Celebrate the ones you love at Peggy Mercury’s CHARM BAR POP UP with their friend and jewelry designer Carolyn George!
Celebrate the ones you love at Peggy Mercury’s CHARM BAR POP UP with their friend and jewelry designer Carolyn George! Carolyn will be on hand to customize pieces from her line ROSE and MOKSHA and guide guests in creating their own charm necklace and bracelet designs!
11am – 4pm
Peggy Mercury, 9 Maple Street
Move Your Mind, Move Your Body with Nancy Schuler
Tuesdays in March: 10:15 – 11:00 AM
Live, In-Person & Live on Zoom:
Registration is required for In-Person
This Class is designed for senior women.
The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2021 to 2030 The Decade For Healthy Ageing. The OWL has always been committed to expanding minds and now we would like to help our community expand their physical strength.
Join Nancy Schuler in this exercise class for senior women. You can attend the class in person, or online. The class features stretching and exercises that can be done in a chair or standing, and lifting of 1 or 2 lb. weights. All exercises are gentle and easy to understand. Exercise has been proven to help one’s cognitive abilities, blood pressure, insomnia, digestive issues, depression, strength and independence. The Alzheimer’s, Diabetes and Heart Associations all recommend exercise for healthy ageing.
No prior experience is necessary. Bring in a set of light weights for this class – 1 to 2 lbs.
Oliver Wolcott Library
160 North Street
Litchfield, CT 06759
https://www.owlibrary.org/adult-events.aspx#anchor_move
Artist: Albert Coffill March 3 – April 11
“Connections” – An exhibit of paintings celebrating the pastoral scenes that reflect the natural elements and characteristics of rural New England
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 20 from 5:00 – 7:00 PM
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Have you ever arrived upon a scene where everything about it gives you a sense of awe or remembrance? Life moves very quickly, yet a beautiful pastoral scene can stop you in your tracks. These instances are the inspiration of my paintings and I try to capture the feeling of the moment before it disappears literally or figuratively. Studying the natural elements of the landscape as a child and young adult gave me the background to not only identify what I am painting, but through an artist’s eye, observe and depict the colors, light and shadows that enhance a scene. My inspiration comes from the American Barbizon painters, a group of artists “that painted simple, pastoral scenes”. I hope that by viewing my work, you too can find a connection to each painting and perhaps rekindle a memory or emotion of your own.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Albert Coffill paints quiet scenes that reflect the natural elements and characteristics of rural New England. His love of nature and the rolling hills, open meadows, forests and waterways of the region inspire the paintings created with oils on canvas or gouache on paper. His roots run deep in Litchfield and New England, tracing back to the Mayflower. So too do his emotions for his scenes that he paints. His work captures those special tucked away places that make our region so unique.
Beginning his art teaching career at the Morse Pond School in Falmouth, MA, Albert was the art teacher at Kent Center School in Kent, CT, as well as Sharon Center School in Sharon, CT. He was educated in the Litchfield Public Schools and holds Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Art Education from Southern Connecticut State University and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Visual Arts from Wesleyan University. Albert also studied landscape painting at Art New England at Bennington College, Bennington, VT and Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, CT. He was the recipient of the 2001 Connecticut Art Education Association’s Distinguished Service to the Profession Award. Other honors include three grants from The Philanthropic Initiative, Inc. of Boston (TPI) presented in the years 2000, 2001 and 2006. These grants were given for the creation of a home art studio; an integrated art program between Kent Center School and the Kent Historical Society; and for further study in landscape painting.
Albert has displayed his work at various galleries in northwestern Connecticut; Litchfield, Kent, Sharon, New Milford, Torrington, Salisbury and Canton. He participated in the 2016 Open Your Eyes Studio Tour presented by the Northwest Connecticut Arts Council. One of his paintings is part of a permanent installation at The Philanthropic Initiative office in Boston, MA and another work is at the Kent Center School in Kent, CT.
