LAKEVILLE — John Carter, pastor at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury, spent four years (1967-71) in South Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer — and was excited and a little apprehensive when he returned with his wife, Deborah, for a visit last month. “I hadn’t been back for 40 years, nor had I maintained any contacts,” Carter said in an interview after his return.“Part of my self was dormant for 40 years,” he mused. “I was excited and a little nervous.They needn’t have worried, as it turned out. The trip, with other Peace Corps veterans, was well organized and the welcome very warm.“It was daunting,” said Deborah Carter, describing the couple’s mood prior to arrival in Seoul, the capital. “Where would we go, when, how? And with whom?“So this was amazing.”The Korea Foundation sponsored the trip, one of several, with former Peace Corps volunteers revisiting the country. The Peace Corps ended operations in South Korea in 1981.When John Carter was in South Korea, serving as a health worker in a rural village in Cholla Nam-Do (Southern Cholla Province), he learned the language by singing.“In Korea, singing is a national sport,” he said with a grin.Carter and other young Americans even teamed up with local musicians and made a long-playing record of traditional Korean songs. Carter played a couple of cuts. One was in a bluegrassy arrangement; another was a plaintive ballad, very accessible to Western ears, in a minor key and recognizable time signature.Carter had to sing for his supper during the trip, literally — “I was asked to sing at a dinner,” he said.He still has notebooks from 40 years ago, with the lyrics to songs he heard in his travels — which impressed his hosts.The country has changed considerably since 1971, Carter said. The three-hour train ride (in a comfortable, modern train) from Seoul to the provincial capital was indicative of the change.The old dirt roads are paved now, and utilities have been laid in.In his first stay, Carter said he lived with a family in a small home, with five children, assorted livestock and an outdoor arrangement for personal sanitation. “You could talk to the pig while you were in there,” Carter remembered.The county health center where Carter worked is now gone, replaced by a modern facility. When the Carters (plus translator) arrived, there was a banner out front reading, “Welcome John Franklin Carter.”Carter has a brief video clip of the welcome at the health center, with the couple receiving gifts, drinking tea and chatting with his hosts — including one man whom Carter remembered.The man clearly wasn’t in good health, Carter said, but made the trip anyway. “He gave me an envelope with 100,000 yuan — about $100 — and the words ‘Enjoy Your Travels.’”Another Korean man said he had inherited Carter’s bicycle.Any nervousness evaporated when the group started singing.In the village — one of 26 within the township — the mayor also remembered Carter bicycling around.And one woman told him that the local elementary school had gone from 300 students in the late 1960s to just 40 — the result of the increasing urbanization of South Korea.Carter said during his Peace Corps days the population of Seoul grew rapidly, from 1.5 million to 4 million. Today the city has more than 10 million residents.Other changes in the village included not just the obvious modernization but also changes in agricultural practice, with greenhouses for specialized cash crops where rice paddies once were.Carter said that the area is still rural, and still not affluent.Other changes: a once-common remark, the Korean equivalent of “Oh, my aching back,” has been renedered obsolete by the mechanization of agriculture.Carter said the diversification of crops is probably a net benefit.But families are much smaller — one child, as opposed to five — and Carter wonders if that’s an improvement. “What happens to sibling relationships?”On the other hand, opportunities for women are far more numerous than 40 years ago.And these women are waiting longer to get married. Deborah Carter said one woman told her, “We’re pickier now.”All in all, Carter said the people’s affectionate character hadn’t changed. “What I had embraced was still there.”Carter also tracked down a man named Lee Jong-Ho, who was his “uncle” — an honorific for the head of the household and his host during his stay.“He’s 83 now,” Carter said. The group adjourned across the street to have a drink and, of course, sing. (Carter has a video clip of this as well.)Deborah Carter described the trip as “kind of a love feast.”“People were appreciative of the efforts of the Peace Corps.”“We did accomplish something, “said John Carter. “But South Korea is still trying to recover and grow.”
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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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