With a soft gurgle of bubbling water and a puff, conversation fills the air along with an aromatic blend of tobacco in the hookah lounge of Smoke-N-Peace.
The newly opened 421 Wabash Ave. shop’s become a sanctuary for those who’d still like to smoke ‘em if they’ve got ‘em, a haven of hookahs in a country where smokers are drawing increasing fire.
Doug Horton, Dustin Allen and husband-and-wife Patrick and Mary Feild gathered around the hookah one January evening, their laughs and conversation filling the air quicker than the smoke.
The lounge, opened …

Steve Connelly’s life reads much like a novel.
The Indiana State University English professor rides unicycles for fun, and once was scouted as a shortstop by Major League Baseball.
He’s been among the vanguard of Pop Culture studies, trading letters with Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and famous cartoonists.
He withstood the glare of racist Southerners just after the Civil Rights Movement, travelling to New Orleans with his friend, Terre Haute’s Olympic gold medalist and long jump champ Greg Bell.
He’s been a strong promoter of the legacy of Eugene Debs, a Hoosier politician …

Unquestionably, 2008 was a dark year for the members of Cuba, rife with losses both personal and universal, a slow creeping sadness seeping in like the floodwaters that temporarily sank parts of the city that June.
Now, a year and change later, the band’s buoyed up and bounced back, lyrical sorrows reflecting the roughness of that troubled time even as the joyous ranging sprawl of its music demonstrates the rebounding strength of playing at top form.
“Disease in the family, divorce and a surgery, flooding in the backyard and it’s haunting me,” …

In Christina Blust’s music, the darkest days are illuminated by the sudden flowering of a friend’s amaryllis. Magnolias dream of flowering under the snow. Her accordion conjures the hoodoo of a hurricane- ravaged New Orleans where she once volunteered.
And the cancer that once plagued Blust’s mother and sister — now, thankfully, in remission — is wished away, becoming poppy seeds, a wooden desk or a cotton skirt.
“It just seems to me that, of all the things a group of cells could be, why would it want to become cancer when …

When they walked through the then-new Honey Creek Mall, gawky teens with painted faces, they were like nothing Terre Haute had ever seen, a rag-tag coalition of kids whose support for their favorite band became the first draft of the KISS Army.
“We were like Wayne and Garth, from ‘Wayne’s World.’ We were all nerds, and I’m not ashamed to say that,” Bill Starkey laughs, remembering the days before KISS was a household name, let alone inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Now in their 50s, Starkey and …

Forget the pipers piping and drummers drumming. During the 2009 holiday season, music’s top sellers are artists who might make you believe it’s the 1960s all over again, courtesy new technology.
Still, in a tough economy, local musicians hope they don’t get lost in the mix.

The toy rat with glowing red eyes and mean plastic fangs reminds Thomas Ready of the year Christmas came early.

Ready, who’s played Santa for more than two decades, once went dressed for the part, clad in red sweatshirt and pants, to a Halloween party. The revelers, lacking a proper award for his costume as St. Nick’s surrogate, awarded him the rat as a trophy.