After forty-two years of teaching art, Albert is now retired. If not in his art studio, he can be found in his multiple vegetable and flower gardens, berry patches and orchards or restoring stone walls or sheds. His 1830 Milton Road homestead “Spruce Tree Acres” where he lives with his wife Teresa, has been in the Coffill family since 1920, beginning with his paternal grandparents. During his “quiet” moments he spends time researching his genealogy to preserve the legacy of his family, just as he does with the scenes that he captures in his paintings.
Oliver Wolcott Library
160 North Street
Litchfield, CT 06759
https://www.owlibrary.org/on-exhibit.aspx
Meet The Author Richard King: Sailing Alone
Thursday, March 6 from 6:30 – 7:30 PM
Live, In-Person & on Zoom: Registration is required to attend In-Person
A masterfully curated collection…You don’t have to be a sailor to be blown away by this fascinating, bighearted book.
—Nathaniel Philbrick
A story as vast and exhilarating as the open ocean itself, SAILING ALONE chronicles the daring, disastrous, and often absurd history of those who chose to sail across the ocean, in very small boats, alone.
Sailing by yourself, out of sight of land, can be invigorating and terrifying, compelling and tedious – and sometimes all of the above in one morning. But it is also a wide expanse of time in which to think. Sailing Alone tells the story of some of the remarkable people who, over the last four centuries, have spent weeks and months, moving slowly over the world’s largest laboratory: a capricious and startling place in which to observe oneself, the weather, the stars, and countless sea creatures, from the tiniest to the most massive and threatening.
Sailing Alone also recounts the author’s own nearly catastrophic solo crossing of the Atlantic, and the mystery of his inexplicable survival one sunny afternoon.
Richard J. King is a Visiting Associate Professor in Maritime History and Literature with the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, MA. He has been sailing on ships throughout the Atlantic and Pacific for twenty-five years and in 2007 sailed across the Atlantic alone in a 28’ sailboat.
The library will have copies of the book to borrow and the title is also available to download as an e-book or e-audio to OWL library card holders. The Curious Cat Bookshop will have books for sale at the event.
Oliver Wolcott Library
160 North Street
Litchfield, CT 06759
https://www.owlibrary.org/adult-events.aspx
The Hickory Stick Bookshop is delighted to welcome author and architect Daniel Frisch who will be here signing copies of his new book “Looking Forward to Monday Morning” on Saturday, March 8th at 3 pm.
ABOUT THE BOOK
“Looking Forward to Monday Morning” is a collection of essays that weaves together stories from Daniel Frisch’s thirty-year (plus) residential architecture practice.
The essays focus on design and technology, anecdote and philosophy, entrepreneurship and culture, and beyond. Taken together, the essays provide a look into the practice of architecture (with insights applicable to any collaborative field), demystifying the complexities of the profession and challenging the elitism for which architects are so well known.
In his writings, Frisch works both in the dirt and from a mile high in an entertaining and instructive voice, marrying the practical and the theoretical. His essays on technical issues will help all students, practitioners and homeowners understand the underpinnings of design and construction, while his more personal musings touch on universal themes that speak to the very core of running a client service business and fostering a creative culture. In his practice and his personal life, informed by real-world experience, Daniel Frisch maintains a sense of idealism, candor and wit that shines through on every page of “Looking Forward to Monday Morning”. Throughout the entire volume Frisch inspires by celebrating his great good fortune in his combining avocation and vocation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Frisch began his architectural studies in 1982 at the Harvard University Career Discovery Program in Architecture. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia School of Architecture (’87), and a Master of Architecture from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (’91), and is licensed to practice in New York and Connecticut.
Frisch is the founding partner at Daniel Frisch Architecture, a residential architecture firm in midtown Manhattan (established 1991). The firm specializes in single family home commissions in New York City and beyond.
