LAKEVILLE — Summers in the Northwest Corner have always drawn crowds from the city. After all, since the late 1800s, there have been summer camps scattered throughout the Berkshire hills for the children of urbanites and there have been second homes here for centuries. There’s not much missing from our trails and lakes and there is little one could ask for in the way of summertime amenities. Unless you’re Lee Minoff, a psychotherapist who lives and practices in New York City and Sharon and who has a penchant for some wholesome competition. He and a few other city professionals started a Sunday softball game in the summer of 1983, at the field behind Patco in Lakeville.There are no practices and the only schedule is one that starts on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend and ends the Sunday of Labor Day. Some ball players show up in cars and on bicycles, others on motorcycles or in pick-ups. Bill Riiska, a lawyer in town, walks from his office with his own bat. It’s simple. You show up. Take batting practice and throw the ball around. “The Commissioner,” as Minoff is known, picks the teams, assigns the positions and the batting order. There’s no choosing and there are no choices. If Big Jack is around, he’s the umpire and if he’s not then the catcher or someone else calls it.There were games early on where so many people showed up, they had to play two games. The game has always allowed for everyone who wanted to play to play. Largely based on seniority, newcomers waited until the later innings but always got in the game. Men, women and some children have played. As some of the veterans have gotten older, the kids who showed up would pinch run or shag fouls. Folding chairs line the third base line. Dogs run on and off the field. Kids have a catch with their dads. It’s real American pie.As if the competition wasn’t a good enough reason to show up at 10 a.m. on a lazy Sunday, the roster of past alumni reads like a who’s who. Tom Brokaw played for years, even brought a film crew out to do a piece on American leisure. CNN’s writer/journalist/newsman Jeffrey Greenfield, Micky Kramer from Time magazine and director/writer Andrew Bergman have played for many a Sunday. The owner of the Colorado Rockies, Dick Monfort, usually plays shortstop. Even the guy who wrote the “Baseball Encyclopedia,” Jim Charlton, has played on the hallowed Community Field in Lakeville.And then there’s the rest of the guys. Real estate developers. Real estate managers and real estate speculators. Jim, with tape measure in hand and a stogie pinched between his index and middle finger, is sure that the bases are properly situated. He’s even played ball at Yankee stadium. We have a bunch of lawyers. And a few doctors — specializing from head to toe. And then there’s Gary, a Miami Beach hotel owner, and Duke Moore, our resident architect (in case we need to build a stadium). We’ve also played an esteemed professor at New York University. Authors, writers, wrestling state champions traveling from Millbrook, N.Y., to Norfolk. Coming down from Great Barrington, Mass., and over from Ancramdale, N.Y. And from Lakeville and Salisbury.There were summers when some of the local teams from North Canaan would come by and play the older guys. It was competition with all the flavor, wit and humor that can only be imported. There are tempers and tactics but never at the expense of goodwill. And in the end, it’s always a good game and it doesn’t matter because we’ll do it again next Sunday.We get rained out now and then, and some of the guys get injured and some of them get old. But when they show up, they show up to play. There are some good father/son combos who play, and with Cathy at third and her son at short, well, that’s a good combo, too.There are many places to see and dozens of things for families to do when it comes to the most venerable of all American vacations. And the summertime sure is easy with The Commissioner and the cast of thousands playing ball over at Community Field. If you’re like many, filling up at the service station or heading to the Grove for a swim, and if it just happens to be around 10 on a Sunday morning and you feel like getting in the game and maybe buying some real estate, stop by and bring a friend, because after almost 30 years of summer Sundays, we could sure use a few new recruits.
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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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