One unexpected byproduct of the Great Coffee Boom of the '80s was the Great Chocolate Boom that began soon afterwards, and is booming louder every day. Once Americans had gotten used to strong, bitter, expensive coffee, then strong, bitter, expensive chocolate was pretty much the same, only sweeter. Godiva and Ghirardelli began to seem like the Ford and GM of American gourmet chocolate.... Read more

In his light, airy, second-floor workshop on Cherry Street in Burlington, Joe Campanella Cleary lays three instruments on a workbench. A tall, lean guy with dark, delicate features, he handles the instruments carefully with long fingers.

The first is his violin, an instrument he made himself and plays when performing bluegrass with the Cleary Brothers Band.... Read more

Bluegrass is generally seen as having been launched by the radio performances of Bill Monroe in the mid-1940s. Earl Stanley, of the famous Stanley Brothers, says that bluegrass music didn't even get its name until 1965, when the organizers of the first festival couldn't think what to call it and decided to adopt the name of Bill Monroe's band, the Bluegrass Boys. It changed the meaning of the word so radically that this is now perhaps the only example on Earth of a music genre named after a band.... Read more