By Jennie Reichman Fall arrived this year by turning the seasonal page with a flourish. One day I’m out in the garden swatting black flies and the next I am wearing a sweater and turning up the heat in the house for the first time since...

Listening and Helping by Jennie Reichman I love it when another writer inspires me. As a songwriter, I’ve often listened to a song performed by a musician I admire and felt a switch flip inside me, like an engine starting up and being flooded with fuel. Suddenly...

How Can I Help? by Jennie Reichman When something catastrophic happens, many people remember where they were or what they were doing at that moment. When the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center happened in 2001, I was trying to call my then husband’s...

By Jennie Reichman As astrological sign personalities go, I am about as Taurus as they come.  Stubborn, quiet, relatively slow to anger (don’t push me too far, though), enamored of beauty, the outdoors, good food, art, fiercely loyal.  I do not like my feet to leave...

By Jennie Reichman It’s cliché to say that the older we get, the faster time seems to pass.  Most cliches, however, got that way by containing a kernel of truth.  Suddenly children who were toddlers only, what? Two years ago? Are headed for their first year...

By Jennie Reichman A couple of weeks ago I asked Karen if there was anything she wanted me to write about in the newsletter article for May.  She said, “Something positive! Something happy!” It’s true that Brattleboro, and the world in general, has had its share...

The month of March felt a little like the title of the Oscar winning movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. Although T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month, I hope it doesn’t take its cue from March.  Of course, there was the snow storm to...

I know there’s a significant divide between people who like daylight savings time (DST) and those who don’t. Anti-DST folks argue that it's an antiquated system that was originally meant to give farmers and others who work in agriculture more daylight hours in the summer to plant, tend...

Sometimes I am at a loss trying to explain my job to other people.  “I work in a thrift store” sounds straightforward enough, but does not come close to what we actually do at Experienced Goods. To work in the clothing department, I have to...

When I moved to the Brattleboro area in 1994, I did what I always do when getting to know a new place: I sought out the best grocery stores, bookstores and, most importantly, thrift stores.  Experienced Goods was a cute little shop off the Harmony...