One of my professional interests in addition to city government is emergency management. While in Michigan, I participated in a series of training events, both classroom and online, with the Michigan State Police and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This training culminated with a day-long examination, one of the most difficult tests that I had ever taken. I passed the examination and earned the designation of professional emergency manager.I then sought to use my training to assist others. I had enjoyed the emergency management training and believed that if I left municipal management, I would seek a FEMA-style position. As I looked for various opportunities, I discovered the Presbyterian Disaster Relief National Response Team (PDA NRT).I was raised as a Presbyterian and remained active in my local church. I submitted an application to join the NRT. The NRT is a group of approximately 65 to 70 volunteers who, when requested by affected churches, deploy in two- or three-person teams to areas that have been struck by a disaster. The efforts of the NRT focus on recovery efforts (dealing with the long-term after-effects of a disaster), not response efforts (search and rescue, filling sandbags, etc.).After a lengthy weekend “interview” in Arkansas, I was formally invited to join the NRT. My commitment entails four weeks of annual service: one week for our national training conference, one week of training and two weeks availability for deployment to disaster locations (the two weeks need not be consecutive, but may be a series of shorter deployments). For all of my work, I use my accrued vacation leave.My first real interaction with the PDA NRT was last year’s national training conference in San Francisco. Wow — a week in San Fran! But this was not a junket. We stayed at an area convent with very Spartan accommodations: Each room had a single twin bed, a small sink and a closet. The doors had no locks and each floor had a community bathroom. No cell phones were allowed. Despite the intensive 13-hour training days, it was incredibly tranquil and peaceful.During the conference, I was assigned a deployment to Nashville in response to the widespread flooding. I was in Nashville for a week, visiting area churches and assisting those churches and other relief organizations. It is critical to understand that spreading Presbyterianism is not an objective of the NRT. It is part of the faith to help others in need, no matter what their faith or beliefs. Most of our efforts were spent in helping area churches make preparations to host out-of-town volunteers coming to Nashville to do the “grunt work” of rebuilding the community.Less than a month later, I was deployed to a small town in Illinois. A tornado hit Streator, Ill., at dusk on a Saturday evening. The twister came down on the community theater (the annual spring production had completed its shows the previous week), battered a few homes, jumped over the area hospital, came back down and destroyed several homes and a recently renovated park complex before continuing across farmland. This “little” tornado generated nearly 2,000 truck loads of tree debris. The destruction was limited to property: No one died as a result of the tornado. I stayed in Streator for four days, helping a new pastor prepare for group counseling sessions as part of the community recovery effort. I also met with town officials to determine other possible opportunities for assistance by local groups or national relief agencies.I have found the relief efforts to be rewarding and fulfilling. The destruction and suffering that I have witnessed serves as a means to reset my “perspective meter.” After my seemingly inconsequential effort to contribute to Nashville’s recovery, I returned to a community that was embroiled in a dispute as to how many pets each resident would be allowed to keep. Somehow, the whole debate seemed trivial. Government, especially local government, can do so much more than debate little things that exhaust our time and resources.Next week I will be at the PDA NRT national training conference in North Carolina. Many of my fellow team members have deployed recently to Alabama, North Dakota, Georgia, Texas and Arkansas. When you hear of tornadoes or floods, please remember that a community has just been torn apart (and you rarely hear of smaller disasters such as shootings or fires that affected individual churches that request assistance). I used to unfeelingly turn the page or channel after hearing such news. I had never heard of Streator, Ill.; now I have hundreds of photos and even more vivid memories.Our community’s issues are strikingly small and humbling compared to Tuscaloosa, Ala. Please keep that in perspective. Let’s work together and make things better here.Dale Martin is the town manager of Winchester.
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Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.
“I was a library kid. I walked to the library after school,” she said.
For Sher, the library is as much about the people as it about the books.
“Part of the job I love so much is that running the library is such a community,” she said.
She treasures the relationships she has built, whether recommending books, celebrating accomplishments or helping patrons through difficult times.
“I am thankful that our community is so supportive of the library, unlike what is happening in some other places where librarians are villainized,” Sher said.
Sher takes pride in the Hunt Library’s reputation for being “open and welcoming to everyone. People come in and see things and get pulled into things they weren’t expecting. Our library is seen as a positive force.”
Sher came to Falls Village after being awarded a fellowship at Adamah Farm, then a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She worked at pickling, in the greenhouse and later in the development office. She also worked as a nanny.
At the same time, “I was in the library all the time,” she recalled. “I’m a voracious reader. The library is where I met a lot of my first friends in Falls Village.”
She became assistant librarian at Hunt and worked in that position for almost a decade before becoming the executive director four years ago.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino
Sher met her husband, Adam, while working at Adamah. They had their wedding there in 2012. He now emcees many events which she co-organizes with the Falls Village Recreation Commission.
Sher and her family live near the library.
“It’s an easy commute,” she said with a smile. “My kids run back and forth. I can go home to walk the dog if I need to.”
