Also on today’s menu:
Community Night Out Returns For Second Year
Putin Continues Goodwill Tour With Visit To Vietnam
Scott Haines has retired as assistant manager of First Student bus company after 46 years with the company. He began as a part-time bus driver while working for the Bristol Police Department, a job he held for 26 years before retiring in 2002.
Fellow workers, friends, and members of his family threw a surprise retirement party at Newfound Memorial Middle School on June 12, with Interim Superintendent Steven Nilhas praising Haines’ work in coordinating the bus routes and overseeing the safety of Newfound students.
Haines said his friend and fellow police officer Phil Dion had encouraged him to take a second job with First Student in 1977. Scott’s wife, Mary, recounted a story from those early years when their children were young and she also had a job. Scott would bring their children along with him on his but route. One day, when the students riding on the bus got particularly rowdy, Scott stopped the bus and yelled for them all to calm down. There was dead silence for a minute, then they began acting up again. His three-year-old daughter “stood up on the seat and yelled, ‘You be quiet! My daddy has a headache!’” Mary said. “I’ll never forget when he came home and told me that story.”
Discussion: Scott has always kept busy, not only with his two official careers, but also offering commercial and residential snow-plowing services.
Community Night Out Returns For Second Year
Bristol’s second Community Night Out will take place on Thursday, June 27, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at Kelley Park. There will be entertainment by Henry the Juggler, music by Uncle Steve and the Dreamers at the concert pavilion, a climbing wall, and a display of fire trucks and police and conservation vehicles.
The event will feature a free barbecue, popcorn, and other treats.
Community Night Out kicks off the free Concerts in the Park series which brings music for all ages to Kelley Park on Thursdays from 6:30 to 8 p.m. throughout the summer.
Discussion: Bristol’s Summer Concert Series has become something that residents have enjoyed for several years now. It provides a chance for people to get together with old friends and new residents and share in the town’s history while enjoying the music.
Putin Continues Goodwill Tour With Visit To Vietnam
Vietnamese president To Lam and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, met in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi today in a demonstration of the historic ties between the two countries. Their relationship goes back many decades, to when the Soviet Union welcomed the new communist state of North Vietnam in the 1950s. A small park in Ba Dinh, Hanoi’s political quarter, features a five-meter-high statue of Russian revolutionary and politician Vladimir Lenin. Each year on Lenin’s birthday, a delegation of senior Vietnamese officials lay flowers and bow their heads before the statue, which was a gift from Russia when it was still part of the Soviet Union.
The United States has criticized today’s visit as giving a platform for Putin to promote his war of aggression in Ukraine, but Vietnam has described their relationship as “filled with loyalty and gratitude”.
Vietnam has abstained from votes on resolutions at the United Nations condemning Russia’s actions while maintaining good relations with Ukraine. Vietnam even sent some aid to Kyiv. Thousands of Vietnamese have worked and studied in Ukraine.
Discussion: As the BBC reports, Vietnam’s foreign policy of “bamboo diplomacy” seeks friendship with everyone while avoiding formal alliances. It allows the country to “bend with the buffeting winds of great-power rivalry without being forced to take sides”.