The more that the $567 million bus highway project between Hartford and New Britain is touted for the construction jobs it will produce, the more you can be sure that its nominal justification — transportation between the two struggling cities — isn’t very persuasive. Most Connecticut Republicans are against the project now that it has been brought to fruition by the state’s new Democratic governor, Dannel P. Malloy. But as Paul Hughes of the Waterbury Republican-American reported, the bus highway would not have gotten this far except for the long support in planning that was provided by the administrations of the two Republicans who preceded Malloy, John G. Rowland and Jodi Rell. The project seems to have been a way for those Republicans to pose as supporters of “mass transit” without having to spend much.Meanwhile, transportation systems of the greatest practical use to Connecticut — roads and bridges and the Metro-North commuter railroad from New Haven to New York — are falling apart for lack of maintenance funds. And the Hartford Courant’s Matthew Kauffman reported that while the accident-plagued junction of routes 9 and 17 in Middletown has been identified by the state Transportation Department as the most dangerous spot in Connecticut’s highway system for five years running, there is no money to fix it; though fixing it along with other roads, bridges and Metro-North might employ a lot of people, too.Instead, state government has found the money for another white elephant that will require huge operating subsidies every year.Participation in this month’s municipal elections in Connecticut fell below 31 percent of registered voters. Since a quarter or so of people eligible to vote don’t register, perhaps only 23 percent of Connecticut’s adults showed up on municipal government’s big day.Of course, the strain imposed by the freak and damaging snowstorm Oct. 29 may have reduced participation. But two years ago participation was only 37 percent of registered voters, and the percentage of all adults participating was probably already below 25.Connecticut has seen a long decline in civic virtue, and it is not likely to be reversed by legislating same-day voter registration and voting by mail or over the Internet. Though local government performed spectacularly after the recent snowstorm, most people in Connecticut seem to think it’s not important. Are they so wrong? While there are always personal popularity issues in municipal elections, there are seldom issues of policy anymore, not even issues of taxes. Most candidates and voters themselves seem resigned to rising property taxes just to maintain the status quo. Campaigns consist of little more than candidates pledging themselves to a few meaningless pieties. Indeed, many local elections can’t be competitive at all because the law arranges offices and nominations so that nearly everyone nominated is elected.Even where there is serious competition it may be hard to extract meaning. East Haven’s new mayor, Joseph Maturo Jr., a former mayor, may get Connecticut’s political candor award for acknowledging as much. Having just defeated Mayor April Capone by 30 votes out of 7,500 cast after losing to her by 25 votes four years ago, Maturo remarked at his victory party: “I don’t know what the people said four years ago with 25 votes, so I don’t what the people said this time with 30 votes.”Connecticut Light & Power Co. is now nearly unanimously certified as a bunch of idiots because it needed 10 days to restore electricity to all its customers after the Oct. 29 snowstorm. But now roadsides in the northern and western parts of the state are cluttered with fallen branches stacked up by property owners for eventual collection by road crews, and it may be months before all the mess is taken away. To finance the debris removal work, town governments are appropriating millions of dollars they don’t have, in the hope that the federal government will reimburse them, as state government is too committed to the Hartford-New Britain bus highway and other things to help financially. And despite winter’s approach, Bradley International Airport, having needed seven hours to disembark passengers on a flight diverted there during the storm, and five hours to disembark passengers on a diverted flight last year, does not yet have a plan to prevent more outrageous and humiliating incidents.If the power company is contemptible for having been unprepared to fix its problem in less than 10 days, what does all this make government three weeks later? Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
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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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