name on to his two daughters as eighth-generation Mississippians. [1]

Etymology of the Surname "Colom"

• Catalan & Latin Roots. According to genealogical records from FamilySearch and Geneanet, Colom is primarily a Catalan surname derived from the Latin word columbus, meaning "dove" or "pigeon". Historically, it originated as a nickname or an occupational name for someone who bred or kept doves. [1, 2, 3]
• Scottish Variation. Genealogical sources such as HouseOfNames also note a separate Scottish lineage in the Hebrides and Argyllshire, where Colom developed as a shortened variation of the Gaelic surname MacCallum, meaning "son of the servant of Callum". [1]
• American Adoption. In the United States, the surname appears in census records dating back to at least 1840 in neighboring Alabama, reflecting a mix of European migration and the adoption of regional surnames by African American families in the Deep South.[1]

Katharine Hayhoe: What YOU can do about climate change

Dr. Katharine Hayhoe speaking to WPC by Zoom

 More than two-thirds of us in the USA are worried about climate change. 

"Wildfires across Georgia and Florida destroy more than 50 homes and force evacuations," reports NewsNation today, Earth Day 2026.

What? I thought those were the wettest places in the country. 

Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, reports that though most people are worried, only 8% are activitated to slow down climate change. 

Most of us don't know what to do besides work to reduce our own personal "carbon footprint." We hear the bad news, and we don't think we can do much about it. 

"The harder people try, often the more discouraged they get," Dr. Hayhoe says. "But we can't afford to give up."

"I believe that together we can fix this," she continues. "The best weapon against climate change is hope."

Here are things that you can do:

1) Talk to someone about climate change. 

Educating others at the grass roots level is extremely important. "You don't have to be a scientist to talk to others," she says. "You can talk with others when you're a hairdresser, a plumber, a person on a bus, a neighbor talking to a friend."

But don't start by asking someone, "Do you believe in global warming?"

Start with, "Wow! The weather seems to be getting weirder." Most people will respond with examples of their own. "The key to having a real discussion is to connect over shared values like family, community and religion," she says.

Stick to facts and local examples. 

  ⇒Low-income neighborhoods in the same city are 15% hotter.

  ⇒Climate change is profoundly unfair. 

  ⇒The richest 1% produce 14% of the carbon emissions into our atmosphere.

  ⇒The poorest 50% produce only 7% of the annual carbon emissions.

2) Work on your own personal carbon footprint.

  ⇒your use of your car

  ⇒your airplane travel

   ⇒your use of plastics (which come from crude oil). For example, insist on powdered detergents instead of those in plastic jugs.

3) Use what you're good at. 

Whether it's science, business, teaching, construction, homemaking, medical work, writing or social media, in any walk of life, you can make choices that slow climate change and serve as an example to others. And you can talk with others.

4) Look at Dr. Hayhoe's website. 

Read one of her articles. Maybe even subscribe to her newsletter. Good things are happening. Know about them.

5) Listen to one of her TED talks. 

You will see good news about the progress we are making, and you will learn more about what you can do.

Dr. Hayhoe also works for the Nature Conservancy as Chief Scientist. She grew up in Toronto, Canada, and her undergraduate majors were physics and astronomy.

I heard about her when she came to speak at my church--by Zoom. She spoke with us and showed us her PowerPoint slides. We asked questions. 

"I only travel in person when I can bundle events," she says. She also told us about empty planes being flown to preserve an airline's allocated slot at a busy airport or to service a low-use city. Read this article on airline slot guidelines.

Her husband is a pastor, Andrew Farley. See the biography on her website.

Among her books is A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Communities. "It untangles complex science and tackles many long-held misconceptions about global warming," her site says. 

Thank you to Westwood Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles for sponsoring the Zoom lecture that allowed me to gain hope about the problem of human-caused changes in Earth's atmosphere. See the full lecture with PowerPoint slides on WPC's YouTube channel.

Jake Putich moderating Zoom with Dr. Hayhoe

Special thanks to Jake Putich, Director of Faith Formation and Creation Care at Westwood Pres, who knew about Dr. Hayhoe's work and planned this event as part of Creation Season at our church. 

He is also leading an Ecotheology Reading Group accessible by Zoom. Its purpose is "to deepen our understanding of what it means to be caretakers in the garden of creation," writes Jake.

