CORNWALL — The Little Guild is having a clearance sale. All cats must go.If that sounds inhumane, nothing could be further from the truth. The cat and dog rescue shelter is already over its ideal capacity for felines, and this is the time of year when demand is high for a warm place for strays. And amend that to say: All cats will only be given to a good home.“So many people out there are trying to help by feeding stray cats, and giving them a garage or some other place for shelter. Now, we are overwhelmed with calls for cats out in the cold,” said Denise Cohn, executive director of the West Cornwall shelter. “We need to make room, and we know there are many people out there willing to help.”For the first time, the Guild is taking part in $5 Felines, a nationwide promotion by the Best Friends Animal Society. It is a way to help the organization’s goal of No More Homeless Pets.The Little Guild’s standard application process and good “matchmaking” efforts remain part of the process. The $5 adoption donation is an extreme reduction from the usual $150, which offsets the average $400 cost for taking an animal into the shelter. Many have to be spayed or neutered, all are vet-checked, treated and inoculated as needed and microchipped. Between Nov. 26 and Dec. 3 (excluding Monday and Tuesday), noon to 4 p.m., all are invited to come and meet the adoptable cats and kittens. The staff can answer questions about the cats’ personalities and can point out any special needs they might have. Any cat is just $5. At that price, why not get two?As of late last week, the shelter had 27 cats and kittens, with 22 of them ready and waiting.For a cat or dog, the Little Guild is not a bad place to be. Dogs have roomy kennels and an outdoor play yard. Cats lounge on cushy kitty beds and climb carpet-covered “trees” in visitor-friendly rooms. But it’s not the same as bonding with an individual or family. There are no long walks or sleeping knees to curl up behind on a cold winter night.There are often litters of kittens from which to choose two playful fur balls that will keep each other amused and provide endless entertainment.Cohn said the economy has resulted in a nationwide drop in pet adoptions of about 40 percent. “At the Little Guild, the dog adoption rate is actually up about 66 percent, and cats are only down slightly. We are the only shelter I know of that has not seen a big decrease.” She attributes it to the great conditions of their animals, thanks to generous donations toward their budget for medical care and facility maintenance; to volunteers who do chores and offer the attention the animals crave; and a high adoption success rate that comes from carefully matching animal personalities with individuals and families.Communication is also important. The Guild reaches out on Facebook, Petfinder and through its own regularly updated website. Applications can be completed at the Guild or online. Potential adopters are urged to do so in advance of choosing a pet, so that the cats and dogs can be placed in their new homes as quickly as possible.Yes, each cat that goes out the door at $5 represents a loss of income to the shelter, but it doesn’t matter, Cohn said.“Our mission is to help as many animals as we can. For every cat that is adopted, two lives are saved, because it makes room for us to take another cat in.”Best Friends Animal Society is a nonprofit organization and sanctuary based in Kanab, Utah. It provides extras such as networking for those who are trying in various ways to save animals, and trained emergency response teams to rescue animals in disaster situations. Its mission is to eliminate homeless pets and kill programs.
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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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