The new American $50 bill unveiled in April features background colors, security thread, color-shifting and watermarks. The website of the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing reassures visitors, though, that the note "preserves the distinct size, look and feel of the traditional American 'greenback.'"... Read more

Vergennes is the election-year place to be for Memorial Day festivities and this year was no different. Where else could you see grown, fez-wearing men riding camel-butts on go-carts? Civil War cavalry and scruffy colonials firing muskets? Bernie Sanders in a coat and tie?

Plus, there was the jolt to the eardrums from the sudden low-level swoop by two F-16s from the Vermont Air Guard. It was a reminder of the current state of existence -- the state called war. It's actually the longest surviving state in the history of the human race.... Read more

It's a Saturday evening and I'm standing barefoot in a Franklin County field with a dozen other unshod women and men. It's dark, and we're holding hands in a circle, chanting. In a few minutes, those of us who want to will be walking on hot coals. I feel as if I should be in Fiji or India, flanked by fakirs and readying my soul for purification. But the locale is Fairfax, my co-chanters have day jobs ranging from acupuncturist to AmeriCorps, and the path I'm readying my soles for is strictly secular.... Read more

Dave Dellinger's father was a well-connected Massachusetts lawyer and friend of Republican Governor Calvin Coolidge. One of his grandmothers was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Benjamin Franklin was a direct ancestor.... Read more

Burlington will be bopping this week and next as the Discover Jazz Festival takes over town. While heavy hitters such as Branford Marsalis and Randy Weston bring the masses to the Flynn Center, stars from a slightly different cosmos will be throwing down downstairs.

The 200-person FlynnSpace, a cabaret-style venue located next door to the Flynn Mainstage, will host a trio of performances by some of jazz's most energetic performers: the Chris Potter Quartet, Steve Coleman and Five Elements, and Han Bennink and Eugene Chadbourne.... Read more

Howard Dean's South Burlington office is a lot emptier than in the heyday of his presidential campaign, but reminders of those heady times are everywhere. On the wall to the left of the door hang huge photos showing thousands of jubilant supporters waving blue Dean signs at rallies in Seattle and Philadelphia.... Read more

Most christenings involve water or champagne, but Chip Schlegel has something else in mind. Standing in a small clearing in the woods at Bolton Valley Resort, the rock-climbing and ropes-course guru points to three long boards at our feet and several chunks of wood forming a zigzag pattern on the carpet of dried leaves. "We will be using these planks and those blocks to get across the toxic peanut-butter pit for our rite of passage," he says. "This will determine the absolute christening of the Bolton Adventure Center Challenge Course."... Read more

In the age of "Fear Factor," it was probably inevitable: a reality series in which participants risk cruel and unusual treatment along the lines of whipping, having one's head bound to one's feet overnight, branding with a hot iron, having an ear cut off and "cucking." That is, being strapped to a chair, lowered under water and exposed to the jeers of bystanders.

No, it's not "Survivor: Abu Ghraib.... Read more

A generally negative New York Times review suggested that The Mudge Boy suffers from "one of the least commercial titles in film history." But writer-director Michael Burke's debut feature, which was released in a few major cities earlier this month, is every inch an indie. Legendary critic Rex Reed praised the way it "intelligently explores the unhappy world of a teenager too different from the rural claustrophobia of the Vermont farm community where he lives to ever fit in with the other kids his age.... Read more

The first public shot in the new cross-border battle between Vermont and New York was fired this week from atop Burlington's Hospital Hill. The target: the hearts, rather than the minds, of the New Yorkers across Lake Champlain.

Starting next month, Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in Plattsburgh is getting into the heart business. CVPH will begin offering coronary angioplasty to upstate New York patients. Later this summer CVPH will start doing open-heart surgery. No longer will upstate New Yorkers have to cross the lake or travel down country for surgery.... Read more