Trump's mental deterioration

Survivors spoke at Congressional hearing Feb. 3
Screen shot from MS NOW @msnownews

President Trump is in sad shape. He is self-destructing. 

Meanwhile, he causes the deaths of more people every day--in Minneapolis, in Venezuela and the Caribbean, in South Sudan and in every nation that used to be served by USAID. We can't forget the 1.20 million deaths from his ignoring the Covid epidemic until it was too late.

In early December, as the season of Advent began, I resolved to stop posting on social media about anything he said or did. I planned to take a Christmas break and then not soil 2026 by commenting on him. I would just watch him dissolve.

But then he sent ICE and National Guard troops into Minneapolis. His untrained, eager-to-shoot recruitees shot and killed Renee Good and then Alex Pretti after causing several deaths in the Los Angeles area a few months earlier. We have to act. Thank you to those who have already spoken out or demonstrated in the streets.

We need Congress to impeach and oust him. Or maybe his Cabinet and vice president will declare him unfit to serve, as outlined in the 25th Amendment. Congress would then confirm the need to remove him from office. 

Trump's crude post linking President and Michelle Obama to primate animals is enough evidence for either impeaching or using the 25th. 

But Republicans have a slim majority in both the House and Senate, and too many them are still afraid to stand up to this man. 

One thing we can do right now is speak the truth about Trump's mental health problems as diagnosed by Dr. John Gartner in a podcast called The Daily Beast on September 19, 2025. Other psychologists have made similar diagnoses based on his gait and speaking problems.

Donald Trump's psychiatric disorders:

1) malignant narcissism - "the most severe personality disorder a person can have." This term was invented by Erich Fromm.

2) psychopathy (a type of antisocial personality), not currently in the DSM. Oxford Languages definition: "a persistent pattern of antisocial, impulsive, manipulative, and sometimes aggressive behavior, sometimes described as a personality disorder." Psychopathy can be summarized as a lack of compassion. 

3) paranoia, 

4) sadism

5) And now in addition: frontal temporal lobe disorder

The signs of this last disorder are:

• his impulsivity (erratic, arbitrary decision making, disinhibition)
• his language including difficulty completing a sentence or a thought. Often he can't pronounce a common word (phonemic paraphasia) or shows just plain vocabulary loss.
• his tangential thinking and speaking
• his wandering in a Japan trip in the week of Oct. 27-31.

Dr. John Gartner's conclusion: "Trump will not make it to the end of his term compos mentis". Compos mentis means with a mind that is competent to think clearly.

If that is the case, what is our duty?

1. To pass this information along to others in whatever way we can--by speaking, using social media, or going out in the streets.
2. To contact our congress members and senators asking them to remove this incompetent man from office--especially if we have Republican representatives.
   
3. To refuse to succumb to despair.
4. To avoid "obeying in advance" -- Lesson #1 in Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

The man's days are numbered. 

When he's gone, we can then start the task of rebuilding the nation, the CDC, the Department of Defense and other departments. We can begin rebulding our national reputation. We can restore the information about slavery and native people in our national parks.... The list is long.

Resources:

The Daily Beast podcast, October 2025, with Dr. John Gartner, guest speaker on various podcasts.

Times Radio podcast c. Oct. 30 2025, owned by Times UK (Murdoch).

The Bill Press Pod, Sept. 9, 2025

Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Timeline: Life of Renee Nicole Good (1988-2026)

This timeline is based on facts in

 the Minneapolis Star Tribune,

the New York Times, 

and other sources 

as of Jan. 14, 2026.

Please send corrections to

AnneLinstatter@gmail.com.

1988 – April 2             

                                  Born in Colorado Springs to Donna and Tim Granger, who had five children.

                                    Was raised attending Village Seven Pres. Church, Colorado Springs.

·         This church was part of the Presbyterian Church – USA. Now it is part of the Presbyterian Church of America, which opposes women pastors, legal access to abortion, and same-sex marriage.

·         Her uncle is a minister in a PCUSA church in Nebraska.

2002                        Went on church mission trip to Northern Ireland.

·         Friend on that trip, Rebecca Hainsworth, remembers her as kind with a beautiful voice.

·         They led Bible studies with Northern Irish teenagers.

