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

By Sari Goodfriend

Clinton Kelly debuts Wear Whatever You Want on April 29, a new Amazon Prime show about authentic personal style.

I have a new show coming out. If you enjoyed “What Not to Wear” (and realize how insanely dated the concept is now), you might like it. It’s called “Wear Whatever The F You Want.” In it, I encourage people to wear whatever the F they want. Brilliant, right? But wait! I don’t mean sporting flannel pajamas to Community Table. It’s more about finding the courage to express your True Self to the rest of this crazy, mixed-up world. Like, if you always wanted to be a Goth but you never did it because your parents threatened to write you out of their will. 

What does this have to do with Litchfield County? A lot, actually!

When I began shooting “WNTW” 22 years ago, I lived in Manhattan and had been working steadily in the magazine publishing industry. One of my more memorable gigs was writing under the pseudonym Joe L’Amour for Mademoiselle, a once-respectable Condé Nast mag that died slowly of irrelevance. Scores of women would write me every month—genuine handwritten letters!—and ask why the guy they hooked up with on Saturday night neglected to call them back after explicitly stating, “I’ll call you tomorrow.” And every month I’d have to find a different way of telling our dear readers that you shouldn’t believe a word out of a man’s mouth until he is 30, at which point you should, at best, believe every other word. 

But I digress. At the time I was really caught up in the rat race, and one of the rules of the rat race was to look like one of the most fashionable, well-groomed rats so that you could get a better office and make more money, which you could spend on looking like an even higher-quality rat! It was all very American Psycho, without as much murder. 

So when I got the “WNTW” job and would watch “secret footage” of people sporting hoodies and sweatpants and scuffed shoes, I was positively horrified! I channeled that horror into making some pretty decent money advising our “clients” that their lives would improve significantly if they wore more dark jeans, statement necklaces, and structured blazers. Then, with some of my winnings—I mean, earnings—I bought a house in Kent and soon realized that—get this—my happiness wasn’t contingent upon the label sewn in my cashmere sweater. Mind. Blown. I could have a conversation with the cashier at the IGA while wearing flip-flops and not feel like I was being judged a degenerate. I could buy an eight-pack of mouse traps at Ace Hardware in ripped jeans and not have to worry that my money wouldn’t be accepted. I could show up at the Fife ’n Drum with a teeny tiny bleach spot on my polo shirt and not fear being ushered to a cozy table situated on the threshold of the men’s room. 

I could wear whatever the F I wanted, and it was nice. 

During the pandemic, when my manager asked me what I’d like to do with the rest of my life, I said, “Garden.” He lives in LA, so he was unfamiliar with that concept. I continued: “I don’t know, maybe do a show where I taught people to really love the clothes they put on their bodies, regardless of other peoples’ opinions.” 

He liked it, so we pitched the idea to my former co-host Stacy London, and she was in. Yay! Then we brought it to Amazon Prime and they bought it. Yay! And now it’s ready to stream on your favorite device beginning April 29. I probably won’t watch it because I lived it, but I’d be happy if you did. I’ll just be over here getting my dahlia tubers in the ground. 

*Author’s note: This account of my personal growth has been condensed and grossly simplified for reasons of space and your attention span. 

By Clementina Verge

Andy Savage’s career, spanning four decades, has established him as a key figure in the Tri-State Area’s construction industry, specializing in transforming high-end properties with his unique approach to landscape design.

A native of Amenia, N.Y., Savage moved to Connecticut in 1984, and founded his masonry business in Sharon. In 2000, he rebranded it as Savage Construction, reflecting its expanding scope and evolution. 

“Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working on a variety of fascinating projects,” he reflects. “From building stone and brick homes to crafting custom fireplaces and masonry structures. But I most enjoy designing custom landscapes.”

Savage’s portfolio showcases a variety of creations: from a wood-burning oven and indoor grilling area of a kitchen that won him recognition in House Beautiful magazine, to strategically placed boulders that create magnificent hardscapes, and impressive fireplaces that add luxury and warmth, whether indoors or out. 

His masonry work also includes columns and pergolas that beautify pool areas and expand living spaces throughout the region, along with services for maintenance, repairs, and historic restorations.

His philosophy of success is rooted in a commitment to exceptional craftsmanship.

“High quality is what keeps us separate from the competition,” he notes. “It’s the only way to be successful for decades: Your quality has to be better than the rest.”

For Savage, the satisfaction derived from his work extends beyond client approval. The opportunity to express creativity while building lasting, meaningful structures is deeply fulfilling. 

“This business allows my creative side to thrive,” he shares, emphasizing his love for hardscapes and landscapes. “There’s instant gratification when you complete terrace walls, place plantings. Suddenly, you’ve not only enhanced and added value to a property, but to someone’s life.”

