Sometimes, good inventions come in simple packages. And sometimes good people redefine their life’s goals to change the lives of many.Jose Gomez-Marquez at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was frustrated at the lack of money for expensive medical equipment in developing nations. People were dying because, for example, IV drip machinery could cost $5,000. For some hospitals that is the budget for the entire emergency room. Then he thought, “Toys have amazing mechanical parts. To get a part made from scratch could cost hundreds of dollars but I can go to a market and find toys very cheaply.” So he took the trigger of a toy gun apart and attached it to an IV drip bag and controlled the drip flow. Then he found that Lego bricks can be assembled to make tiny conduits for medicines for lab testing. “I couldn’t build them a clinic but I can provide them with a Lego kit for them to make their own devices,” he said. And a thing called a nebulizer could be made out of bicycle pumps.His thinking did not stop there. Patients were reluctant or forgetful to take pills prescribed by field hospitals or to take diabetes tests regularly. So Gomez-Martinez talked to the patients and found out one of their main worries was affording to keep their cell phones charged. He joined the two ideas and came up with hidden code that is only revealed when the pill is taken or the test strip is used. The code is dialed into the cell phone and the user gets 10 cents of credit.In Africa, Mr. Femi Akinde was frustrated that the Internet access to services and goods we now take for granted had not reached most of the continent yet. But he realized there was a middle step that could help. Rural people in Africa often travel huge distances to obtain or try to obtain services ranging from car repair, medical help, accommodation, parts for machinery and even food. If local people could find out, before they travel (often for days on foot) that the part they needed was at a garage 150 miles away, they could get better use of their time and improve their quality of their life. So he started SlimTrade. This service links retailers with one another, giving retailers and services a mutual interest in serving customers. Like the old Mr. Macy telling customers that Macy’s is out of stock but Gimbels has it, Mr. Akinde’s service allows retailers, airlines, shops and services to be able to help customers network for the services and goods they need. One phone call can link a customer with a garage, who links to a motel, who links to a pharmacy, who links to a hardware store. One call, one trip, good economy.Meanwhile, in Guatemala, 20 percent of the population has no access to electricity. Manuel Aguilar, a former investment banker from New York City (who got fed up making rich people richer) had a eureka moment. He founded Quetsol, an energy company offering a simple solution to the lack of rural electricity. The company makes kits, which consists of a battery, an LED light bulb and a small solar panel. So far it has sold 2,000 units. The battery also offers a socket that allows people to charge their cell phones, something that was hardly easy when a house doesn’t have electricity. “People used to have to walk two hours to charge their phones and pay heavily for it,” said Mr. Aguilar, who wasn’t through improving people’s lives. Quetsol then marketed a 30-watt battery that will allow people to power a computer. “It will give families Internet access and education for their kids.” And how can people afford that new device? Mr. Aguilar did a deal with a large bank to make each unit cost only $13 a month, which is about what an average family would spend on candles.Good ideas do come from individuals. Just as Jobs and Wozniak did all those years ago in a garage (Apple computers), good people with a goal and imagination can change the world, one step at a time. Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.
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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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