Your guide to the heart of Litchfield County:
Discover local stories, hidden gems, and must-know events.

Healing Power of Acupuncture and Chiropractic Care 

By Clementina Verge

Many pet owners are pursuing alternative and holistic therapies for conditions ranging from arthritis and soft tissue injuries to digestive issues, seizures, and chronic pain.

“People seek alternatives to Western medicine for themselves, for better results, without potential medication side effects, and they’re doing so for their pets, too,” notes Dr. Karmen Couret, a certified veterinary acupuncturist and chiropractor who sees patients in Bantam, Watertown, Goshen, and Southbury.

Couret, who resides in Litchfield with her husband, son, two dogs, and a cat, graduated from Columbia University and earned a veterinary degree from Cornell University. In 1999, her dog’s battle against cancer propelled her interest in alternative medicine, homeopathy, and physical therapy.

“We are vets first, but some of us sought additional training because we believe in integrative care and using all the available tools,” remarks Couret, who has exceeded 500 hours of training in Chinese herbal medicine and is a member of International Veterinary Acupuncture Society, American Association of Veterinary Anatomists, and American Veterinary Chiropractic Association.

From puppies who incurred birth trauma or sustained play injuries, to sporting breeds that “jumped an inch too far,” and aging dogs affected by incontinence, Couret uses adjustments, needles, and laser therapy at all stages of life.  “We look to fix any imbalance,” she explains. “It’s like a reset to factory settings, getting the dog back to health and optimal performance.”—karmencouret-dvm.com

En Plein Air in Litchfield

By Douglas Clement

Some of the finest landscape painters in the Northeast will gather on Oct. 5 for an invitation-only celebration of the art of plein air painting, or painting done outdoors rather than in a studio.

The one-day event is hosted by the Litchfield Economic Development Commission, the Litchfield Historical Society, and a local arts nonprofit called Art Tripping.

An estimated 28 artists will set up their easels and brushes all over town and at Litchfield’s farms, trails, lakes and rivers, capturing outdoor scenes and the village’s historic architecture. They will capture the light and the essence of this historic county seat and its surroundings.

The painters can be seen at work on @visitlitchfieldct and @arttripping on Instagram and Facebook; and it will be possible to visit sites around town and watch them paint. 

The works will be available for sale after the judging at Milton Hall. Cash prizes will be given for first-to-third place winners (there will also be a People’s Choice Award). 

The hope is that this first plein air event will lead to larger-scale events in the future. The Litchfield Hills and surrounding areas have always attracted artists of national renown, as well as talented amateurs. Plein Air Litchfield will celebrate that heritage and, the organizers hope, will lead to future multi-day events that attract artists from around the country and the world.—litchfieldartscouncil.org and [email protected]

Photographs by Elena Uryadova

Publicist Victoria Hood met artist Theo Coulombe at his gallery, Standard Space, in Sharon in the summer of 2019. At the time, Victoria was representing Troutbeck, a resort in upstate New York, and approached Theo about a collaborative exhibition with an artist he was showing, John Paul Philippe. They became friends, bonding over good wine, food, and music. During COVID, while staying alone at her father’s house in Sharon, Victoria invited Theo to join her dinner pod. They often stayed up late talking, laughing, or watching Last of the Mohicans. Victoria sensed Theo’s admiration but they remained friends until fall 2021 when she rented a carriage house on Skiff Mountain. Feeling brave, Victoria invited Theo over for champagne and her client Pointy Snout’s caviar. Their relationship blossomed, and on June 15, 2024, they held a civil union officiated by Priest AJ Stacks at the home of their friends Heidi Hendricks and Rafe Churchill, with family and close friends.

Jess Savner Does It All at Paris Olympics

By Wendy Carlson

Photo Courtesy of USAPM

She runs, she swims, she shoots. She flies over obstacles on horseback, and is a fierce fencing opponent. Jessica Savner, of Bethlehem is an über athlete. She excels at the five very different disciplines that make up the modern pentathlon. 

In August, she tested her mettle at the Paris Olympics, where she finished 14th in the five-event competition.

