Trinity College should give Todd Dagres of the Class of 1982 an especially nice welcome if he shows up in Hartford for his 30th reunion this spring. He’s a really hot prospect for the alumni fund, having the wherewithal to endow several professorships with what he saves on taxes alone.There was a story in The Washington Post the other day about how private equity types “work the angles to keep from paying taxes” and the Trinity graduate was Exhibit A. That’s because Dagres paid no taxes on $3.5 million he earned in income and capital gains one recent year, and he beat the IRS in court when it tried to bill him for more than $1 million in back taxes and penalties. You can do that when you’re a venture capitalist like Dagres or, need I say it, Mitt Romney.Dagres raises funds to buy and invest in new and existing businesses and he’s extremely good at it. The Post reported he once made $800 million for his clients on a $15 million investment in a single business. “It’s a performance-based business,” Dagres told the court in 2009, when his case came to trial. “If we perform well, we’re compensated well. If we don’t perform well, we’re not.” Because of their patriotic willingness to take risks with other people’s money, a grateful nation gives wonderful tax breaks to venture capitalists like Dagres and Romney, to select two members of the species at random.Over a five-year period, The Post reported Dagres paid 20 percent of his total income of $59.5 million in taxes. That’s barely more than half the average middle class family’s tax rate. We haven’t known how much venture capitalist Romney paid in taxes because Romney, who still receives a cut from the profits of his firm, Bain Capital, didn’t release any of his tax returns until failing to do so cost him South Carolina and maybe more. Under considerable pressure to make his returns public, Romney first said he might release some returns around “tax time” in April, hoping he’d have the nomination in sight or clinched by then. He won’t. Now that he’s released his most recent tax data, he’ll still be under pressure for returns from his active years with Bain Capital to let the public know if he consistently paid at a rate of 15 percent, thanks to the exceptions made for those great Americans who labor in the venture vineyards. To be sure these splendid tax breaks continue, the financial services industry has worked hard to provide Congress with legal bribes disguised as contributions, to be honest about the system. The Post report on Dagres singled out Democrats from New York and Connecticut who “have faithfully represented and been rewarded by their Wall Street constituents,” with Sen. Charles Schumer receiving $18 million from the financial sector over two decades and Chris Dodd, $14.5 million.The industry is also generous to Republicans, especially House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who picked up $5.8 million in 12 years. His wife is a former Goldman Sachs vice president and that firm continues to lead financial sector donors with $2 million given to our Congressmen and women so far this election cycle, followed by the now famous Bain Capital, at $1.8 million.What Bain paid its founder and CEO and how much he paid in federal taxes are of greater interest because of Romney’s inexplicable resistance to making his returns public, something every presidential candidate since Richard Nixon and Romney’s father, George Romney, have done for four decades. Newt Gingrich released his return and no one cared, but Romney foolishly encouraged the suspicion that he’s hiding something big. That impression remains and will remain until he releases about a dozen years of tax returns, as his father did.For example, did Romney ever go as far as Dagres, and avoid taxes completely during an especially venturesome year? Probably not, because paying no taxes would be a very dumb move for someone interested in running for president. Fifteen percent is bad enough; zero percent would leave voters confusing Romney with General Electric or Al Capone. Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.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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