WINSTED — Two separate violent incidents near Highland Lake in the past month resulted in hospitalizations, one significant enough to require a LifeStar helicopter and recovery in a rehabilitation facility.Winchester Police Chief Robert Scannell confirmed this week that the department is investigating an incident that took place some time between Friday night, Oct. 28, and early Saturday, Oct. 29, in which a local resident, Brandon Gurtowsky, 27, was brutally assaulted, somewhere near Resha Beach. Gurtowsky suffered traumatic head injuries, facial fractures and shattered hands in the attack, and was reportedly dropped off at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington by friends after the incident. Gurtowsky traveled by LifeStar helicopter to Hartford Hospital, where he spent a week in an induced coma with cerebral hemorrhaging.It wasn’t until noon on Saturday, Oct. 29, that the Winchester Police Department received a call from Torrington police indicating that the assault may have happened in Winsted.“We’re pretty sure it happened near the Resha Beach parking lot, however we’re no closer to an arrest,” Scannell said Tuesday. “But there has been very limited cooperation from the witnesses.”Gurtowsky was hospitalized at Hartford Hospital and is now recovering from severe facial fractures, a broken jaw and broken hands, according to his girlfriend, Amy Root. Root said in an interview Tuesday that Gurtowsky and two friends were traveling together in a friend’s car Oct. 28 and that she doesn’t know who attacked Gurtowsky.“For some reason his friends aren’t saying anything,” Root said. “Someone might have been trying to blame him for something that was stolen.”Root acknowledged that Gurtowsky has had some trouble in the past. “He’s from Winsted and he used to be a troublemaker,” she said. “The cops don’t really like him because when he was younger he was in a lot of trouble, but he’s grown up.”Chief Scannell said the department does not yet have suspects in the case and that the timing of the call, along with uncooperative witnesses, has made for a difficult investigation.“We were alerted at noon the following day by Torrington police, who told us the victim had been dropped at Charlotte at 2 a.m. [on Oct. 29],” he said. “They started an investigation and they determined the incident might have happened up here. They got in touch with us, but needless to say, some of the tracks were cold.”Root said she is concerned that Gurtosky’s friends have been unwilling to explain what happened. “Everyone is saying something different, and his friends won’t speak up,” she said. “They’re saying they don’t remember. I was home sleeping, and I got a phone call that he was being LifeStared to Hartford. I think someone wanted to kill him.”Gurtowsky remains in a rehabilitation facility in Hartford with his jaw wired shut and a tracheotomy in place. Root said he is expected to remain in rehabilitation for at least two weeks.In a separate case, Scannell said another fight occurred Oct. 14 near Highland Lake, in which an unidentified 17-year-old male resident of the Highland Lake area received numerous lacerations requiring hospitalization. “It appears that these are people who know each other,” the chief said regarding the victim and the suspects. The exact nature of the fight is not known, the chief said, but the department does expect to make arrests in the case. “We have identified suspects,” he said.Scannell said Highland Lake residents are not in danger and that the two violent incidents are coincidental and appear to involve people who know each other. He asked anyone with information about either incident to contact the Winchester Police Department at 860-379-2721.
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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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