SHARON — Sharon is a hospital town, which means the town clerk and her staff have more documents to file than those in other area towns. For Sharon’s town clerk, Linda Amerighi, though, it’s all good. “I’m never bored. I’m always learning something new.”“The Connecticut Town Clerks Association once listed more than 300 different jobs town clerks are responsible for,” she told The Lakeville Journal.During a one-hour interview with Amerighi in the town clerk’s office, it seemed 300 may be a low number.“We maintain the accuracy of their land records, their property,” Amerighi said, ticking off some of the services the clerk provides to town residents. “We are responsible for making sure that when documents come in they are recorded and indexed properly; this includes mortgages, refinancing, estates, liens and payments of liens. That aspect of the job is enormous in itself. Property and homes represent peoples’ livelihoods.“Real-property-related work takes up the largest percentage of what is required from this office because it encompasses so many different aspects. We also have to make that information available to title searchers and banks.”Amerighi has been the Sharon town clerk since Aug. 10, 1989. “I love my job,” she said. “It’s important in any job that you are constantly challenging your mental awareness and capabilities in being able to do what is required of you, and this job certainly does that.“Helping the public is important to me,” she said. “That’s why I am here. After 23 years, I still love my job.”To help her serve the public, she has two part-time assistants: Marie France-Corsini and Nancy Wadman.A lifelong and avid dog lover, Amerighi said she is passionate about dog licenses. “Providing dog licenses to residents is a small part of the office work, but it is very important for people to license their dogs. People should understand it is not just because the state gets money. It’s because a license is a dog’s way to find its way home. So many times I get calls from people saying, ‘I found a dog. It has a tag. Do you have the number?’ It’s such a quick way home for dogs. If found dogs do not have a tag, they just go to the pound.”Revenue from dog licenses goes into the state’s spay/neuter program, which helps people who cannot afford those procedures for their pets. The town clerk is also responsible for selling hunting and fishing licenses. Two years ago the state mandated use of a new computer system for sale of the licenses. When the first new computer was installed and didn’t work, the vendor provided a new one. To Amerighi’s frustration, the second one also failed.At that point, the “take charge” town clerk took matters into her own hands. She sent the second computer back to the vendor. And she began to advise license-seekers to do it themselves online. Anyone who has a state conservation number (meaning they previously had one of the licenses) can get the renewal at the town clerk’s office; the $1 fee goes to the town.Those are some of the tasks that bring the general public into contact with the town clerk. Some of her other jobs?“Election information; birth and death certificate information; marriage license information and marriage certificate information; how to find a notary public; how to become a justice of the peace; map information; property transfer information is available to the public including information on how much homes and property have sold for; zoning and other town regulations; inland wetlands regulations; subdivision regulations and subdivision and zoning maps.”And more. And as if that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, Amerighi also maintains the town’s website at www.sharonct.org. Much of that work gets done at home, on evenings and weekends.“One of the biggest things the town clerk’s office has done for people is increase their access to what we offer on our website. Our goal is to eventually have everything possible about the town on the website.” Town clerks are very busy during the municipal election years. Presidential election years mean even more work. “You have primaries, you have more phone calls, you have more calls for absentee ballots and there are more people requesting overseas presidential ballots,” Amerighi said.
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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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