Qualifying for the games was a decade-long goal for the 32-year-old Savner. A former track-and-field star, prize-winning equestrian, and triathlete, she has always been inspired by athletes who tested the limits of a sport.

“I knew I wanted to be one of them, I just didn’t know which sport—until I found modern pentathlon,” says Savner, who believes that modern pentathletes are some of the best all-around athletes in the world. “There are so many moving parts. I get to explore every aspect of my athleticism every day, and there isn’t much that’s more gratifying,” she adds.

Modern Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin devised the sport to show the complete athlete, combining five skills considered essential for a 19th-century cavalry soldier. After Paris, show jumping will be dropped from future Olympics, and replaced by a human obstacle course. With the change of the format, Savner is retiring to spend some much-needed down time with her husband.

By Jamie Marshall
Photos by Joshua Simpson

Student historians share stories of the region’s rich BIPOC past

At a time when the history of our country is systematically being erased, denied, or buried, a group of local high school students are taking a different tact—they are shining a light on it. This past May, 200 middle and high school students from sixteen regional public and private schools gathered at the Troutbeck Resort in Amenia for the third annual Troutbeck Symposium. This student-led forum celebrates and commemorates people of color and other marginalized groups whose contributions to the community have long been forgotten—or simply ignored.

At first glance, the symposium might seem a departure for the resort—whose guests come for its beautifully designed rooms, farm-to-table cuisine, and wellness amenities. Yet, at its core it speaks to Troutbeck’s storied past when former owners Joel and Amy Spingarn were key players in the civil rights movement and the Harlem Renaissance.

It all started during the COVID-19 lockdown when Salisbury history teacher Rhonan Mokriski challenged his students to find little known stories about African-American history in the area. Mokriski enlisted the help of documentary filmmaker Ben Willis.  Among the highlights was a short film called “Coloring Our Past,” featuring Katherine Overton, a passionate historian whose mother was born in Lakeville and who traced the Cesar side of her family back five generations. Because Katherine was riding out the pandemic at her daughter’s home in Frisco, Texas, her two grandsons—Isaac and Kasai—were enlisted as producers The project was so successful that a year later the Troutbeck Symposium was launched.

“From the beginning the idea was to give it to the students and let them run with it,” said Mokriski.

And run with it, they have. This year’s films covered tough topics: modern day lynchings, the silent protest march of 1917, a private school for mentally challenged children, and destruction of the sacred lands of a local Indigenous tribe, to name just a few. For Salisbury School senior Kasai Moore (Overton’s grandson who came to the school as a junior), it was a chance bring his family legacy full circle.

His documentary “Roots” traced his family’s ties to the area back five generations including his great, great grandmother, Matilda Cesar Williams and her brother Arthur who worked at the Troutbeck estate. “It takes my breath away to imagine my uncle Arthur, the family chauffeur, ferrying Langston Hughes or Zoe Neale Hurston from Wassaic train station to the Troutbeck,” he said.

For Moore, the experience was deeply personal.  A gifted soccer player, he arrived at  Salisbury hoping to fulfill his dream of playing for a college team. An early season-ending injury forced him to pivot and he now plans to pursue a career in cybersecutiry. “It was a difficult transition to come here my junior year but at the same time it felt like a calling for me to do it,” he says. “And then I learned about my family’s connections to the area, and how they weave into the tapestry of the landscape. It made me feel like I was part of something and I can take that feeling with me wherever I go.” —troutbeck.com

Bison Farming in Litchfield County 

By Erik Ofgang 

Photos by Rana Faure

Seeing the mammoth bison at Mohawk Bison in Goshen, one gets the impression of having wandered onto the set of an old Western movie. The animals can weigh as much as 2,500 pounds and seem to belong to a different time and place. “They look like prehistoric animals,” says Peter Fay, who owns Mohawk Bison. But don’t be fooled by their idyllic appearance; bison are dangerous animals. They are not domesticated at all, and are therefore difficult to corral. It is foolhardy to get close to them. 

