MILLBROOK — Not even an overcast day with scattered showers could take away the beauty at the Millbrook Vineyard & Winery. On Saturday evening, June 11, as fog rolled across the vineyard, people from all around the Dutchess County area traveled to get a taste of Millbrook. That night the Millbrook Education Foundation (MEF) hosted its eighth annual A Taste of Millbrook event. The night included performances by the Millbrook High School Jazz ensemble, Madrigal Singers, a silent auction, wine from the vineyard and food from area restaurants. Members of the high school’s National Honor Society chapter volunteered to serve food.John Dux, chair of the MEF, has been on the board for nine years.“What we do is we raise money. Hopefully we will raise $30,000 to $35,000 tonight, and in return we give that as grants for the school,” he said. “It can go for small things, like a trip for the eighth-grade class to go to a museum, to something big like a new computer lab with 26 new computers. So it goes from small grants to very large grants.” Dux said he expected more than 300 people Saturday. “What is really great is all the restaurants give so much food; they have been so nice to us,” said Dux. The variety of food donated to A Taste of Millbrook consisted of restaurants such as China Tokyo, When Pigs Fly South, Slammin Salmon and Rusty Tomato, to name a few. Two restaurants were showcased at the event. One, Bread Alone, a bakery with locations in Boiceville, Woodstock and Rhinebeck, featured homemade baked goods such as crumb cakes and brownies. The other showcased restaurant was Aurelia, a Mediterranean restaurant in Millbrook. Some of the highlighted cuisine consisted of gazpacho soup, watermelon with goat cheese and fresh thyme and homemade hummus with pita. Susan Nestel, owner of Aurelia, explained why she enjoys being a part of A Taste of Millbrook. “It’s a good community event that raises money for a great cause.” she said. “This year we are actually here and we want to meet some people who haven’t been to our restaurant. We have been in the village for four years; this year was the first we were invited to come and have our own table.” Planning to have an event of this size is no easy task, Diane Schnoor, a member of the MEF board of trustees, said. “We start back in January contacting businesses, friends, neighbors, and brainstorming what would be great to have at the event,” she said, adding that between 30 to 40 people work to bring the evening together. “The month of May is crazy getting everything together to publicize the benefit; it’s a team effort.”Eleanor Pelc chairs the A Taste of Millbrook committee.“I just want the community to know how much MEF does to help the schools,” she said. “I often think they don’t realize what we have done to contribute to the schools, so it’s nice they get to come out and talk to us. And we try and hang some signs up to show some of the grants we have approved throughout the years so they realize where their money is going.”At A Taste of Millbrook there were suggestion cards giving donors ideas of what their money might fund. For instance, $2,000 could fund an eighth-grade trip to Washington, D.C., or for $15,000 the school district could finish putting in Smart Boards in the schools. The cards also explain where grant money has gone in the past, like establishing the Model U.N. Club in the high school or creating scholastic magazines for all elementary students. Kyle Goodwill, 17, is a senior at Millbrook High School. He was working as a server at the event and said he is especially thankful for the money donated. “One particular thing that was funded by MEF was Project Lead The Way; I took those courses all the way through high school,” he said. “That influenced what I plan to major in when I go to college.” Goodwill will be attending CUNY Binghamton in the fall, hoping to study digital electronics and architecture. Lloyd Jaeger, superintendent for the Millbrook School District, said he feels blessed to have MEF. “The Millbrook Education Foundation is founded for the sole purpose of funding the Millbrook schools. All of their money comes in one form of donations or another to individual teachers or a schoolwide project,” he said. “This event is their single largest fundraising event annually. Last year they grossed about $35,000 and it is a uniquely Millbrook event at the Millbrook Winery. There are many donations from community people, it turns the community out here and it has become a real joy for everybody. So we are very fortunate to have the strength of a organization like this for our district and that’s why it’s important.”
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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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