Earth Day 2007

My how time flies. Sunday, April 22 marks the 37th annual celebration of Earth Day. As a ninth grader at Hudson Junior High, I participated in the the first Earth Day in 1970. Got out of school for a half day to go clean trash, tires and a variety of junk that littered the gullies of Hudson's parks.

I'm not sure we made the world a better place to live, but we sure had some big piles of trash to toss into the city dump trucks. Our clean detail was in Birkmose Park. Back then it would be a rarity to see a bald eagle flying over the St. Croix river. Now days it's a common site. In 1970, the sewer treatment plant was where it is today. Up till around 1950, the Hudson sewage was dumped straight into the river. Times change...and often for the better.

This Sunday, if you see some trash laying around, pick it up -- even if it doens't belong to you. If you can manage it, wake to the store instead of driving. Think about Mother Earth on your walk.

A side note to my participation in the Earth Day I. Myself and two other fellow friends had to pick up trash with our shirts turned inside-out. The three of us came up with this brilliant -- actually day-glo -- idea the night before that involved the alphabet. Parks painted an "FU" on the back of his shirt, McGree painted a "CK" on his shirt and I painted a big "U" on the back of my shirt. The letters where in an assortment of day-glo colors.

We met at the Vine Street grocery store for the walk up Vine to the junior high and are idea was met with much praise from our fellow students. Everything went fine till the librarian read our shirts as we sat together in three chairs at a table in the library. A visit to Mr. Shoemaucher resulted in a shirt reversal. He wasn't buying our story about a coincidence.




Check out the official site for International Earth Day 2007.