“They’re wild animals, you don’t walk in pastures with them,” Fay says. “A lot of people don’t raise them because, if they get loose, most of the time you’re not going to get them home.” 

Fay has been working with these beautiful but difficult animals since 2007. Mohawk Bison is one of two active bison farms in Connecticut; the other, Creamery Brook Bison, is in Brooklyn. Thanks to farms like these as well as other preservation efforts, the once-endangered American bison—often casually referred to as buffalo, a related animal found only in Africa—has returned. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are some 20,500 plains bison in conservation herds, and an additional 420,000 in commercial herds. A program at Yellowstone National Park even works to rehome bison from the park to indigenous tribal lands.

Bison meat’s key selling point is its healthier nutrition stats. Bison is high in protein and iron, much lower in fat than beef and as much as 30 percent lower in fat than skinless chicken.

Some bison proponents also claim that because bison are indigenous to North America and tend to produce fewer greenhouse gasses than cows, they are a more environmentally friendly option. In a 2016 article, Modern Farmer says that bison meat can be more sustainable than beef, and that a random sampling of bison meat would probably be more sustainable than a random sampling of beef. 

Eating bison meat also, perhaps counterintuitively, aids the conservation of bison. 

“If you don’t eat it, we won’t raise it, and there won’t be any bison,” Fay says. 

Fay’s interest in farming bison began after a friend (who was the owner of Aj’s Steak & Pizza in Goshen) started featuring it on the menu. At the same time, Fay was looking for new opportunities for working his family’s multi-generational dairy farm. 

Today, Fay’s 60-acre farm is home to somewhere between 100 and 150 bison depending on the season. He sells the meat on Saturdays at the farm, and to wholesalers who distribute it to restaurants. It is also featured in the bison burger at Aj’s.

Though Fay has grown used to working with bison, about a year and a half ago he was reminded not to let his guard down. Early one morning, he was corralling the bison and says he got careless. 

“I got between a gate, and one of the animals tried to get at me. She wasn’t liking me much,” Fay says. The animal pinned his hand and arm against a gate hard enough to dislocate several fingers. He only escaped when the bison “just kind of lost interest in me, and I crawled out.”

The incident resulted in a trip to the hospital, and a reminder for Fay that bison are still, even when found on a farm, creatures of the wild. 

Restoring the Soul through Nature and Ballet

By Linda Tuccio-Koonz

Photos by Ryan Lavine

Scott Thyberg grew up in the wilderness of Warren, on a wondrous property where his parents ran a children’s summer camp. “It was a place where you could spend time with yourself and explore your heart,” says the accomplished choreographer and founder of the dance company Dansereye. “I had 400 acres to play in. It was unbelievable to me.”

The nonprofit camp was his father’s dream—started with a 100-acre purchase made upon his return from World War II; he grew it from there. Generations of children affectionately referred to Thyberg’s parents as Uncle Al and Aunt Elaine; the camp thrived for 60-plus years.

Many kids came from inner cities, where they hadn’t experienced nature’s grandeur. “When anyone would come up, they were just blown away by how stunningly beautiful it was,” Thyberg says of the land where he and four siblings chased butterflies and hunted for frogs in babbling brooks that disappeared into the woods. 

“There were so many incredible natural features. People would say to my father, ‘What a beautiful place you have here,’ and he would immediately correct them and say, ‘This isn’t ours, we’re just the stewards; we’re the caretakers.’”

It’s a sentiment Thyberg holds dear, especially since losing his father to dementia, the illness that left him unable to keep his beloved camp going. Thyberg, 66, a Juilliard-trained musician whose ballets have been performed throughout the United States and in Europe, returned home to care for him in 2013; he died in 2019, at age 95.

With his siblings scattered around the world, Thyberg knew he needed a new dream for the property—one that preserved its beauty while combining his passions for dance and nature. 

He decided it was time to create a home for Dansereye, and that it should include an intimate amphitheater with natural features. (Think tiered seating areas amid lush gardens and stone outcrops, nestled into a gentle hillside).