The blend of artistic expression and tangible results makes the work meaningful, both in the visible transformation of spaces and in the lasting impact it has on clients.

Judy Murphy of Old Farm Nursery, a longtime collaborator in Lakeville, affirms this sentiment, praising Savage for his professionalism, knowledge, and reliability. 

“Andy’s ability to keep a promised schedule and budget is nothing short of a blessing in projects when there are deadlines,” she notes. “I have worked with him on projects as simple as a stone walk to multimillion dollar projects that involve stone buildings, water slides, spiral staircases, and terraces. Andy’s love for the work and his consistent effort to do the best job that can be done are rare and honorable characteristics.”

Savage does not take all the credit, praising his team, and crediting timeless principles for his business longevity: good relationships, customer care, and hard work. 

“You are only as good as the people around you,” he says, proudly acknowledging his crew and reflecting on a recent return to a property he serviced 20 years earlier. “We strive to hire only the best, and to keep our clients happy. When you execute something at a high level, its longevity is another level of reward. As it ages, as the patina sets in, it actually becomes more beautiful with time.” —savageconstructioninc.com

Discover the inspiring individuals shaping health and wellness in Litchfield County. From Anne Hungerford’s transformative yoga practice to Tal Fagin’s empowering life coaching and Annie Kaplon’s holistic Pilates expertise, our guide highlights their unique approaches to well-being—plus more local experts dedicated to helping you thrive.

Ah Yoga

Today, Hungerford’s classes balance challenge and relaxation, offering students a space to build strength, find stillness, and renew both body and mind.
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Litchfield Pilates & Integrative Health (LPIH)

Located at 2 Green Street, the warm and inviting boutique studio provides a space to move, grow, and connect with others while working toward your wellness goals.
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Tal Fagin Coaching

Based in Washington, Connecticut, Tal works virtually with clients worldwide. Her coaching approach blends warmth with strategic thinking, guiding high achievers to self-acceptance, ease, and fulfillment.
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Dr Tara Tranguch

Dr. Tara Tranguch is a naturopathic doctor who combines functional testing with personalized treatment plans to address a wide range of health concerns, including cardiovascular disease, digestive disorders, hormone imbalances, and chronic inflammatory conditions.
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Pilar Beauty Studio

Pilar Beauty Studio, nestled at 8.5 Titus Road in Washington Depot, is a private, elegant, and serene retreat often described as a “jewel box of a salon.” Discreetly located behind other businesses, it provides clients with an intimate and tranquil atmosphere.
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Stronger Roots Therapy

Located in Warren Town Center, Stronger Roots Therapy provides pediatric occupational therapy for children from infancy through adolescence.
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Energy Health & Fitness

Housed in a renovated 12,000 square foot space in the historic Torrington Company’s former needle factory, the gym features a medical clinic and a smoothie/coffee bar for a well-rounded experience.
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Fit Coach in the Hills, LLC

Owner Suzanne Blaicher, a certified personal trainer, works with clients of all ages and abilities, designing workouts that are user-friendly, fun, and challenging. Virtual training provides added flexibility, ensuring that clients can stay on track even when life gets busy.
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The Spa at Litchfield Hills

The Spa at Litchfield Hills provides holistic healing through world-class beauty, health, and wellness experiences. Current treatment offerings include massage and bodywork, medical grade skincare, hair, and nails, with more to come in early 2026 with the unveiling of their newly renovated destination wellness property. 
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If Noah’s Arc had a veterinary office, it would be this one. “We’ve had a kangaroo, a lemur, even a camel. If it can fit in the building, it can come in,” says Dr. Sarah Timm, who sits at the helm of the Roxbury Animal Clinic.

The sunshine yellow Colonial building is home to a team of six doctors who care for nearly 20,000 patients. We walk past a labradoodle, light headed from a cocktail before teeth cleaning; around the corner rests a cat under a pile of blankets post-spaying; in an outer room, a peacock recovers from a corneal ulcer. “One of her babies scratched her,” reports Timms.

The practice was started in the 1980s by Dr. Paul Elwell, serving both farm animals and smaller pets. Timm arrived in 2013, and has continued the long tradition of being a  mixed practice. And a good thing too, as your 2-month-old goat may require a blood transfusion, or your emu may have a hole in his heart, or your alpaca could need treatment for gastrointestinal parasites (all real patient stories). Today about 40 percent of the practice is still farm animals.

If this sounds like the life of the Scottish country doctor James Herriot of All Creatures Great and Small, that may not be a coincidence. Timm attended the University of Glasgow, the same veterinary school as Herriot. “There are a lot of sheep in Scotland, so you really have no choice but to learn everything.” 

Timm’s medical tales are limitless: a Border Collie had a bleeding tumor on her spleen. An 8-pound mass was removed and she lived to be 16 years old. “Animals bounce back faster than humans. Probably because they don’t get caught up in the emotions,” suggests Timm.