2006                            Graduated from Coronado High School in Colorado Springs.

        Summer               Made another mission trip.

                                          ·         Served at First Presbyterian Church, Saintfield, N. Ireland.

·         Served with mission teams in Ballysally.

·         Served again with a church in Northern Ireland in 2007.

                       

2009                            Married Justin Sheppard, serving in the military. She was 21.

·         Her uncle officiated at wedding (this one?).

·         Daughter born in 2010—now 15 yrs old.

·         Son born in 2013 – now 12 years old.

2015                            Divorce.

2015-16                       Attended Metropolitan State University in Denver.

 

2018                            Married Timmy Macklin Jr., who was serving in Air Force.

·         Sister-in-law Jessica Fletcher

·         Traveled to NYC, Paris, and then Oregon where he had relatives.

2019                               Son born--now 6 years old.     

2020 - January             Pandemic began.                   

2020 - December         Graduated from Old Dominion University in Norfolk VA.

·         English major

·         Earned Academy of American Poets prize earlier in year.

                                   

2022 – December        She and Macklin separated (not divorced).                           

 

2023 – May                 Macklin, her second husband, died.

·         “The military just really took a toll on him” – his sister said.

·         Also the first Trump administration took a toll.

                                    She was living in Colorado.   

                       

2023 - October            She changed her surname to Macklin Good.

·         She & Rebecca Good started living together in Kansas City MO.

·         They owned a business called B. Good Handywork LLC.

·         Neighbor Jennifer Ferguson liked the family.

 

2024 – November 5    Donald Trump re-elected.

            December        Renee and Rebecca Good left Kansas City, Missouri.

                                                Visited family

                                                Went to Canada, trying to figure out where to live.

 

2025 – Jan., Feb.         Visited Macklin family in Oregon & Tennessee with 6-year-old son.

            March              Arrived in Minneapolis.

·         Lived in Powderhorn neighborhood, which was becoming gentrified.

·         Diverse neighborhood, people supported each other.

            Fall                  Hosted poetry workshops at her son’s elementary school.

 

2026 – January 6         A block captain for a group monitoring whereabout of ICE agents knocked                                    on doors of her block handing out pamphlets & whistles.

            January 7         Killed by ICE officer in Minneapolis.

·         Portland Avenue South, between E. 33^rd and 34^th Streets.

·         She was 37 years old.

·         Her younger son was 6 yrs. old.

·         Her wife Rebecca Good was in the car.

 

Sources:

“Renee Good came to Minneapolis seeking a safe place. Less than a year later, she was killed.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, Jan. 14, 2026.

“Who Was Renee Good, the Woman Killed by an ICE Agent in Minneapolis?” by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Dan Simmons, and Ann Hinga Klein.  New York Times, Jan. 10, 2026.

“Presbyterians learn of Renee Nicole Good’s connections, work within denomination” by Gerald Farinas. Website of Edgewater Presbyterian Church in Chicago, Illinois. Jan. 10, 2026.

“Killing of Renee Good.” Wikipedia.

Trump doesn't know what's in his Big Beautiful Bill?

What an agony we are going through this July...

First we had the push toward Trump's big ugly bill passed on July 3, and now we're figuring out how to live with it, how to continue fighting the effects of the $79 billion given to ICE, and how to prevent the bill's many cuts to health care for Americans.

Three sources say that when Trump was negotiating with a few Republicans holding out against the bill in the House of Representatives on July 2, he said "There are three things Congress can't touch if they want to win elections: Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security."

"But we're touching Medicaid in this bill," said one Republican.

Trump mumbled something not recorded on tape. Maybe it was, "Oh, I didn't know." Or maybe it was a denial that this bill includes cuts in Medicaid--$1 trillion in health cuts total.

Jamie Raskin: "The extraordinary thing about that is that, of course, all  of these people have gotten in line despite their own misgivings because Trump is leading the way, but Trump might not even understand what's in the bill. So it's a very dangerous moment when you think about what democracy is, and it doesn't speak well for what has become of the Republican Party. 

Raskin went on to say: "Now some people think that it's just Trump's devilishly clever politics where he's already distancing himself from a bill that he knows will be a nightmare, and then he'll blame it on somebody else for not having told him what was really in there."

