Thin. Thick. Short. Long. Neat. Messy. Dreadlocks of all styles never seem out of season in the Green Mountain State. This week Seven Days got the low-down on locks from Elisabeth Hart, "dread specialist" at Diversity Hair & Nails salon in Burlington.... Read more

Cancer isn't just a virulent growth that afflicts the human body -- it's also a dangerous weapon that can infect the body politic. Mere mention of the word "cancer" in a headline can be enough to blacklist a geographic region or bankrupt a company. So when an independent group of scientists from New York claimed recently that there may be a link between elevated cancer rates in Windham County and the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, the contention further inflamed an already incendiary issue.... Read more

Anti-immigration factions are hijacking the Sierra Club. An eco-activist is arrested for torching SUVs in California. Vermont environmentalists are battling it out over the pros and cons of wind power.

These days, it's not much of a stretch to imagine some eco-terrorist transplant hatching a plot to take out the transmission towers on Mount Mansfield. Vermont Public Radio's worst nightmare comes true in Don Mitchell's timely new novel, The Nature Notebooks, when a smooth-talking conservationist enlists three female nature writers to take back the Nose.... Read more

It takes a lot of nerve to interview an oral historian. And a tape recorder, I thought, until Meg Ostrum set me straight. Most of the conversations she conducted over a period of 20 years for The Surgeon and the Shepherd, her book about the French Resistance, were never put on tape. The Montpelier author recalls being advised by a folklorist friend that "tape recorders can often get in the way of people talking to you."... Read more

John Fusco's Hidalgo is a box-office hit, but the Lamoille County screenwriter has been plagued by controversy over the Touchstone release that opened in early March. Viggo Mortensen stars as Frank T. Hopkins, who in 1890 reportedly rode a mustang to victory in a 3000-mile endurance race across terrain that now encompasses Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria.

But Fusco says a Kentucky couple, Basha and CuChullaine O'Reilly, is behind a media blitz to discredit the film.... Read more

Back up, America! Rewind that film! Your columnist has some flip-flopping to do.

You heard me -- I'm a flip-flopper. Despite all you've been told by the White House, the major media, Ann Coulter and the Ouija board, it takes a big man to flip-flop and I'm going to be the first one on the block to do it.... Read more

The apparent suicide of monologist Spalding Gray was a wrenching loss. According to Alison Granucci, a friend of Gray and a former Burlingtonian, the loss is made more poignant by the fact that in his final performances -- a work-in-progress presentation of Life, Interrupted at New York's P.S. 122 last December, not long before he disappeared -- Gray was beginning to reveal a side of himself that had never been seen on stage.... Read more

In 1975, Howard Dean was in medical school in the South Bronx. Gary Dahl was in California trying to make a go of it in advertising. One evening, over a few cocktails with his pals, he came up with the idea for marketing the perfect pet -- a Pet Rock.

At $3.95, Dahl's rocks made great stocking stuffers. They also made Gary Dahl a millionaire, and a forgotten one at that, despite all the national press and appearances on "The Tonight Show." It was a one-year phenomenon for Mr. Dahl.... Read more