Despite the emotional high of saving lives, the hardest work Timms has to do is “economic euthanasia”—putting a pet down due to the high cost of treatment. “I have no judgment whatsoever when it comes to deciding what someone is comfortable spending, but the emotional toll on the owner is enormous.”

With bottles of pills lining the walls and cages stacked floor to ceiling, they are at max capacity and about to pour cement on a new building. The existing one will be devoted to services such as dermatology and acupuncture––not for the owners but for the pets. As animals have become an extension of family, so too have their health bills. In Timm’s practice 30 percent of pet owners now carry insurance and about 50 percent consult an oncologist upon learning of a pet’s cancer diagnosis. 

Timm herself is mom to not only her 8-month old human child, Oliver, but also to Boo, Theo, Alfie, and Ginger (her canine pups), and Harper the cat. Ever since shadowing a vet at 14, Timm knew this was her calling. When pressed to name her favorite animal, she responds: “Goats. So much personality. They’re the dogs of the farm world.”—roxburyanimalclinic.com

By Michelle Madden

Photos by Jimmy Ienner Jr

By Wendy Carlson

Photographs by Ryan Lavine

They seem to be everywhere lately. Sound baths have been steadily growing from the fringes to becoming a mainstay at yoga studios and fitness centers. Listening to the tones and feeling the vibrations from musical instrumentals has been compared to meditating, because of its potential to tap into deep brain waves. But unlike meditation, you don’t have to concentrate or train to benefit from a sound bath. Think of it sort of like a brain massage. 

All you have to do is lie down on a mat, listen, and open your mind to the experience. The vibration of sounds helps you reach a meditative state more easily, relieve tensions and anxiety, reduce fear and anger, depression––or simply tune out the world.

A sound practitioner leads the bath using ancient vibrational musical instruments including the gong, the didgeridoo (from the Australian Aboriginal peoples), a bell-like instrument called the Tibetan (or Himalayan) singing bowls, chimes, tuning forks, and flutes.

For Luann Mullen of Litchfield, sound baths have been transformative. “I have trouble meditating at home because I get too distracted,” she says. But when she practices yoga, her instructor, Grace Magnusson at Kula Collective in Litchfield, finishes the class with 20 minutes of sound healing, and she is able to reach a meditative state.

Before practicing at Kula, Magnusson worked with patients at an inpatient rehab center for teens. There, she witnessed sound healing’s ability to make stillness more accessible by quieting the mind and activating the body’s relaxation response.

Similarly, Laurie Antonacci, owner of Guiding Light Wellness in New Milford, incorporates guided imagery and music in her Reiki sessions to promote relaxation. Receiving a gentle bath of sounds allows your body to let go and move into a deeper state of relaxation, she says.

Sound healing may be relatively new to the Western world, but its roots can be traced all the way back to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who utilized sound as a form of medicine to treat a variety of ailments. Recent studies have highlighted the healing potential of sound and frequency to lessen physical pain, help those suffering from insomnia, and complement PTSD therapies.

Sound baths also can serve as an introduction to deeper yoga practices by allowing participants to experience a sense of calmness and openness. Additionally, since there’s such a wide range of sounds emitted from a variety of  instruments, no two sound baths are alike.

It’s worthwhile to try a number of options at different venues. 

Ah Yoga Center, St. John’s Parish Hall, 9 Parsonage Lane, Washington, 860- 488-1570 —ahyogacenter.com

Charym, 174 West St., Litchfield, 860- 245-8586—charym.com

Guiding Light Wellness, 143 West St., Blg. C, Studio 204-A, New Milford, 475- 289-4991—guidinglightwellness.com

Kula Collective, 499 Bantam Road, Bantam, 434-962-5227—thekulacollective.org

New Milford Fitness and Aquatic Club, 30 Grove St., New Milford, 860-799-6880—nmfac.com

Riga Yoga, 15 Academy St., Salisbury, 347-206-0366—rigayoga.com

Sanctuary Power Yoga, 12 Franklin St., Torrington, 860-497-1500 —sanctuarypoweryoga.com

Woodbury Meditation & Yoga Center,122 West Side Road, Woodbury, 203-263-2254—woodburyyogacenter.org

Sportsmen’s Connection is Ethan Raskind’s hub for all things fishing, hunting, and outdoor adventure.

By Anne Franco McAndrew

Photographs By Rana Faure

While other Westchester County kids were at summer lacrosse camp, Ethan Raskind was game hunting in Colorado. It was summertime during the ’80s and, as Raskind says, “my dad, uncle, and I would load the pickup and go.” 

Time spent fishing and hunting would later in time transition to a career choice. He spent his young adult life in Vail, guiding and working for Garth Brothers, a well-respected outdoor business in Colorado, before moving back East with his wife, Amy, in 2002. “Literally, I have been outdoors my whole life,” he says.

