MILLERTON — American Legion Auxiliary Unit 178 in Millerton is raising money to sponsor a service dog for a war veteran. The organization they’re working with, Puppies Behind Bars (PBB), was founded by a resident of the Northwest Corner: Gloria Gilbert Stoga.When Puppies Behind Bars first started, its mission was to train puppies as guide dogs for the blind. After the terrorist attacks in 2001, they also started training dogs as Explosive Detection Canines (EDC). In 2006 they launched a new program called Dog Tags: Service Dogs for Those Who’ve Served Us. It is specifically for veterans of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or who’ve had a traumatic brain injury or other debilitating physical injury.Molly Jenks, first vice president of the Millerton auxiliary, said the organization chose to sponsor a dog as a project for their junior members and the community but also “to raise awareness about the plight of returning vets.“The stories of what these dogs can do to help a veteran with PTSD are just incredible,” she added.Service dogs in the Dog Tags program are trained very differently from guide dogs for the blind or other service dogs, such as search-and-rescue or therapy dogs. They all must learn the standard service dog commands such as come, sit, stay and down. And they all must be socialized. But a dog in the Dog Tags program will learn more than 80 commands. Just a few of the tasks they are expected to master are to turn on lights; open doors (including the refrigerator); distinguish between objects and bring the requested item; remind their veteran to take medications; and warn them of an approaching stranger.Long before they get to that level of training, the service dog will start its working life as an eight-week-old puppy living with an inmate at one of six correctional facilities in New York, Connecticut or New Jersey.Puppies Behind Bars purchases the puppies outright from a list of reputable breeders. Not all puppies are suited for a life as a service dog. At the end of their 18 months as a puppy behind bars, they are evaluated. Some dogs develop health issues, making them unsuitable. They must be healthy and free of any disabilities, including allergies and hip dysplasia.Gilbert Stoga was working in New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s office when she decided to start the Puppies Behind Bars program. She credits her inspiration for PBB to Dr. Thomas Lane, a Florida-based veterinarian who, every day on his way to work, passed the state prison in Gainesville. He saw the inmates standing around and thought they could be doing something productive and useful. He worked with the prison to start inmates training canines as guide dogs.Gilbert Stoga read an article about the program he had developed, and went to see him and study his methods. The program benefits both the inmate and the veteran. Working with inmates confined to medium- and maximum-security prisons, because they generally have longer terms of incarceration, the program is designed to contribute to the inmates’ social rehabilitation. An inmate must meet fairly strict criteria before they’re welcomed into the PBB program. The puppy then comes to live in the inmate’s cell and goes everywhere he or she goes within the prison community.And the inmate must be committed to training the dog.Gilbert Stoga said, “I am constantly bringing in articles about the soldiers that describe what they’re going through. We want the inmate/trainer to understand why we give the commands and how they will be used. “They have to take quizzes, and tests on a regular basis and read a lot of books. We give them homework. “Sometimes the puppy isn’t cut out for the work; and sometimes the inmate isn’t either.“We don’t consider the inmate to be a trained trainer until they’ve graduated one puppy. But we want them to learn and work with multiple dogs.”PPB also pays for correspondence courses for the inmates in veterinary assistance, animal grooming and training, so that when they are ready to be paroled they will have some real life-skills they can take with them.Just as the inmates are carefully screened before they are entrusted with a puppy, the veterans are also carefully screened before they receive a service dog. “A dog can be a complication,” Gilbert Stoga said. “It is not a magic wand. It’s a tool. If they can’t take care of themselves, then they won’t be able to take care of a dog.”In addition to the requirements regarding the war and the disability, they also must be in a stable living situation, be free of any drug or alcohol addiction for at least a year, be able to afford the cost of maintaining the dog, not have more than one dog already in the home and — most importantly — be committed to keeping up with the dog’s training.When they are first matched with a dog, they will spend two weeks at an on-site training facility, to get acquainted with the dog and learn how to communicate with it. After that, PBB has frequent check-ins to make sure that everything is going OK. Eventually those visits are reduced to an annual check-in.The organization has an enormous amount at stake in making sure that the match is a good one at every step of the way. A service dog will cost PBB, on average, $26,000 during its lifetime.So far, 39 dogs have graduated and been placed into service and PBB has 85 puppies in training. Since all of PBB fundraising is private, it is helpful when organizations such as the American Legion Auxiliary Unit in Millerton and private individuals sponsor a dog.To contribute to the auxiliary unit’s sponsorship, contact Molly Jenks at 518-789-6738 or send a check to the American Legion Auxiliary Unit 178, PO Box 22, Millerton, NY 12546. To contact Puppies Behind Bars go to www.puppiesbehindbars.com.
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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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