If you couldn’t find something to do in Westport today, you just weren’t trying.
Downtown pulsed with the energy of thousands of Westporters and visitors, of all ages.
The Sunrise Rotary Club sponsored their annual Great Duck Race and Family Faire, on Jesup Green.
The race offered a chance to win a $5,000 grand prize, among others. The fair offered games for kids, vendors for adults, and food for all.
Meanwhile, the 60th annual jUNe Day offered dozens of United Nations families a chance to enjoy a Westport experience, at Longshore, Compo Beach, Wakeman Town Farm, Earthplace and more.
The day began on Jesup Green — at the start of the Family Faire — with welcomes from dignitaries (including Westporter Aye-Aye Thant, daughter of former UN Secretary General U Thant), food, and a chance to mix and mingle.
Getting away from the UN, for a day in an American suburb.
A few steps away on Main Street and nearby, the Westport Downtown Association’s Sidewalk Sale offered bargains from merchants — some of whose stores are not downtown — along with (hey, why not?) haircuts right there on the street.
The Sidewalk Sale continues today (Saturday) until 5 p.m. It’s on again tomorrow (Sunday), from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Plenty of shoppers outside Vineyard Vines.
There’s always something happening in Westport. Today, there just happened to be a bit more than usual.
Little girl, big duck.
Felicia Catale offers a sidewalk service.
Sunrise Rotarians are feeling ducky.
You’ve heard of touch-a-truck events. At the Family Faire, kids could touch — and get into — a Westport cop car.
The United Nations soccer team, before heading off to play. (All photos/Dan Woog)
Miggs Burroughs created today’s jUNe Day globe. “06880”‘s Dan Woog supports it. (Photo/Miggs Burroughs)
Perfect! Where Westport and Dan Woog meets the world!
Vanessa, I was just going to write what you wrote!!! Great minds think alike. You must be brilliant.
One other event happening today in Westport … the weekly 11 a.m. Saturday gathering on the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Memorial Bridge to protest the White House administration!
Sara, What are you talking about? Gas here is $1.89 a gallon and eggs are 89 cents a dozen and there’s a 1.9% thirty year mortgage! The Ukrainian war ended on DAY TWO and this is basically heaven on earth!
Aw yes, Jack, in our dreams. 🙏
The United Nations should NOT be welcome in Westport.
Whatever good work it does in attacking poverty and providing elegant meeting rooms for debate, it is now also a deeply anti-Semitic organization. Anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and Anti-Zionist. And it has been at least since 1975, when it declared Zionism is racism. The UN has demonized Israel for decades, attempting to isolate it and strangle it. And through the actions of UNRWA, the UN bears some direct responsibility for the butchery of October 7.
Last year, we staged a silent protest to ask Westporters to see the UN for what it is. We reminded visitors that for years the UN passed more resolutions condemning Israel than the sum total of resolutions condemning Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other such states, and that it turned a blind eye for weeks or months to the savagery of October 7 and particularly the violence done to women. We said the town would never invite an institution that similarly demonized any other group for racial, ethnic, gender preference or identity, so it must not invite the UN.
Some say the UN is merely a forum, not responsible for the actions or decisions of its member states. But no one would honor a PTO, for example, if member parents demanded use of racist textbooks — it’s laughable even to suggest. This UN, the modern UN, attempts to strangle the Jewish state through sanctions, resolutions, and BDS, and might well have succeeded if not for US vetoes. This UN is the world’s largest hotbed of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-Zionist rhetoric.
We didn’t protest this year, partly because we recognize that UN workers who come to town are not decision making ambassadors or nation heads, but hard-working men and women typically working on international projects benefiting the more needy. Also because, well, who wants to rain on a parade?
Now I wonder if we didn’t make a mistake. In the name of wanting to go along to get along, we were silent when really we should still be shouting. The UN demonizes Israel. Unless and until it finds a way to reform itself, to rid itself of its anti-Semitic poison, the town of Westport and its people should not welcome it back. Surely we can find other ways to celebrate international community without inviting an organization who raises its voice loudly day after day in denunciation of the world’s one Jewish State.
Bob Neumann
Westport
So agree with you Bob!
Ditto to the entirety of Bob Neumann’s comment.
I agree, Bob. It’s unfathomable to me that anyone would celebrate the UN at this point. Its sustained and wildly disproportionate focus on Israel is aimed to weaken, if not eliminate, the one majority Jewish state on the planet. Even if one didn’t care to permit the right of self-determination to the miniscule worldwide Jewish population (the one that still doesn’t number as many as people as it did prior to WWII because of an actual genocide), the farce that is the UN’s human rights effort should nauseate us all. This isn’t the United Nations which Eleanor Roosevelt and many Westporters of her time thought held so much promise. If anyone still wants to rally around the UN, one has to assume that they’re okay with the UN’s singular fervent demonization of Israel and the unbridled antisemitism in many of its key bodies, or is living the most dangerous form of magical thinking.
You are right on Carolyn!
I could not agree with you more, Carolyn. Shame on the so-called United Nations for their tardy and tepid response to the brutal attack on Israel on October 7.
It’s time to put a stop to jUNe Day and to see the UN for what it is- an organization filled with hate for Israel and the Jewish people.
In four months NYC will have a Muslim anti-Zionist mayor. Who says regularly on the record that he wants to add a new tax to rich white people, his words. Then this really gets interesting.
We do live in the upside down when genocide is being committed in front of our eyes yet are incensed by people who want it to end. The IDF admits, admits it’s a shooting gallery in Gaza but only when Haaretz writes about it do we begin to question the narrative we’ve been given. Or a rap group is more dangerous than starvation, planting drugs in flour, Netanyahu arming criminal gangs to terrorize the population even more. So go with your indignation because history will show you’ve been on the wrong side.
Given your “right” side of history consists of the elimination of the only majority-Jewish state in the world, empowering terrorist organizations that deliberately target civilians, subjugate its own people and strip basic rights from women and LGBT people, I think we’ll take our chances on the “wrong” side.
Sorry if israel can’t sit back while Hamas/Iran commits its stated goal of genocide against it. Israel cares about its citizens unlike Hamas. Hamas could have prevented deaths but continues to hide behind their citizens and prevent aid from getting in. And like you the UN refuses to place the blame on and pressure Hamas for their starting this war and refusal to release the hostages and surrender.