Archer Records is excited to announce the release of Amy LaVere’s new record, Stranger Me, on July 19, 2011. Produced by Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire), Stranger Me is LaVere’s third record and is the follow up to the Jim Dickinson-produced Anchors & Anvils. Always texturally rich and often employing dissonance and off-kilter instrumentation, Stranger Me is her most exploratory work to date. Alternately haunting and exuberantly defiant, it is a perfect backdrop for this collection of songs about frustration and feeling emotionally disconnected.

Organizers have canceled their attempt at a mass potluck dinner at the Georgia State Fair in Macon this weekend.

They planned to shoot for the Guinness Book of World Records for largest potluck dinner.

In a Facebook post, organizer Chris Horne says the Bibb County health department raised "some legitimate safety concerns" about the Macon Bacon & Kazoo Festival.

He noted, "This is a matter of hundreds of strangers feeding each other with no control over the preparation or source of the food. The potential for someone to get sick is too great to ignore."

"The only way to proceed, they said, would be if no one ate the food," he wrote. "Obviously, that puts a kink in things -- it would be an incredibly unfair temptation to look at all that bacon and not be able to eat it."

Central Georgians gathered outside Macon City Hall to honor the 60th National Day of Prayer.

"I do believe that when we pray we will begin to pray as a nation," says Pastor Victor Grubbs, "that the guns will go out of the schools, the drugs will leave the classroom."

Covenant Academy Grammar School's chorus sang at Thursday's event.

Congress established the day in 1952, and in 1988 designated the first Thursday in May as the National Day of Prayer.