After protracted negotiations, much of the original property is now in the hands of the Warren Land Trust, which will see to its preservation. The remaining 5 acres serve as Dansereye’s home, a place to “retreat, revitalize, and perhaps even restore the soul,” says Thyberg, 66.

There are no permanent structures for the amphitheater, which will serve a maximum audience of 150 to 180. Lighting and sound equipment will be set up each year.

“Even if ballet is boring to you, you can listen to owls, look at the fireflies dancing around, or just listen to the beautiful music,” says Thyberg, who served on the faculties of the Nutmeg Conservatory in Torrington and Ballet Academy East in Manhattan, among others.

“I spent many years in other places, but the yearning to come back to where I grew up was always there,” he says. “I feel so inspired by this area.”

The amphitheater won’t open until 2025, but Thyberg chose 10 professional dancers from around the country to participate in this year’s residency. Their work this summer will culminate in two performances at the Visual and Performing Arts Center at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, August 9 and 10, at 7:30 pm 

If you go: “Dansereye: The Fifth Temperament” opens with the return of the 2023 genre-bending ballet, “The Seven Deadly Songs.” That’s followed by “Second Salt,” a new ballet featuring music by Emmy-nominated composer Craig Safan (“The Last Starfighter,” TV’s “Cheers”). Thyberg describes “Second Salt” as a “dramatization of what really happened at Sodom and Gomorrah,” adding “Spoiler: It wasn’t about the sex.” The final offering is another world premiere from Thyberg, a charming comedy set to beloved Italian classics.—@dansereye

Wendy Sutter Adds Fire to WFM
By Charles Dubow
Photos by Carl Weese

In what arguably might be one of the most agreeable ways to usher in the New Year, ever since 2013 the Washington Friends of Music (WFM) has presented a live concert featuring the gorgeous and soothing strains of such composers as Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi. But in recent years, longtime patrons cannot help but notice subtle yet distinct changes to these concerts: The program has now expanded beyond the Baroque, the January 1 concerts are now held in the Gunn School’s dazzling new performing arts center, and the artistic director is a statuesque brunette in a long dress playing the cello. 

Called by The Wall Street Journal “one of the great leading cellists of the classical stage,” Wendy Sutter has brought a fresh new perspective to WFM. “My goal was to open up the repertoire, and introduce composers from the Classical and Romantic eras, such as Dvorak and Schubert, as well as Modernist American composers such as  Copland. The challenge was reassuring two Germans that the music of Beethoven was worthy of their concerts,” she says with a laugh.

The two Germans in question are WFM’s founders and guiding lights, Hermann and Waltraud Tammen. The two former bankers started coming up to Washington on weekends more than 20 years ago. “We were looking for local musical events that featured classical music,” says Hermann, “but couldn’t find any. So we decided to start our own.” 

Today WFM hosts five concerts per year: the New Year’s concert and, during the summer, four additional performances at Washington’s historic Congregational Church. “Our concerts have become a destination to an ever-growing audience of music lovers from all over Connecticut,” says founding board member Charles Raskob Robinson, “and we couldn’t be more excited to have Wendy bring it to new heights.”

“In 2022 we felt it was time to take a more professional approach and attract a new audience,” says Waltraud. “That’s why we approached Wendy. She is a renowned cellist and connected with many musicians. We asked her to organize a few concerts and were so impressed that we invited her to come on full time.” 

Sutter continues to have a rich career playing with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic and the Shanghai Symphony. (To list all the orchestras she has soloed with would take up more space than this article is allotted. Rest assured, it’s impressive.) “The chance to curate performances and work with musicians of my own choosing is what really attracted me to WFM,” says the Juilliard grad. “It’s like being in a candy store for me—but it’s also a lot of work. We are professional musicians who only get a few weeks off per year. So we have to coordinate schedules, and arrange rehearsals and transportation. One of the nicest things about playing in Washington, though, is that we don’t simply slip out the back door, like we do after most performances. It’s been lovely getting to know the people here. I feel really blessed that Hermann and Waltraud reached out to me.” —washingtonct4music.blogspot.com