In addition to the practice of architecture he is also a writer, teacher, and product designer. He lives in New York City and Kent, Connecticut with his wife and two children.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
“I recommend taking one or more (as needed) of Dan Frisch’s essays at bedtime on Sunday evening. It will transform your Monday from drudgery to inspiration.”
—Joel Rosenman, Woodstock Founder and author of Making Woodstock
“At all events, I know what it takes to write a book, and so does Dan. It ain’t easy. What has driven him to create Looking Forward to Monday Morning is that natural instinct to celebrate what he’s learned, share it, and reap benefits of earned erudition. We must raise a glass and toast to those impulses!”
—Tom Casey, Author of Strangers’ Gate and Unsettled States
“Dan Frisch is that rare architect who is also a true thinker and writer. He is full of ideas and he brings them to light in his new and illuminating book Looking Forward to Monday Morning. It was a pleasure for me to read, and others will agree.”
—Adam Van Doren, Painter and author of In the Founders’ Footsteps
This event is free and open to the public. If you are unable to attend this event, you may reserve signed copies of “Looking Forward to Monday Morning” by calling The Hickory Stick Bookshop at (860) 868 0525, or shop our website 24/7 at www.hickorystickbookshop.com.
The Hickory Stick Bookshop
2 Green Hill Rd
Washington Depot, CT 06794
https://hickorystickbookshop.com/event/2025-03-08/daniel-frisch-book-signing
The Hickory Stick Bookshop is delighted to welcome author Elissa Altman who will be here discussing her new book “Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create” with Kerri Arsenault (author of “Mill Town”) on Saturday, March 1st at 5 pm. The discussion will be followed by a book signing.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Who am I to tell my story? And how can we grant ourselves permission to write the stories we’re compelled to tell when we’ve been told we shouldn’t?
Without fail, almost every writer–new or experienced–has faced dire questions of permission and story ownership: there is something that they want to write about, that they need to write about. Yet: they can’t. They have been warned not to. They might be paralyzed with shame, threatened with shunning, chastened into silence. Even if what they need to write about has defined them and their worldviews.
But what if they did? What if you did?
After writing three critically-acclaimed memoirs and a decade of teaching memoir workshops at every level, Elissa Altman has helped students face the elephant in every writer’s room: how to craft the stories that are most vital to them despite the voices that have told them not to. Permission is a master course, not only on how to craft memoir, but how to begin and keep going when you’ve been told you can’t, and how to how to give yourself permission to transcend the fear that keeps vital stories from being written.
We are the storytelling species; this book will inspire and guide all creatives to a place of transformation, of freedom from the constraints of shame and fear in all their forms, and to the understanding and recognition of the ethics of story-making, art-making, truth-telling, and creative soul-saving.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Elissa Altman is the award-winning author of the memoirs Motherland, Treyf, and Poor Man’s Feast, and the bestselling essay substack of the same name. A longtime editor, she has been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Connecticut Book Award, Maine Literary Award, and the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, and her work has appeared in publications including Orion, The Bitter Southerner, On Being, O: The Oprah Magazine, LitHub, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and the Washington Post, where her column, “Feeding My Mother,” ran for a year. Altman writes and speaks widely on the intersection of permission, storytelling, and creativity, and has appeared live on the TEDx stage and at the Public Theater in New York. She teaches the craft of memoir at Fine Arts Work Center, Maine Writers & Publishers, Kripalu, Truro Center for the Arts, Rutgers Community Writing Workshop, and beyond.
An avid gardener, cook, and musician, Elissa lives with her wife, book designer Susan Turner, and their small herd of animals, in southwestern Connecticut.
Kerri Arsenault is a literary and cultural critic, director and co-founder of The Environmental Storytelling Studio (TESS), and author of Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Her writing has been published in the Boston Globe, The Paris Review, the New York Review of Books, Freeman’s, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. She is also part of the teaching ensemble at The New School of the Anthropocene.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
“Elissa Altman’s marvelous, passionate and charming new book, Permission, is going to breathe freedom into your life. It is a clarion call for writers to tell their hard, lifelong truth, no matter how many decades they have agreed to stay silent. Lies and cover-ups won’t save you. This book just might.”
