Serialized fiction has venerable bloodlines, packed with the DNA of Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy and Melville. Generally, these writers published chapters of future novels in popular magazines that paid well and built the authors’ audiences. Such opportunities are rare for writers these days, but the pull of piecemeal literature is still strong.... Read more

Humans have been growing food for more than 10,000 years, so do we really need an app to show us how to do it? Well, probably. According to the South Burlington-based National Gardening Association, about 39 million households in the United States plant edible gardens, but 20 percent of them give up every year. That’s a whole lot of discouraged gardeners. Jim Feinson, president of Gardener’s Supply, thinks we can do better.... Read more

A few years ago, the Middlebury College community engaged in a deep conversation about grass. More specifically, synthetic grass — the material the college planned to put on the new football field. This being Middlebury, the talk went way beyond the cost and aesthetics of authentic sod. A large committee was convened to research the environmental effects of the turf, from off-gassing and water needs to maintenance and disposal.... Read more

A man sits on a folding chair in the basement of a Rutland duplex. He picks up a crude, four-stringed guitar and places it on his lap. With his left hand, he runs a metal slide along the strings, which sit a quarter-inch above the fretless neck. His right hand plucks a soulful, Delta-blues riff from the instrument, the notes bending and moseying on a 12-bar progression. The sound, though rough hewn, is clear and true and packed with feeling. “That’s just a piece of board we glued to a cigar box,” the man says.... Read more

Soundscapes, like landscapes, change over time. As the clopping of horse hooves became the hiss of rubber tires, so did tracts of virgin forest become condominium complexes. On this journey there are awkward interactions between old and new. In zoning parlance, a nonconforming (or “grandfathered”) use is one that isn’t compatible with current development patterns but is allowed to continue because it predates the zoning regulations. It’s the tiny deli squeezed between two skyscrapers, or the house abutting a gas station.... Read more

Let’s recap some bad news. Thanks to BP, there are over 140 million gallons of oil polluting the Gulf of Mexico, and that number increases every day. Because of the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street, with their credit-default swaps and collateralized debt obligations, the nation is reeling from a recession rivaled only by the Great Depression. And, if it weren’t for those two catastrophes, the deaths of 29 coal miners in April — thank you, Massey Energy Company — would have stayed in the public’s consciousness a bit longer.... Read more

Sculling, rowing, crew — whatever you call it, this sport in which skinny jocks pilot skinny boats up skinny rivers comes with some unfortunate stereotypes. They’re a bunch of spoiled prep-school kids with expensive, effete watercraft, some say. Others quip the pastime is for elitist Ivy Leaguers whose best days are behind them.

Well, Vermont doesn’t have many fancy prep schools, and not a single Ivy. Nonetheless, sculling thrives here. And, as you might expect, Vermont rowing has a flavor all its own.... Read more

An orphanage is no place for a kid to grow up. For one thing, it’s a rigid, highly regulated institution devoid of the love and compassion that children need to develop into healthy adults. Then there are the stories of abuse and neglect inside orphanages — the very situations that many orphans escaped from at home. Yet, for much of modern history, an orphanage was the destination for most parentless children.... Read more

If Little House on the Prairie is to be believed, there was once a time when children were supposed to be seen and not heard; to speak only when spoken to. And Laura Ingalls did her chores without expecting any financial reward.

But drop in on a young family today, and you’re likely to witness something like an operatic cage match: kids whining for a snack, crying about some grievance and evading their parents’ requests. Mom and Dad, meanwhile, are wrangling their kids with bribes, punishing them with time-outs and lambasting them with lectures.... Read more

Right off the bat, in his new book, The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise, Sutton author Garret Keizer admits that noise “is not the most important problem in the world.”... Read more