I’m sure you’ve heard the University of Connecticut and the Burton family of Greenwich are friends once more. The UConn football operation will keep the family’s $3 million donation and the Burton Family Football Center will keep its name.You’ll recall Robert Burton, the family patriarch, had angrily sought a refund because he was unhappy with the selection of the new UConn football coach, a choice made without the proper input, as he saw it, from the generous Robert Burton. We don’t know what the incoming UConn president and the nervous athletic director said to the patriarch to make up, but I’m sure it was nice. At any rate, the team will continue to do what it does in the elaborate facility and play its home games at Rentschler Field in East Hartford, a considerable distance from the campus and the Burton Family Football Center but convenient for fans who don’t attend the college. There is no danger Rentschler Field will undergo a name change in the foreseeable future as it was properly named for the long deceased Frederick Rentschler. He was the founder of United Aircraft, an ancestor of United Technologies, which gave UConn the land in East Hartford. The basketball teams will continue to play at arenas named for a donor, Gampel Pavilion, on the campus, and at the XL Center in Hartford, which is so named, not to honor the Roman number 40, but to promote XL Group, a not terribly well known, 25-year-old insurance conglomerate. This means the University of Connecticut, at least for now, will not be playing home games in arenas or stadiums named for orange juice, dog food, companies with funny names or unsavory reputations.This is, however, not true of away games. Just the other day, the UConn men played the University of Louisville in an arena with the tackiest name around, the KFC Yum! Center, complete with the !. When I was growing up, ball parks honored people named Ebbets, Crosley, Griffith, Shibe, Comiskey, or they had names that reflected the teams, Braves Field, Yankee Stadium or even their neighborhoods, as in Fenway Park. But just a bit of research reveals there have always been commercial motives behind some name selections. Fenway Park is in the Fenway neighborhood, but its naming in 1912 started with a Red Sox owner who thought the name would be a plus for his Fenway Realty Co. Wrigley Field was named in 1926 for the Chicago Cubs owner, but Philip Wrigley picked the name to promote his chewing gum. Since naming rights are granted for as little as three years or as many as 20, there can be some confusion when names change faster than team rosters. The TD Garden in Boston has had about 35 names since it was built as the Shawmut Center in 1993. It was Fleet Center until owner Fleet Bank was gobbled up by the Bank of America and attained its record number of names when the arena’s owner bought the naming rights back from Bank of America. The arena couldn’t find a long-term name renter, so it auctioned daily naming rights on e-Bay for about $3,000 a day. This gave the center a different name every day for about a month, and the owners rejected only one, an attempt to name the arena the Derek Jeter Center. They did, however, allow the place to be called Yankees Suck Center for two days in 2005. The proceeds of the auction, more than $150,000, went to charities. Some names turn out to be embarrassing for more than a day or two and have to be changed. The Houston Astros played in a park named for the notorious Enron Corporation until it ceased to exist in that unseemly financial scandal in 2002. But the worst naming embarrassment may have involved a name honoring a contributor. UConn basketball teams play Villanova in a campus arena known simply as The Pavilion, but it was the du Pont Pavilion until the man it was named for, John du Pont of the Delaware duPonts, was convicted of murder in 1996. I guess there is something to be said for short-term, renewable naming arrangements. Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail 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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