Image: detail of Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole's "The Savage State," from Course of Empire, 1836
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INTRODUCTION Visit the REGENERATIVE COMMUNITIES NETWORK Visit our FIELD GUIDE HUDSON VALLEY STORYTELLING |
Kevin Irby, director of Threadspan, based in Rhinebeck, New York, introduces the Hudson Valley hub:
The Hudson River originates at Tear of Clouds Lake on Mt. Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains and outlets into the Atlantic Ocean in New York City. Called by the indigenous Mahicantucks the "river that flows two ways," it is in fact a tidal estuary where salty seawater meets fresh; where, today the five boroughs of New York City meet the suburban and rural communities to their north. The first peoples to inhabit the Hudson River Valley were hunters and gatherers and, some, agriculturalists. When Europeans arrived in the area beginning in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, two tribes dominated the region—the Mohicans of the northern valley and the Lenape in the southern valley. In 1609 Henry Hudson "discovered" his namesake river on what was ultimately a failed search for a passage East, commissioned by the Dutch East India Company. Since then, as Lewis notes, the Hudson River Valley has been a landscape where the complexities and contradictions of America’s western cultural and economic history have been playing out, for better and for worse. In a series of paintings he created between 1833-36 entitled The Course of Civilization, Thomas Cole, the founder of the renowned Hudson River School of landscape painters, depicts the rise and fall of a city against the backdrop of a river that is much like the Hudson. The series reflects Cole's deep despondency as early industrialists of the region despoiled the Hudson Valley landscape, seeming to care only for the economic value they could extract from it. Cole, thankfully, did not live to see the river further poisoned by industrial waste during the first half of the 20th century nor, unfortunately, did he get to witness the beginnings of its revitalization in the mid-20th, led by pathfinders Scenic Hudson, and Pete Seeger and his Clearwater sloop. The regeneration of the Greater Hudson Valley is now being designed and supported by a growing network of inspired practitioners— working across the disciplines of finance, manufacturing, agriculture, the arts, and others. The Hudson Valley Hub is a collaborative group working together to support the emergence of a regenerative, place-based society in the Hudson Valley, NY. The highest goals of the Hudson Valley Hub within the Regenerative Communities Network are to 1) facilitate the conditions for emergence by discovering and providing tools for communities of practice to visualize and explore themselves; 2) support connectivity, understanding, action, and the sharing of learnings within the vibrant landscape of place-based work in the Hudson Valley and beyond; and 3) evolve and adapt in service of the collective. Examples of this work include mapping the ecological and social justice organizations and initiatives in the Hudson Valley; storytelling in conjunction with the Capital Institute and a new affiliate project of the Institute, Hudson River Flows; an emerging Hudson Valley Farmer Training Collaborative; and more. |