— Anne Lamott, author of Somehow
“I can’t think of a better book on the craft of memoir. Erudite, wise and deeply personal, Permission burrows into the complexity of telling our own stories. This is a masterclass.”
— Katherine May, author of Wintering
“With Permission, Elissa Altman has given us a profound and generous gift. She candidly addresses the slipperiest questions behind making art from life: Can I tell my story? What are the risks and rewards? How do I care for myself–and others–in the process? There are only a handful of books I recommend every time I teach, without fail, and Permission will be one of them. This insightful, empowering book should be on every writer’s shelf.”
— Maggie Smith, author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
This event is free and open to the public. If you are unable to attend this event, you may reserve signed copies of “Permission” by calling The Hickory Stick Bookshop at (860) 868 0525, or shop our website 24/7 at www.hickorystickbookshop.com.
The Hickory Stick Bookshop
2 Green Hill Rd
Washington Depot, CT 06794
https://hickorystickbookshop.com/event/2025-03-01/elissa-altman-conversation
Join us for a magical evening as we celebrate love with a specially curated pop-up dinner that promises to tantalize your taste buds and create unforgettable memories. Award winning chef, Chef Brian Pazsko, will be returning to host this Supper Club special and provide us with an expertly crafted multi-course dinner that features seasonal ingredients and innovative dishes. To enhance each course and elevate your dining experience, thoughtfully selected wine pairings will be included. Enjoy a soothing backdrop of live music by renowned pianist David Grausman, creating the perfect ambiance for a romantic evening. Whether you’re celebrating with a partner, friends, or indulging in self-love this evening is designed to delight all the senses.
Sold out on Friday February 14th but limited seats are still available for Saturday February 15th.
The Litchfield Inn
432 Bantam Rd
Litchfield CT 06759
https://litchfieldinnct.square.site/product/the-supper-club-valentine-s-day-dinner/38?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false
The upcoming “Becoming Theia” retreat is about growth, reflection, connecting with like-minded women, and finding balance in a supportive and fun environment.
Set against serene landscapes in Litchfield, CT, our Becoming Theia Retreat will offer transformative workshops, mindful practices, and a space to learn about ways to reenergize your life. Save the date-March 27 @ The Washington Club.
9:30-4pm
$325
The Washington Club
Washington, CT
https://stan.store/BecomingTheia
The Highly Anticipated Winter Sale Returns To Privet House.
DISCOVER 40% off savings on ALL furniture, lighting & mirrors,
plus lots of other great stuff for your home…and just possibly,
your soul. Visit our charming New Preston emporium where
each piece tells a story and every corner holds a treasure just
waiting to be discovered.
PRIVET HOUSE
13 East Shore Road, New Preston, CT 06777
Wednesday – Sunday, 11am – 5pm.
Sale: February 14th – March 2nd
Visit Early For The Best Selection
The Winter Sale
Warm up your winter with an evening of hearty laughter and Valentine’s Day cocktails at LIVE LAUGH LOVE – a comedy event featuring New York City talent live in North Canaan! Host Ronnie Reed will share the stage with other regulars on the NYC club circuit, including headliner Jerrold Benford, and Ralph Anthony and Scott Bongiorno. Before the night’s comedy, there’ll be a happy hour with Valentine’s themed cocktails created by With a Splash Mobile Bar and a warm-up performance by area pop sensation Vemilo! Fri. 2/14, 6-9pm. Tickets $40 plus fees at canaancolonial.com. (Food and drink sold separately.)
Colonial Theatre, 27 Railroad St., North Canaan, CT
https://canaancolonial.com/public-events
Your weekly guide to can't-miss events, hidden gems, and local favorites in Litchfield County. Sign up now for curated things to do, eat, and explore—delivered every week. It’s free. It’s local. It’s essential.
