Wedding venue in Blue Ridge, GA for couples in Macon-Bibb County, GA

Whatever way you slice it, pie is just too good to pass up.

And with National Pi Day on Thursday, we couldn’t miss the chance to highlight some of Macon’s best places to get your fix.

Sure, Pi Day is technically about math, but we promise not to count how many pieces you enjoy.

Where: 3001 Vineville Ave.

Pies on the menu: pecan pie cheesecake, orange dreamsicle, chocolate cheesecake

Yelp rating: 4.8/5 stars

Yelp review: “The Pecan Pie cheesecake is absolutely amazingly delicious! The cheesecake itself is creamy and light. The pecan pie topping is just perfect and the buttery crust pulls it together perfectly,” said Tara.

Where: 1191 Oglethorpe Street

Pies on the menu: sweet potato pie, pecan pie

Yelp rating: 4.5/5 stars

Yelp review: “Unbelievably delicious. The Pecan Pie is the best...in the world,” said Tony P.

Where: 807 Forsyth Street

Pies on the menu: sweet potato pie

Yelp rating: 3.8/5 stars

Yelp review: “This place was everything I had hoped it would be and more. The food, service and ‘feel’ were perfect,” said Bill I.

Where: 4436 Forsyth Road

Pies on the menu: coconut pie, chocolate pie

Yelp rating: 4.4/5 stars

Yelp review: “The coconut pie was great. Good texture and light crust,” said Jay S.

Where: 543 Cherry Street

Pies on the menu: cracked pie, lemon buttermilk pie

Yelp rating: 4.6/5 stars

Yelp review: “Fantastic restaurant and a gem in Macon! Don’t leave without trying a cheese board and the cracked pie! Fantastic,” said Courtney M.

Where: 512 Poplar Street

Pies on the menu: lemon icebox pie,

Yelp rating: 4.2/5 stars

Yelp review: “The Lemon Icebox pie was incredible. If you find yourself in the area I can’t recommend this enough,” said Allison H.

Where: 450-B Third Street

Pies on the menu: nutter butter pie

Yelp rating: 4.4/5 stars

Yelp review: “The nutter butter pie was amazing and huge,” said Kyle L.

Where: 543 Cherry Street

Pies on the menu: derby pie, caramel apple pie or try the moon pie milkshake

Yelp rating: 4.2/5 stars

Yelp review: “Fabulous! Everything we ate was delicious, fresh, homemade,” said Carey W.

What’s your go-to spot for pie? Comment below or let me know at cmadden@mcclatchy.com

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March 04, 2024 4:36 PM

(Reality Check is a Telegraph series holding those in power to account and shining a light on their decisions. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email mynews@macon.com.)

A “major spill” caused fluids from a Macon wastewater treatment plant to flow into the Ocmulgee River last week, but the Macon Water Authority says there are no early signs of the river being impacted.

The spill happened at the Rocky Creek Water Reclamation Facility located at 4705 Mead Road, and it’s the fourth major spill at Macon’s facilities in the last year. Heavy rain caused extra water flow in the area and contributed to the spill, the water authority said. While officials are taking steps to address the problem, they’re facing obstacles.

“We have very limited options as the plant is at capacity, and strong rain events can rapidly increase the flow far above what the plant was designed and constructed to handle,” said Kate Kubesheski, director of wastewater operations who oversees the day-to-day operations of both water reclamation facilities in Macon.

The water authority reported the spill to the Georgia Department of Natural Environmental Protection Division. The water authority is required to report the incident if the discharge into the body of water exceeds 67.5 milligrams per liter of “total suspended solids” in a day. Total suspended solids are a measurement of the solids within a water or wastewater sample.

This spill eclipsed that barometer on consecutive days, according to the Macon Water Authority: on March 6 the measure was 108 mg/L and on March 7 it was 78 mg/L.

Kubesheski said when there are too many solids on the plant, and the area gets heavy rain, there’s increased water flow that pushes the solids out into the river “before they are sufficiently treated.”

The solids in the plant are a mix of waste entering the plant and microbes the plant uses to break down the waste in basins. The waste is a mix of municipal and industrial waste, though most of it is industrial.

Kubesheski said staff have been working to get the aerators back on, which the plant uses to provide oxygen to the microbes.

“We shut down some of our equipment to cause less mixing in the basins to try and let the solids settle in the hopes that the excess flow will not be able to carry them to the effluent,” she said. “We’re also removing as many solids as we can without disrupting the treatment process to reduce the overall inventory.”

