A Winsted resident who hosts one of the most recognized radio shows in the region will be honored next month by the Connecticut Main Street Center (CMSC) during the organization’s annual Main Street Awards Gala Monday, June 6, at the Warner Theatre’s Nancy Marine Studio Theatre in Torrington.John Dankosky, news director at WNPR and host of the network’s live call-in show, “Where We Live,” will accept a Connecticut Light and Power (CL&P) Award for Outstanding Contributions to Main Street Revitalization on behalf of the network and his popular radio show, which explores timely events and issues in communities throughout the state.Already a winner of numerous journalism and broadcasting awards, Dankosky said this week that this particular award is special for him. “When people who don’t have to give you an award just give you something out of the blue and clearly understand what you’re trying to do, that makes you feel good,” he said. “We’ve been focusing on a lot of the same issues that Main Street organizations have been focusing on for years.”Dankosky, 41, moved to Winsted 12 years ago with his wife, Jennifer, and has watched with interest as the town’s Main Street has evolved. A public Main Street Enhancement Project completed its first phase in the early 2000s, and Winsted became an official Main Street community under the guidance of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Locally, the Friends of Main Street organization maintains Winsted’s membership with the CMSC.“In one of our early shows we did a walk-and-talk down Main Street in Winsted, but we’ve been to Norwich and a number of other Main Street communities,” Dankosky said. “Community revitalization is a big topic for us. We really want to focus on communities that are trying to revive themselves in some way.”Some Main Street projects seem to catch on faster than others, but Dankosky said it is the shared enthusiasm among all of the people involved that he sees as inspiring and newsworthy. “One of the real positive things about Main Street projects is you have built-in activists who can talk about their work toward revitalization. It may not be entirely successful right away, but they all seem to point in a positive direction.”Dankosky was a resident of Hartford and prior to that, Pittsburgh, before settling in the Laurel City. “We were living in the West End of Hartford and we wanted to buy a house,” he recalled. “We knew about Winsted because we had been coming out to the Gilson Theater, this place where we could have food, drink beers and watch a movie. We started coming out on Saturdays and Sundays because we liked the place a lot.”The Dankoskys settled on a Hillside Avenue home and have been happy residents ever since. “We love living here,” he said. “It’s a nice part of the world. We hike on weekends and travel to Great Barrington and the Berkshires all the time. We’re thrilled to be close to so much interesting stuff.”A broadcaster and journalist for the past two-plus decades, Dankosky is also a jazz aficionado and drummer. He regularly engages in a bit of historic preservation of his own by interviewing noted jazz musicians. One of his favorite memories is an onstage interview with Dave Brubeck at the Litchfield Jazz Festival in 1998 (www.cpbn.org/program/where-we-live/episode/dave-brubeck-and-paquito-driv...). During state and federal elections, Dankosky organizes up-to-the-minute coverage of the polls on Connecticut Public Radio and each day manages some of the most information-filled news broadcasting in the world. Each day, he finds the time to deliver a live, hour-long broadcast of “Where We Live,” which in the past week has covered health care reform, reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden, a discussion of Afghanistan and Pakistan with Congressman Chris Murphy, a small business breakfast in Bridgeport and what it means to have good friends in your life.The CMSC’s annual awards ceremony will take place Monday, June 6, 5 p.m., at the Nancy Marine Studio Theatre, 69 Main St., Torrington. A Welcome to Main Street reception will be followed by the presentation of awards. For more information, visit www.ctmainstreet.org.
Latest News
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
Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.
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.
Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.
