BOSTON - A state agency is releasing nearly $9 million in grants for organizations, communities and schools across the state including about $1 million in three counties in Western Massachusetts.

NEWFANE — Art is often admired for its beauty, but a group of Newfane High School art students have taken it to the next level. Their creations will help feed the hungry of Western New York.

Opera spoof is Sunday at UMA AUGUSTA — PORTopera's Maine's Emerging Artists will appear in "Too Many Sopranos," a spoof and take-off on opera singers, sung in English, at 2 p.m. Sunday in Jewett Hall Auditorium at the University of Maine at Augusta.

About nine months ago, artist Lacey Lewis knew the time had come to move the brushes and canvasses from her Kansas City, Kan., living room to a real studio.

If radio is theater of the mind, Mars Hill Audio is a sort of salon, a gathering place for about 6,500 subscribers to hear a bimonthly discussion about the interaction of Christian faith and modern culture. The program's host, Ken Myers, founded Mars Hil