Catholic Courier

Andy and Patrick Collier both were very involved with the youth group at Sacred Heart Parish in Auburn when they were teenagers. Unlike most of their peers, however, their involvement with the group didn't cease after they graduated from high school, and at the beginning of September the brothers became the new youth ministers for the SMASH youth group, which encompasses teens from St. Mary and Sacred Heart in Auburn as well as St. Ann in Owasco.

In 1918 an Austrian immigrant named Lawrence arrived at Willard Asylum, the state mental hospital on the shores of Seneca Lake that would become his home for the next 50 years. A veteran of the Royal Austrian Army, this man was no stranger to mental institutions. He'd previously spent time in mental hospitals in Germany and Long Island, where he reportedly sang, shouted and whistled boisterously and sometimes claimed to hear the voice of God and see angels.

WATERLOO -- The kitchen was quiet except for the soft murmur of casual conversations and the bubbling of a large pot of pasta boiling away on the stove.

There was complete silence in the crowded gymnasium as Katie Ronsivalle stared up at the ceiling. Dozens in the audience appeared to hold their breaths as they watched the sixth-grader stand at the podium, her lips barely moving as she silently worked out the correct spelling of the word "environment."

University of Georgia sophomore Rebeka Geer found herself in a slump last fall, and when classes let out at the end of December she boarded a plane bound for Africa.