A Macon Water Authority report states the facility is making continual adjustments to the aeration basins and clarifiers, when possible, to try to manage the solids onsite without more of it flowing into the river. Pressing is being done continuously if storage room is available.

But these actions don’t always do enough to completely solve the problem, and options are sometimes limited, Kubesheski said.

“At times they aren’t enough to keep us from losing solids to the effluent,” she said, which is a term used to describe the outflowing material going into the river. “However, the amount lost is minor compared to the amount of solids retained in the plant during these times.”

Kubesheski explained the river is monitored for a year after a spill event and so far, no negative impact on the river has been seen.

“The flow from the plant is a small percentage of the overall river flow, and the solids we lose are treated, just not to our normal standard,” she said. “We monitor the river for impact for a full year after a spill event - we haven’t seen any negative impacts on the river.”

Kubesheski added that the water authority is pursuing options for plant expansion.

“The Macon Water Authority is actively pursuing options for plant expansion at this time to help prevent this from continuing to occur in the future,” she said.

It was a memorable week at the GHSA basketball state championships for three Class A basketball programs – Mount Vernon, St. Francis and Greenforest.

But for one school, it was an historic ending.

Greenforest became the 22nd program in the history of GHSA basketball to win on both the boys and girls side of the class when the Division II season ended Wednesday at the Macon Coliseum.

Grayson, the 7A powerhouse, became the 23rd when both the boys and girls teams won championships Saturday.

All told, Mount Vernon (Division I boys), St. Francis (Division I girls) and Greenforest (Division II boys and girls) finished with state championships.

The Greenforest boys were led by Elijah Lewis’s 18 points in a Class A Division II boys 68-39 championship victory against Manchester. Caleb Kawela added 11 points.

The Greenforest girls defeated Montgomery County 39-28 to win the Division II girls championship. Milica Lazarevic led with 11 points; Arek Manoon added 10.

Mount Vernon’s boys and Greenforest’s girls both won program-first state championships. The Greenforest boys previously won championships in 2013, 2016, 2017 and 2022. St. Francis’s girls enjoyed championship victories in 2013, 2015, 2016 and last season.

Mount Vernon upended Paideia 48-40 in the Class A Division I boys game after splitting regular-season games between the Region 6 rivals. Xavier Shegog led with 18 points and seven rebounds.

Nya Young’s 3-pointer late in the fourth quarter extended St. Francis’ lead to five points, allowing the Knights to defend last year’s title with a 74-71 victory against No. 2 Galloway. Giaunna Rogers scored 19 points, and Young finished with 13 points to lead St. Francis.

Here are the final rankings:

Class A Division I boys

1. Mount Vernon (23-9)

2. Paideia (17-13)

3. Savannah (23-9)

4. Darlington (24-7)

5. St. Francis (13-12)

6. East Laurens (22-5)

7. Mount Pisgah Christian (14-18)

8. Mount Bethel Christian (15-7)

9. Bleckley County (21-9)

10. Woodville-Tompkins (22-5)

Class A Division I girls

1. St. Francis (24-7)

2. Galloway (19-11)

3. Athens Christian (24-5)

4. Rabun County (24-7)

5. Swainsboro (19-7)

6. Lamar County (24-6)

7. Bryan County (26-4)

8. East Laurens (19-8)

9. Mount Pisgah Christian (16-11)

10. Oglethorpe County (23-3)

Class A Division II boys

1. Greenforest Christian (27-4)

2. Portal (28-2)

3. Manchester (19-9)

4. Calhoun County (25-6)

5. Macon County (27-4)

6. Warren County (24-6)

7. Christian Heritage (21-6)

8. Clinch County (18-6)

9. Mitchell County (23-6)

10. Early County (20-11)

Class A Division II girls

1. Greenforest (27-5)

2. Montgomery County (30-2)

3. Taylor County (27-4)

4. Clinch County (21-5)

5. Wilcox County (27-3)

6. Early County (22-7)

7. Seminole County (23-7)

8. Chattahoochee County (21-8)

9. Terrell County (19-8)

10. Christian Heritage (18-12)

A closely scrutinized open-records measure dealing with public access to the flow of electronic messages among government officials won passage in the Kentucky House on Tuesday.

The bill's lead sponsor, Republican state Rep. John Hodgson, backed off the original version that had spurred a strong backlash from open-records advocates.

Those advocates have warned that the revised version still contained loopholes that would hurt the public's ability to scrutinize government business.

