Isn’t it funny how people take certain things for granted and believe those things will always be there no matter what evidence there is to the contrary? Such is the case with the local branches of the United States Postal Service (USPS). This, despite the fact that the general public uses its services less than they used to, what with paying bills online and the convenience of shipping options with other companies such as UPS and FedEx. And it’s common not only to take the post office for granted, but to complain about it services regularly as well. But really, how much fault can one find with the service provided by the post office? What still is a large volume of material is moved and delivered by the USPS in a very timely and direct way. It’s also relatively simple: Just throw a stamp onto a correspondence and toss it into a box. We do just take it for granted. It’s always been there, hasn’t it?Now, in the Northwest Corner, the post office on Main Street in Lakeville is in danger of being shut down by the USPS as one of its many necessary cost-saving measures. Less usage of the services of the post office means such steps will have to be taken as its losses mount. This move seems counterintuitive to anyone who lives in the area and knows that the Lakeville site is large, with more space for sorting and distribution than any of the other USPS buildings in the area. However, the postal service has made it clear that as they are looking for ways to cut soaring losses, one way is to avoid owning the buildings in which post offices are housed. The maintenance costs of such buildings are much harder to control than set rental costs.It’s still with a sense of impending loss that Lakeville residents consider the possibility that their post office could be shut down. After all, as other shops have come and gone in the Lakeville town center, the post office has been the one constant, a gathering place for decades that is welcoming to all. Even with the decreasing usage of the postal service, once one hears that his or her town’s longtime post office could disappear, those bricks and mortar suddenly take on a whole new meaning.There’s something very personal about those things for which we do still use the post office. Holiday and birthday cards, sympathy cards, wedding invitations and other event invitations still usually find their way through the mail rather than being sent by email. This sort of communication is an actual physical connection supported by the post office that doesn’t really happen in quite the same way anywhere else. And the identity of a small town like Lakeville is tied up with its post office in ways both tangible and intangible.Those who grew up in town may remember past postmasters who were especially kind to them when their parents brought them into the post office with them. Or, maybe just this week a special package arrived from a loved one, and the local postal worker went out of his or her way to deliver it promptly, even if it meant doing it on a Saturday morning. A small-town post office like Lakeville’s is somehow different than one in a more urban area. Seeing a line at the window isn’t an annoyance if there are several people in that line with whom one is acquainted, and the time waiting can be spent catching up with them. Yet really, there are rarely long lines in the Lakeville post office, and the wait times to use the services at the window are not long, either. Is that also part of the problem in the eyes of the postal service looking to shut the office down; should the lines be longer?Many in Lakeville are voicing concern about the closing of their post office and the issues of inconvenience that might arise if only the smaller post offices in the surrounding towns remain. This is a call, then, not only to the USPS to reconsider the closure of the Lakeville office, but also to residents of the region to use their local post offices’ services whenever possible. If they are not supported, they cannot survive.
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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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