“My kids have grown up here.” Her oldest son, Eli, “loves volunteering. He helps with Augustfest and often helps set up chairs for ArtWall gatherings.” Her younger son, Noah, is often at events and was eager to taste cookies at last year’s holiday cookie swap.
When she is not at the library, Sher likes to hike with her family. Bella, their Portuguese water dog, often accompanies them.
Sher enjoys seeking out people to offer events at the library.
“I do a lot of different community programming. It is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Augustfest, featuring food, music and an auction, is the library’s biggest fundraiser.
“This summer we had a record 152 attendees, which was pretty incredible.”
Yonah Sadeh, a filmmaker from Falls Village, inaugurated the VideoWall this year, Sher explained.
“I’ve known Yonah since he was two. It’s wonderful to work with him as an adult.”
The VideoWall complements the library’s ArtWall, which showcases a new artist each month. Sher praised the ArtWall committee for its work and highlighted December’s popular “12x12 Show,” featuring works by local artists, each measuring 12 by 12 inches and priced at $150.
Sher added that some of the artists who exhibit at the ArtWall offer workshops to students at Kellogg School, next door to the library. In September, artist Danielle Mailer worked with the children. Vincent Inconiglios taught a class last November.
Being next to the school, said Sher, is a great advantage.
“Kids are coming after school, to see friends, work on projects, find a great book. Kids that love the library end up using the library as grownups.”
This past year, in partnership with Adamah, the library and school created a garden, with excess produce made available at The Center on Main.
This year is Sher’s second year participating in the Troutbeck Symposium in Amenia with James King, director of the library at Salisbury School. The Troutbeck Symposium is “a gathering of a year of student historical inquiry across the region” in which students “uncover stories that have been overlooked, forgotten, or never recorded.”
Last year, Sher and King began a project with a group of students researching Irish immigrants in Falls Village, exploring ancestry and creating small magazines about their findings.
They continued this year, visiting St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery on Dublin Road, cleaning seven gravestones and even righting one with the help of stonemason and gravestone restoration expert Karl Munson. Paul Kozeazny, a representative of the Catholic archdiocese, helped secure access to the site.
A film documenting their activities will be shown at the symposium in spring 2027.
A full schedule of programs and events, ranging from tech help to ceramic mug-making, can be found on the library’s website.
Despite spending her days surrounded by books, and a busy schedule of programming, Sher still loves to settle in with a book at home.
For more information on library programs and events, visit huntlibrary.org
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Touré was born in northern Mali in 1981. His father, the renowned guitarist Ali Farka Touré, came from a family of soldiers and wanted his son to join the army. The younger Touré studied drums and the calabash and practiced guitar in secret. He earned his father’s blessing to pursue music shortly before Ali died in 2006, and they played two tracks together on Vieux’s debut album.
Touré is known for his deft, polyrhythmic playing, and his songs grow out of riffs that repeat and layer to hypnotic effect. He draws on rock, blues, Latin music and various African traditions. This distinctive blend builds on his father’s work adapting the sonic traditions of Mali’s arid north to the guitar.
Vieux’s album “Mon Pays” (“My Country,” 2013) honored Mali’s culture after Tuareg separatists and extremist groups seized the north in 2012. “Samba” (2017) was recorded before about 50 listeners in Woodstock, New York. In 2022 came “Les Racines” (“The Roots”), a return to his father’s desert blues, and “Ali,” on which he and the trio Khruangbin reworked eight of the elder Touré’s songs.
Touré leads the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, which focuses on cultural and educational work in Mali. Around the anniversary of Ali’s death, it holds a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Bamako has been under blockade for much of the past year, besieged by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Against this backdrop, Touré continues to carry the music of Mali to audiences abroad.
At the Nov. 5 concert, Touré’s desert blues will share the bill with Gnawa, the music LanGus plays, which developed in Morocco among West Africans who were brought north across the desert as enslaved people. Gnawa is religious music traditionally performed at all-night healing ceremonies called lila, intended to carry participants into trance.
Samir LanGusProvided
LanGus was born and raised outside Agadir, Morocco, and began learning Gnawa from its masters at age 8. He plays the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute made of wood and camel skin. The player strikes a low string with the thumb to create a deep, resonant pulse. Iron castanets clatter over the sintir’s bass line, and vocalists trade call-and-response refrains.
LanGus infuses the tradition with jazz and improvisation. In New York, he founded the ensemble Innov Gnawa. His first solo album, “Gnawa Love,” came out in February.
Touré and LanGus’s Nov. 5 concert is one of the last public events at Race Brook Lodge, which is for sale and ended full-service operations at the end of 2025. The lodge’s final scheduled event, on Nov. 6, is an evening of Rumi’s poetry with translator and vocalist Haleh Liza Gafori, cellist Isabel Castellvi and ceremonial bard James Bird.
For tickets, visit rblodge.com.
James FitzGerald is a student at Yale Law School, where he focuses on ecological restoration and international environmental cooperation. He splits his time between Lakeville and New Haven.
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