Chris Hayes: "My read on this is that he doesn't really care that much one way or the other." Thank you to All in with Chris Hayes for airing this report on Fourth of July weekend.

• The bill approves spending of about $4.5 trillion total.
• It includes tax cuts of about $1 trillion for billionaires & corporations.
• It cuts more than $1.1 trillion from Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare over the next ten years.
• It will add $3.4 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years--or more depending on how you predict details.

Sources:

"House Passes Sweeping Bill..." NY Times, July 3, 2025

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/breaking-down-one-big-beautiful-bill  

        --detailed estimate as of June 4, 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzmLp9RoLws

See also Senator Elizabeth Warren's post on Facebook:

Being brave in the 21st century...

 

"Grant us wisdom, grant us courage / For the facing of this hour" wrote Harry Emerson Fosdick in 1930, composing lyrics for a hymn that begins with the words "God of grace and God of glory."

He had no idea how bad the next 10-15 years would be, but he had served as a chaplain in World War I. 

Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, chose those words of Fosdick for the first page of How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith, published in 2023.

In order to counteract all the bad news around us, I'm reading this book and listening to her read it aloud via Audible.

I'm also tending the flowers in my garden and enjoying those in the streets around me as I walk my dog, Neenah.

Flowers are brave. They don't give up. Given half a chance, they bloom--rooted in the crack of a rock or in soil that has had no rain for months. 

Each one has a mission to grow, unfold, and lift a smiling face to the universe, whether there's a human around to see it or not. 

Sometimes a deer comes by and eats the flowers. If not, they fade, lose their petals, and grow seeds that ants or birds or humans eat.

Some of the seeds sprout and bring more flowers, but always they give life in one way or another.

Animals are brave too and humble. They never know what's next, but they carry on. Deer endure rain and freezing winters. Coyote venture into city streets in search of their next meal. Abandoned dogs cower in shelters but wag their tails if someone takes them out. Neenah spent time in a shelter.

May we be brave like the flowers and animals as the terrible news of bombing, starvation, and genocide assaults us daily.

May we  grow, unfold, and lift a smiling face to the One who made us all.

May we give life in one way or another and do our best to stop the killing, starvation, and disease. 

Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil, as Jesus taught us to pray.

Where there is genocide, let me sow life.

Kathy McTaggart - Doing her part to stop violence

 

Katherine K. McTaggart  

(1943-2012)

Kathy McTaggart, champion for violence prevention

Katherine McTaggart, better known around the community as Kathy, was loved by the countless young people whom she befriended over her 16-year career as a licensed therapist at various Santa Monica schools. Her specialization was working with adolescents and their families.

Her official title was School and Community Partnership Coordinator in the SM-Malibu Unified School District. In the early 1980s, Kathy was the on-site therapist at Olympic Continuation School, where she counseled high-risk and gang-involved students. She met with their families and enabled many young people to stay in school and resist drugs and other dangers that their peers were involved in.

Kathy developed a genuine rapport with her students, which in turn led to long-lasting friendships. Over the years she stayed in touch with many of her former students, both those at Olympic and those at Santa Monica High School.

In 1988 Kathy was honored as YWCA Woman of the Year. She was active in youth-serving organizations in the community such as the Police Activities League (P.A.L.), where she served on the Board of Directors. As a part of city and county social service networks, she had extensive knowledge of community resources for youth and families. 

Violence Prevention

Violence Prevention aims to prevent the infusion of physical, emotional, and psychological distress from occurring.  Instead, meaningful dialogue serves as a preventive measure to ensure that violence does not become a solution to disagreement or a developing problem.

In the first decade of this millennium, Kathy and others in Santa Monica connected to form a Community Violence Prevention Coalition. We sought solutions to youth and community violence through education, community dialogue, and advocacy for services and policies that would result in violence prevention and intervention. Conflict de-escalation was a central training we supported.

Education and early years

A valedictorian of Suffern High School in Suffern, New York, Kathy graduated from Smith College summa cum laude in 1965 with two BA degrees, one in social work and one in art history.  Then she earned two MA degrees in art history and in child development from New York University, followed by another MA in Family and Child Counseling (MFCC) from CSU Northridge. She married and raised two sons.

Prior to settling in Santa Monica, she had worked in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and New York.  She is a person of value who will always be remembered.