Moseley Architects’ reserved parking spaces aren’t for mothers with young children. They’re for people who drive fuel-efficient cars. The Richmond firm is all about energy efficiency. It used green building techniques to renovate a contaminated garage as long as a football field into its headquarters. The soot was so thick in the barrel-vaulted structure that wood ceilings, 28 feet high at the apex, had to be blasted, but not with sand. Sand would have damaged the wood, so peanut and walnut shells were used.

Benjamin Prince Powell used to brag that his self-published book, “Right Around Home,“ was in 15 states and a couple of foreign countries. “He sold it to people in all of those places,“ Lucy Grove Powell, Mr. Powell’s wife of 53 years, said with a laugh. “It wasn’t an autobiography, just stories about things he remembered. A few of them were imaginary tales,“ his wife said.