Raskind owns a brick-and-mortar store, Sportsmen’s Connection in Kent.  It’s tucked back away from Main Street; you could easily miss it. But take the time to stroll down the driveway to the barn-inspired building. Once you walk through its door, you find a treasure trove of necessities and gadgets. The rustic aesthetic is the perfect backdrop for the everything-outdoors inventory. Camp stoves and gaiters, rods and reels, even snowshoes and backpacks are all part of it. A very comprehensive selection of flies can be found, as well as live bait (including minnows). “The Northwest Corner offers every opportunity for hiking, fishing, and hunting—everything I love to do. My inventory reflects that.”

Raskind is also a professional river guide. He doesn’t have that “look at me” personality. He is understated and knowledgeable, undeniably outdoorsy, ruggedly handsome, and cavalier with his dress. Oh, and one more thing. He knows where the fish are.

He  has been fishing the Housatonic River for more than 20 years. He has expertise in both spin and fly fishing, so whichever is your pleasure he is at the ready. He uses a 16-foot ClackaCraft drift boat that seats himself and two others. The favored route is from Falls Village to Bull’s Bridge, with stops anywhere the telltale ripples are seen. This isn’t a wing-and-a-prayer ride. Raskind knows “every rock” along the way.

Stretching 149 miles from western Massachusetts through Connecticut before reaching its final destination of Long Island Sound, the Housatonic supports a variety of plants, animals, and microorganisms that, according to Raskind, create a healthy environment and a “conveyor belt of food” for myriad fish. Carp, pike, small- and large-mouth bass, crappies, and brown and rainbow trout can be found in the river.  “A guided trip is not just about the water and the fish. This river is a huge player in the ecosystem of the Northwest Corner,” Raskind explains. 

The Housatonic is world-renowned for its fishing, which results in sports enthusiasts traveling from everywhere to angle the river. Raskind specifically includes the Cornwall Trout Management Area (TMA) in his trips. The state stocks this stretch with rainbows and browns, so chances are that you will hook a prized trout. The TMA is catch-and-release only.

A trip is either a half or full day.  Waders, tackle, and bait are all included.—Housatonicfishing.com

Ira Barkoff is an American artist known for his evocative landscapes that blend realism with abstraction.

Born in 1934 in Brooklyn, NY, Ira Barkoff’s journey as an artist began early, drawing seriously by the age of nine. At 13, he attended life drawing classes at the Brooklyn Museum, later earning a BFA from Pratt Institute and continuing his studies at the Art Students League in New York City.

His paintings exist between realism and abstraction, serving as layered responses to his emotional connection with nature. While they may evoke familiar landscapes, they are not literal depictions of a specific place but rather spiritual interpretations of the natural world. Barkoff seeks to transcend outward appearances, capturing something deeper and more elusive—an essence that resonates beyond what the eye perceives.

Now painting primarily from imagination, he creates landscapes that merge the external world with an inner vision. A stand of trees, a shifting sky, or a single falling leaf becomes a metaphor for something greater—an expression of the soul’s connection to nature.

Barkoff’s work has been exhibited in galleries nationwide, including the New Britain Museum and the permanent collection of the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT. He is currently represented by Cavalier Ebanks Gallery in Greenwich, New York City, Nantucket, and Palm Beach, as well as Canfin Gallery. He has also exhibited at the Washington Art Association in Washington, CT, where he has taught oil painting for many years.

The Kula Collective welcomes the community back to its new space in Litchfield. This beautiful center, where connection and well-being take center stage, reflects the philosophy of Kula—meaning “community” and “soul family” in Sanskrit. 

Siri Hoffman, the founder of The Kula Collective, blends her years of experience as a licensed massage therapist and yoga teacher to offer a deeply thoughtful approach to wellness. Hoffman’s unique Kula Yoga style incorporates elements of Anusara, Chromatic, and Katonah Yoga, all grounded in a deep understanding of the human body. With a focus on alignment, intention, and anatomy, Kula Yoga invites practitioners of all levels to challenge themselves while nurturing a strong mind-body connection. Each class is guided by a theme, exploring specific body areas or personal growth intentions, creating a practice that is both purposeful and transformative.

Alongside Kula Yoga, the center offers a variety of other classes, including Kids Yoga with Nick, which blends creativity, mindfulness, and movement to introduce children to yoga in a fun way. Grace’s Monthly Sound Healing Ceremony invites participants to immerse themselves in the calming vibrations of gongs, singing bowls, and chimes, offering a deep sense of relaxation and healing.

The Kula Collective’s new space offers more than just classes; it’s a place where you can come together with others to nurture your body, mind, and spirit. —thekulacollective.org