It would do so by limiting a public agency's duty for producing electronic information, applying only to material stored on a device that's “agency property or on agency-designated email accounts,” open government advocate Amye Bensenhaver said in an email after the House vote.

The new version of House Bill 509 cleared the House on a 61-31 vote to advance to the Senate. Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers.

It would update provisions of Kentucky's open records law that were crafted long before the advent of emails, text messages and other forms of electronic communication, Hodgson said.

“This bill attempts to close a gap that has been created in the subsequent decades by requiring that the tens of thousands of people that work for public agencies, or serve as appointed board members in some capacity, have an agency-furnished or an agency-designated email provided for them, so that they can conduct their official business with those searchable electronic platforms,” Hodgson said.

Hodgson has said he is trying to balance the need for transparency with the need for personal privacy.

Public officials could be punished for using non-public email accounts for official business under the bill. But open-records advocates have said that is not enough because there is no guarantee that those records would be subject to the state’s open records law.

“Until this bill gained traction, the overwhelming weight of authority focused on the nature and content of a record, not on the place it is stored, to determine its status as a public record governed by the open records law,” said Bensenhaver, a former assistant attorney general who helped start the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.

“HB 509 passed out of the House with the goal of upending that analysis and reversing that authority,” she added.

This story was originally published March 12, 2024, 7:30 PM.

The first few weeks in a classroom can help set the tone for the rest of the school year. Building a sense of safety and belonging for young students early on is critical, said Berol Dewdney, a pre-K teacher and Maryland's 2023 teacher of the year.

Dewdney, who's been teaching pre-K for just over a decade now, said her mother Anna Dewdney, the late author and illustrator of the well-known "Llama Llama" children's books, helped spark her interest in early-childhood education. The Hechinger Report spoke to her about how she creates a welcoming environment for students and about other strategies that help her during the first few weeks of the year.

Consistency helps children know what to expect each day, which also allows them to feel confident and safe in a familiar environment. An example of a classroom routine could be creating a morning ritual with students, like going over the rules at the start of class or giving students a job to do like greeting each other at the door each day, said Dewdney, who teaches at an elementary school in Baltimore.

"The brain is pattern-seeking and survival-oriented, so we create consistent routines at home and at school so that we can help our kids feel safe so they can effectively connect with others and effectively learn," Dewdney said. "Those routines, in addition to helping students feel safe and have a dependable sense of what's going on in their lives, also helps them build executive functions."

Every day, Dewdney tries to have meaningful interactions with her students, sometimes planning those exchanges in advance. One activity she likes is an "I love you ritual," a term coined by Conscious Discipline, a company that provides training on social and emotional learning. The rituals can be about anything, but they always have four components: presence, appropriate touch, eye contact, and a "playful spirit."

One of Dewdney's ideas of an "I love you ritual" with students is a nursery rhyme that involves fingerplay: "Round and round the garden goes the teddy bear, one step, two step, tickle you under there." During this rhyme, Dewdney draws a circle on students' hands before tickling them under the chin or arms.

The game helps build a healthy adult-to-child relationship and it also builds a structure kids can draw on to create similar healthy rituals and interactions with each other, Dewdney said. "Adult-child interactions we know to be one of the most important things in an early childhood classroom," Dewdney said. "Planning for those interactions and making time for those interactions is essential."

Staying calm when a student is misbehaving or when something stressful happens models how to respond to a conflict.

"If we're going to empower kids to be in charge of themselves and to self-regulate and to love and learn and lead effectively, we have to first do so as adults. And it can be really hard — in life, in a classroom, with XYZ going on in the world — to maintain your self-regulation and calm," Dewdney said. "One of the first things that a grown-up and educator can do is really practice the structures that make them feel calm and safe."

Dewdney uses breathing exercises in the classroom as one way to foster a sense of calm. She teaches her students the exercises to help them learn to self-regulate, but she also uses the activities for her own benefit.

All of these activities are ingredients for creating a safe and welcoming environment for young children, she said.

"It feels really obvious to say that it's important that a classroom is a loving space, [and that] it's important that you create a sense of belonging. But what does that actually look like in the classroom? And what are the things that you do as a grown-up to make that happen?" Dewdney said. "That's one of the most empowering things that I've experienced as an educator — that these tools help me feel a connection with kids and families and to really create the loving classrooms that we know our kids deserve."

© Stacker Media, LLC.

This story was originally published March 12, 2024, 12:35 PM.