SALISBURY — A forest fire burned 73 acres in the Bear Mountain area of the Taconic Range Tuesday, May 10.According to Jason Wilson, chief of the Lakeville Hose Company, the fire was concentrated in the Ball Brook camp area which is just above Scoville Ore Mine Road.Photographer Joseph Meehan was out that morning taking sunrise photos. He didn’t realize the fire was moving slowly across the peak but he saw it and captured an image of it that can be seen at The Lakeville Journal’s website, www.tricornernews.com. Meehan said the fire looked like some kind of amoeba snaking in a narrow path across the mountaintop.The initial 911 call for “an unknown fire” was received at Litchfield County Dispatch at approximately 12 minutes before midnight on Monday, May 9.“We spent all of Tuesday on the fire scene,” Wilson said. “We went in at 6 a.m. and exited the scene about 7 p.m.”Lakeville Hose Company crews were assisted by fire companies from North Canaan, Cornwall, Norfolk and Sheffield, Mass., in addition to a team from the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection forestry unit. The Millerton fire company was standing by to cover for Lakeville, and the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Service was also on standby.Salisbury resident Chris Janelli’s morning began a little earlier than usual on that Tuesday — at 1 a.m., with a phone call from First Selectman Curtis Rand, warning him that the fire was near his home.“He told me to look out the window,” said Janelli, who lives at the end of Scoville Ore Mine Road, off Undermountain Road (Route 41).Janelli couldn’t see anything from inside the house, but from outside he could see the fire on the mountainside.And thus began a long day, with teams of firefighters moving into the woods above Janelli’s Bingham Brook Farm, quickly clearing an access trail and setting smaller “back fires” to burn up the underbrush and deny the main blaze new fuel.Incredibly, after the initial warning, Janelli went back to bed.“It wasn’t going to get here in four hours,” he shrugged.On Saturday, May 14, Janelli led a reporter into the woods where the firefighters had been. It’s a fairly steep area about 200 yards above the two houses on the property; the trail runs roughly north and south.Janelli said the trail clearing team was particularly impressive: “Guys with chain saws, guys with backpack leaf blowers, guys with rakes — and they were moving.”All that was visible on Saturday along the newly cleared trail was burned leaves and scorched laurel.The main fire did not make it to the preventive fires set behind Janelli’s home.Janelli praised the efforts of the firefighters and said he wasn’t really worried — except when the wind shifted. “Yeah, it was exciting, I guess.”By Tuesday afternoon, firefighters were using the area next to the tennis courts on Mount Riga Corporation property — about a quarter of a mile from the dam at South Pond on the Mount Washington Road — as a staging ground. The teams moved through the woods on a well-defined if not especially wide trail to the fire area. Mount Riga Corporation caretaker Danny Brazee assisted, with his intimate knowledge of the area, which is a mixture of private land owned by the Mount Riga Corporation and National Park Service land that includes the local section of the Appalachian Trail. The trail is the eastern border of the corporation’s property; the fire was beyond that.There are about 40 summer camps on Mount Riga, but none of them were in any danger. The town of Salisbury maintains the narrow dirt road going up the mountain, and the corporation makes available a public beach, access to an old cemetery, hiking opportunities, the Bald Peak lookout and a waterfall.It is worth noting, however, that corporation lands are clearly marked with signs that prohibit camping and fires.Margie Vail, who with husband Charlie lives at the end of Bunker Hill Road (they also own a camp on Riga Lake) said “it smelled as if someone put out a campfire in our yard.” By the late afternoon the smell was detectable in the Salisbury and Lakeville village centers.Wilson said that only one day-hiker on the Appalachian Trail had to be directed away from the fire area.It was a busy day. “We had approximately 120 firefighters from a total of 11 companies working to put out the fire,” he said.There were no injuries.“The biggest challenge was the difficulty of the terrain,” Wilson said. “There are no roads in the area and the fire units literally had to blaze their own trails, to get the equipment, hoses and personnel in.“The guys really worked hard and did a great job.”
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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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