BY DOUG GRAHAM | Staff writer The company behind a project to store carbon deep beneath Lake Maurepas is trying to show it can be a "good neighbor" by spreading funds to local nonprofit organizations. Air Products recently announced its intent to launch the Lake Maurepas Community Fund, which will commit $1 million annually to communities bordering the lake. The first use of the money will be buying boats that will help with emergency response times for two local fire departments. The neighborhood barbershop can be a great place to catch up on news and gossip, and apparently to get screened for cancer. Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center has landed a $2.3 million grant to bring the screenings to barbershops across Louisiana and in Mississippi. Beyond the screenings, the grant will provide for bringing other health care providers, music, food and children's activities to mobile locations. Ernest Gaines always knew he would one day return to the grounds where his aunt raised him in a sharecropper's cabin in Pointe Coupee Parish. It's where he would build his home, where he would die in 2019. The internationally acclaimed author of "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" and "A Lesson Before Dying" now rests in Mount Zion Riverlake Cemetery near Oscar. Read here about how Gaines made sure the area's past was not forgotten. | 