AMENIA — Kildonan School hosted its annual Founders Day on Saturday, May 14. Founders Day celebrates the school’s founders, Kurt Goldman and Diana Hanbury King, as well as the students’ accomplishments during the year.Founders Day encompasses a range of events, including a student art exhibit, a horse show, a tennis match and a lacrosse game. More than 200 students, parents, educators and other visitors attended.The theme of this year’s event was “My Journey,” which focused on the individual journey every person takes with dyslexia.In support of this theme, the school held a private screening of the film “Journey into Dyslexia,” created by Academy Award-winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond. The film debuted on HBO earlier this month and is currently available on-demand.The Raymonds’ son, who is dyslexic, previously attended Kildonan.The movie, which features past Kildonan students, was followed by a panel discussion. Afterward, parents, students and friends were given the chance to film themselves talking about their own journey with dyslexia.“It was a spontaneous reaction to the film,” said Susan Raymond. “I wasn’t aware it would happen that way, but I’m thrilled. Talking about it helps heal you and hearing about it gives the students a role model.”The student art showAnother important part of the Founders Day celebration is the student art show. “Art is a big part of the school,” said academic dean Robert Lane.All students from the school have the opportunity to showcase their work. The elementary students focus on installation art while the middle and high school students complete personal projects during the year.August Hunt was one of the students showing his work in the exhibit. Hunt, an articulate sophomore from Texas, was on hand at the exhibit to discuss his work with the visitors. He had five portraits and a large installation piece on display.The theme that ran through his work was size. The portraits were larger-than-life sized at 6 feet by 4 feet. The installation piece included a panorama made of more than 60 photographs, which, if laid flat, would measure 17.4 feet by 9 feet.The horse showHorseback riding has always been a part of Kildonan School. Students have the opportunity to ride nearly every day.The horse show portion of Founders Day is used to showcase the riding skills of the students. This year, nine students participated, demonstrating their ability to control the horses and playing games on horseback, like “Musical Stalls,” which is similar to musical chairs.The foundersCo-founder King was present at the event, but Goldman, who lives in Florida, was unable to attend.After working at the Sidwell Friends School and Camp Mansfield, both of which had programs designed specifically for dyslexic students, King was inspired to open her own camp.King, originally from England, talked happily about the creation of her first camp. “In the wilds of western Pennsylvania, not far from Uniontown, on top of a mountain, I got a place that was 7 acres with eight little cabins, a lodge, a bar and some outhouses,” she said. “The first summer, we had seven students, and then it grew rapidly to 40 — both boys and girls.” She ran that camp every summer for 28 years.Then Kurt Goldman, the father of one of her students, encouraged her to open a school and offered to donate the money needed to fund its creation.After spending its first 11 years in Pennsylvania, the Kildonan School was moved to Amenia in 1980. It continues to use many of the extracurricular activities — horseback riding, skiing, art — as important elements in the learning plan that was developed in Pennsylvania.King continues to teach and tutor at Kildonan. She also trains other teachers around the world.According to the school’s mission statement, Kildonan strives “to empower students with dyslexia to reach their academic potential and to equip them for future success.” The school uses Orton-Gillingham tutoring, which is a multi-sensory, direct and effective method of one-on-one teaching.According to the International Dyslexia Association, dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.
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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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