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Immigrants bring their own distinctive flavors to Vermont — witness the recent boom in Thai and Vietnamese restaurants. But one new cuisine has snuck in under the radar, perhaps because it’s so similar to the hearty Old Country fare many of our ancestors ate — namely, Bosnian food. Local Bosnian-American entrepreneurs, themselves the products of a cultural melting pot, offer wares that may not sound particularly exotic: bread, cake, sandwiches, kebabs. But one taste confirms these foodstuffs are out of this world.... Read more

Three flags — touting Vermont, Uncle Sam and a school mascot, respectively — hang on a pole outside the Winooski School District. It’s a reasonable compromise: To buy — and fly — a flag for each of the 15-plus nationalities represented by the school’s diverse student body would break its budget.... Read more

About three years ago, Chris Urban bought a notepad at a Middlebury stationer. He was preparing to teach English for the Vermont Migrant Education Program, and his “students” were among the 2500 Mexican nationals living on Vermont dairy farms.... Read more

In December 2004, as fellow inmates listened helplessly, a 19-year-old prison inmate at the Upstate Correctional Facility in Malone, N.Y., suffered repeated seizures on the floor of his cell for two days and two nights without receiving medical attention.

A state medical board later concluded that the inmate, a Mexican national named Christopher Campos, died because one of the prison’s infirmary staff didn’t understand his diagnosis and then denied him his prescribed medication.... Read more

More than a century ago, Irish immigrants regularly muddied Boston Common with their Gaelic football matches, while boxing gyms in Brooklyn and Manhattan reeked with the sweat of Italians and Jews literally fighting for their place in U.S. society.... Read more

It’s been more than five years since Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, was arrested and jailed on terrorism and conspiracy charges cobbled together under the USA PATRIOT Act.

Al-Arian, a longtime Palestinian activist, spent more than two and a half years in solitary confinement, until December 2005, when a jury acquitted him of the most serious of the charges. His family claims he signed a plea agreement — admitting to a minor charge — just to put an end to the nightmarish ordeal in hopes of being reunited with his family.... Read more

When Congo native Fuad Ndibalema participated in a Vermont Foodbank-sponsored 12-week training program on creating a food-based business, he never imagined where he’d be today. The entrepreneur, known to many as “the Samosaman,” has built a successful culinary venture on savory stuffed triangles, originally based on a family recipe. Sold wholesale to stores and offered at farmers’ markets, they’re hot-ticket items at the Chew-Chew Fest, too.... Read more

Vermont is a small, out-of-the-way place, and if recent discussions about its future are any indication, its residents often wonder if their way of life is compatible with the rest of the country’s. No other state proudly trumpets the fact that a sitting president refuses to visit; none has argued so passionately for secession — a movement that surely embodies collective concern about whether the United States of America can live up to its good name. ... Read more

The small custom-slaughtering facility at Morrisville's Winding Brook Farm is spic and span, save for a tiny puddle of blood that gleams on the drain in the middle of the painted concrete floor. Two electric hoists hang from the ceiling. Not knowing better, one might think they were pieces of exercise equipment for pull-ups or some other kind of strength training. In fact, they're used to haul animal carcasses aloft. On the wall hang a number of knives and a hacksaw.... Read more

Grass skirts and faux leopard skins from Wal-Mart are among the props Lusenge Siriwayo uses to transmit the Congo’s culture to his children in Winooski.... Read more