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

It’s hard to escape the bare butts in John Douglas’ current exhibit at Burlington College. Like the steelworkers in The Full Monty, produced by Lyric Theatre last weekend, he lets it all hang out in some of his images.... Read more

One day while walking in the Northeast Kingdom, Meredith Holch noticed one of her dairy farmer neighbors was building a new barn. “A light went off in my head, and I thought, Oh, they must be getting migrant workers,” recalls Holch. She looked out for the workers on her daily walks for several months, but never saw any. Then an ESL teacher of her acquaintance confirmed that the farm had been employing migrants for a year and a half.... Read more

Deep recession, rampant unemployment, disaffected youth — Road, staged this weekend by the Middlebury College Theatre Department, seems to feature ripped-from-the-headlines themes. But Jim Cartwright’s play doesn’t take place in Anytown, U.S.A., in 2009. These circumstances grip an unnamed town in the playwright’s native Lancashire, England, in 1986.... Read more

A piece of painted wood in the University of Vermont’s Davis Center bears these words: “I try to remind myself that I am on the outside free looking in at my mother who is trapped in this prison. But in reality I live in a cage as well, a cage without love and affection.”

The words, written by the child of an imprisoned woman in Columbus, Ohio, pop off their makeshift canvas. They bring to mind urban graffiti, only far more poignant.... Read more

Jay Fleury is a private man with an aversion to cameras. Ask his age and he replies, “Over 35 and under death.” He could be St. Albans’ most eccentric enigma. With gold-topped cane in hand and either a leather baseball cap or brown ushanka covering his clean-shaven head, Fleury takes daily strolls along St. Albans City’s Main Street, visiting downtown merchants and patronizing various restaurants. He calls St. Albans his baby.

“And I should take care of my baby,” he says.... Read more

Last January in this space, we reported on Cambridge resident Christine Sullivan’s self-published book 44 Days Out of Kandahar, which told the story of her desperate search for a puppy lost halfway around the world. Sullivan’s Navy reservist brother, Mark Feffer, had befriended the flop-eared red mutt named Cinnamon in Afghanistan, but circumstances derailed his plan to bring her back to his Annapolis home.... Read more

Lyric Theatre has earned a reputation over the past 35 years for serving up family-friendly entertainment. The company’s new show, a raunchy romp about male nudity and shifting gender roles, should prove no exception.... Read more

Following last year’s run of her play Dreamtime — a fictional drama based on the 2001 murders of Dartmouth professors Half and Suzanne Zantop by Chelsea teens James Parker and Robert Tulloch — Vermont playwright Maura Campbell returns with another original work inspired by troubled youth.... Read more

The term “dark arts” may conjure images of cloaked sorcerers casting devious spells, but for Deidre Healy, it’s a great prompt for a gallery exhibit.... Read more