Dry Run for the Doggie Death Penalty? The First “Dangerous Dog” Hearing is Underway Before Macon-Bibb’s Board of Health, With a Verdict Expected Monday Evening, March 9, 2015. Even After the Verdict, There’ll Be Lots of Questions Left to Answer.

By Dave Oedel, March 8, 2015, Macon, Georgia:

On December 29, 2014, three dogs, Coco, Pearl and Justice, pit bull mixes, got out of a contained backyard in the Brookefield subdivision off Bowman Road in north Macon at 140 Brookefield Drive, apparently from a hole in the high board fence that is typical in the neighborhood. Walking in the neighborhood was a visitor to the subdivision from Miami, Florida. His name? Renalto, an eight-year-old Schnauzer. At the end of a brief, frenzied encounter among the four dogs, Renalto was dead.

Renalto’s owner, Claudio Naranjo, 38, visiting her friends Zarina and Tora Gore who live at 304 Millwood Court just around the corner and about five doors away, was injured with bite punctures to her hand while trying to separate the dogs. Some of the punctures on one hand received stitches. … Continue Reading

Is Macon Really on the Move?

By Alan Wood

Editor of Georgia Watchdog

When I chose the title for this article, I thought I’d give my opinion, support it with some facts, and that’d be the end of it. But once I started thinking more deeply about the subject, I realized this is quite a complex topic, with lots of facets and nuances. You’d need to look at employment, population growth, shopping, attractions, education, culture, tourism, entertainment, crime, and dozens of other issues to really be able to fully delve into trying to answer this question.

So instead, this article will serve more as an introduction to the question of whether Macon is “on the move” or not. In this first edition of the series, I plan to talk first about some personal memories of Macon some decades ago, and a bit later about something called urban scaling — as well as what Macon can learn from some real historical antecedents, ancient cities.

… Continue Reading

Update on Telfair County’s Classic-Car Craigslist Killing: The Former Coroner Speaks Up, No Gun Found, Family Mostly Mum, No New Arrests

By Dave Oedel

I first spoke with Raford Horton on February 10, 2015, when I visited Telfair County to explore the setting, cause and meaning of the killings of retirees Bud and June Runion. As reported nationally, as well as in this local newsweekly, the Runions were lured to Telfair County on Thursday, January 22, 2015, in hopes of having their Craigslist ad answered in Bud’s quest for a 1966 Ford Mustang to match the one that he bought upon his release from service in Vietnam. But the Runions found no Mustang in Telfair. Instead, they met single bullets to their heads. Their bodies ended up lying some yards apart in Telfair’s piney woods.

Raford Horton has seen something of death in Telfair County, having served as its coroner from 2000 to 2008. Horton might have examined the bodies of the Runions himself, except that … Continue Reading

Why Did Maher Do Macon? Looking Back on Maher’s Macon Performance, and Why He Really Came

By Dave Oedel

On February 10, 2015, Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, executed three fine, promising Muslim Americans, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, and Yusor’s husband, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, in a Chapel Hill, North Carolina apartment complex. It was partly over a parking dispute, but probably also because of Hicks’ anti-Muslim, anti-religion rage.

Three days before the North Carolina massacre, Bill Maher made a surprising appearance 400 miles away in Macon, Georgia, before about 1,500 people at Macon’s City Auditorium. Attending Maher’s Macon show were people from all over the southeast, including some from the Chapel Hill area, because Maher scheduled only two southeastern performances this year. One, on February 8, 2015, in a fancy, big Orlando theater, was predictable. More eye-opening was Maher’s choice of a tired Macon venue on February 7. … Continue Reading