About a year ago, Scott Beck got an email that cost him $75,000. It wasn’t from a Nigerian claiming to be the administrator of a millionaire’s estate, but from a company in New York called On Demand Books. In the email was a picture of something that looked like an office copy machine, but could take a digital file and turn it into a library-quality paperback book in a matter of minutes.... Read more

In some places, parents who don’t like the looks of the local public schools send their kids to established, private ones, or they homeschool. In Vermont, a third option is surprisingly popular: Starting your own.... Read more

Patrick Kane was surprised when he got a call from the New England chapter of the American Institute of Architects saying he had won one of the association’s annual awards. After all, he has a solo practice in tiny Hardwick, Vt., and was up against stiff competition from big firms in Boston and Connecticut.... Read more

How much would you pay to outsource the most tedious, physically demanding aspects of your job?

That question arose for Pete and Madonne Rainville in April 2008, when their dairy barn burned down and they considered how to rebuild it. They could go back to the old-fashioned, tie-stall milking barn, in which Pete, now 40, would have to attach the milk pumps on his cows manually. But all that bending down, getting up and lifting was wearing out his joints so much that he was already on a regular regimen of physical therapy.... Read more

It’ll be at least three weeks before the first ski lifts start spinning in Vermont. So why is Dave Bouchard, an avid telemark skier from Hinesburg, keeping a close watch on the mountain weather now? Because, first of all, he doesn’t need lifts to get up the slope — his legs propel him just fine. And, second, he barely needs snow to get back down. With a pair of junkboards strapped to his feet, Bouchard can sample the first turns of the season with just a peach fuzz of frost between him and the ground.... Read more

Denise Davine, 47, has fond memories of growing up in the Wilson Castle in Proctor. She and her friends played hide and seek for hours in the 32 rooms on the 115-acre hillside estate overlooking Killington and Pico. The game wouldn’t be as much fun today, however, when the floors in some of the rooms are sagging dangerously and the intricate elegance of the hand-stenciled ceilings, marble verandas and brick turrets is peeling, fading and crumbling at an alarming rate.... Read more

Humans have been drawn to gold since time immemorial. To the ancient Egyptians, the glimmering rock was the terrestrial surrogate for the sun. Two thousand years later, in 610 BC, the Greeks used it as the basis for the world’s first system of currency. It wasn’t until 1971 that the United States decoupled the dollar from the bullion — before then, the slogan on the back of a one-dollar bill should have said, “In Gold We Trust.”... Read more

In The World Without Us, journalist Alan Weisman interviewed hundreds of experts and crisscrossed the globe to answer his book’s central question: What would the Earth look like if humans suddenly disappeared? Vermonters can find that out by just taking a walk in the woods.... Read more

If Kyle Bergman wasn’t an architect, he’d be a filmmaker. That’s why the 47-year-old New York resident combined his profession with his passion to create the Architecture and Design Film Festival, a new four-day event taking place at Waitsfield’s Big Picture Theater.... Read more

A little less than a year ago, while the national financial markets were in a tailspin, Rutland’s Chaffee Art Center experienced its own bit of fiscal turmoil. The 47-year-old organization, housed in an ornate 1896 Queen Anne Victorian mansion, had run out of money and was forced to lay off its staff and close for the winter. But its fortunes didn’t exactly crash because of the stock market, so what happened?... Read more