Everywhere you turn, everywhere you look, you find drugs, drugs and more drugs: pharmaceutical drugs, illegal drugs, wonder drugs, dangerous drugs. On two separate fronts drugs are at the center of the nation's political debate.

On Monday at City Hall in Burlap it was Congressman Bernie Sanders and Mayor Peter Clavelle promoting the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada.

At 7 p.m. Thursday night at UVM's Waterman building, it will be eloquent crusader Ethan Nadelman calling for an end to the positively useless War on Drugs -- specifically, marijuana.... Read more

Winooski is the new Brooklyn -- I'm not sure where I heard that catchy phrase, but it's been stuck in my head for months. The implication is that Winooski is to Burlington as Brooklyn is to Manhattan -- smaller, cheaper, edgier, less gentrified but no less distinct than the bigger burg it abuts. There's even a bridge between them.... Read more

In the early 1920s, when Winooski's textile industry was thriving and providing jobs, immigrant workers were hungry for foods from home. Satisfying their ethnic appetites became a niche business. Peary Cohen, a Burlington resident who died in his nineties last year, remembered delivering different kinds of bread to the mills. "We had one kind for the Russians, one kind for the Poles, one kind for the French-Canadians," he recalled.... Read more

Coming in for a landing at Burlington International Airport may be the only time a Winooski resident can appreciate living under the flight path. If you crane your neck, you can spot your own roof, or at least the twin spires of St. Francis Xavier's. Certainly the Winooski River, that grand, curvy waterway separating the Onion City from its big sister the Queen, comes into view before you touch down.... Read more

Few spiritual leaders have captured the imagination of the modern world like Tenzin Gyatso, better known as His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Believers consider him to be the incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, the legendary Boddhisatva of Compassion. Others know him as winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign to free his homeland from Chinese occupation.... Read more

In Sue Halpern's first novel, a lay minister wonders why theologians spend so much time debating the problem of evil. In his view, humanity's "main dilemma" is not evil but "hardness." "Why is everyday life so goddamned hard?"... Read more

Game six, Red Sox-Yankees, on the car radio. The Red Sox have just pulled ahead by one run in a crazy seventh inning, and if they don't keep this lead, they're dead.

But I can't listen. I've gotta go watch Vermont Stage Company perform a play I've already seen twice. I know I wasn't the only one in the audience at Prooflast Wednesday night thinking, "Thishad better be good."

And I know I wasn't the only one who, as soon as it began, breathed a sigh of relief.... Read more

"It remains to be seen how many people in our time will make that journey from war to nonviolent action against war. It is the great challenge of our time: how to achieve justice with struggle, but without war." These words from iconoclastic historian Howard Zinn will reverberate through downtown Burlington during the Vermont International Film Festival (VIFF), which begins this Thursday, October 16, and concludes on Monday.... Read more

Four men and two woman mug and gesture as they mimic an incompetent royal entourage preparing for a hunt. (It's important to taste the animal's droppings.) The harmonies emitting from their lips are as sweet and ethereal as their pantomime is absurd. This is the Oxford vocal ensemble I Fagiolini, performing at the University of Vermont's Recital Hall on November 5. While their playfulness might startle those who expect a concert-hall experience to be "heavy," it's surprisingly in tune with the spirit of early music.... Read more

A soft knock on the door of the recording studio in Chuck Eller's Charlotte home sets off his two Cairn terriers, Ruby and Bing. I flinch at the sudden disruption to a recording session inside, then instantly recognize my own naïvete. Obviously, no one can hear the barking dogs from inside a soundproof room Ñ or my knocking, for that matter.... Read more