Join us on Saturday, April 22, at 1301 Hudson Street when the Museum presents two programs in honor of Earth Day. From 4-5:30pm, Poet-in-Residence Danny Shot is your host for “Edward Abbey’s Hoboken,” a celebration of the legendary writer and environmentalist by four notable writers: Robert Sullivan, David Crews, Basia Wilson, and Lynne Shapiro. From 6 to 7pm, Jane Steuerwald, Thomas Edison Film Festival Director, will screen an enlightening and uplifting program of Earth Day films with international perspectives. Filmmakers from Vancouver, Toronto, and Cardif, Wales are featured. Admission to both events is free, and refreshments will be served. 

Edward Abbey (1927-1989) is best known as an essayist, novelist, and defender of western wilderness, but he was also deeply attached to two eastern places – the woods and hills of western Pennsylvania, where he was born, and Hoboken, where he lived on and off from 1956 to 1963. His best-known works include Desert Solitaire, a non-fiction autobiographical account of his time as a park ranger at Arches National Park considered to be an iconic work of nature writing, The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been extremely influential to environmentalists; and his essay collections Down the River (1982) and One Life at a Time, Please (1988).

His essay “Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night,” introduces readers to the particular ecology and natural history of our city, evoking the smell of coffee beans from the Maxwell House Coffee plant; the glistening swarms of cockroaches in his neglected Hudson Street apartment; slow river crossings on the ferry; and the moldering piers. In much the same way he would later mourn the destruction wrought by western strip mining, Abbey calls out the names of some of Hoboken’s many riverfront bars – and his list is partial – that were swept away by urban renewal:  The Old Empire, the Seven Seas, Anna Lee’s, the Elysian Fields Bar and Grill, the Cherokee, The Old Holland House, the Little Dipsy Doodle, the Idle Hours, Pat’s, Pete’s, Lou’s, Joe’s, and Mom’s.

Robert Sullivan is the author of The Meadowlands, Rats, A Whale Hunt, and The Thoreau You Don’t Know, among others. His most recent book, My American Revolution, is a look at the way we think about history and wars in and around the Hudson-Raritan estuary. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York magazine, A Public Space, and Vogue, where he is a regular contributor. He grew up in New York and New Jersey, spent a decade in Oregon, and now lives in Philadelphia.

David Crews is a writer and editor who currently resides in southern Vermont, ancestral land of Mohican and Abenaki peoples. He cares for work that explores a reconnection to land and place and is currently writing a long lyric poem about Mount Monadnock in southern New Hampshire. New work from this project can can be found in recent issues of The Ecological Citizen, Appalachia, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, and This Broken Shore. His mermaid sequence, Incantation, is now available as a limited edition, handmade chapbook of poems designed and produced by Josh Dannin of Directangle Press. Find David and his work at davidcrewspoetry.com

Basia Wilson is a poet. She holds a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing from Temple University, and serves as Poetry Editor at Platform Review. A finalist for the 2022 Banyan Poetry Prize, Basia’s work has most recently been published in Voicemail Poems and bedfellows magazine. Selected for Moving Words 2023, Basia’s work will soon be adapted for animation in an international collaboration between writers, animators and filmmakers with ARTS By The People.

Lynne Shapiro, born in Jamaica, Queens and raised in Southern California, has lived in Hoboken for over 30 years with her husband and now elderly turtle. She is the author of two chapbooks, Gala (Solitude Hill Press) and To Set Right (Wordtech Communications)). She co-edited Dark As A Hazel Eye: Coffee and Chocolate Poems (Ragged Sky Press) and has been included in such anthologies as Decomposition: An Anthology of Fungi Inspired Poems (Lost Horse Press) and Welcome to the Resistance, Poetry as Protest (Stockton University Press). She’s been a poet-in-residence in England, Morocco and Spain. Her “Drone Poem” won first place in the Remembrance Day for Lost Species Poetry Competition in Dublin, Ireland and will soon be published as a small edition artists’ book.  Her website is: https://lynneshapiropoet.com

The Thomas Edison Film Festival selections rounding out the program include In Love with a Problem – Documentary – by Julie Kim, Vancouver, BC, Canada; Inner Polar Bear – Animation – by Gerald Conn, Cardiff, Wales, UK;  and When Worlds Collide – Documentary – by Patricia Seaton, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

For 42 years, the Thomas Edison Film Festival has been advancing the unique creativity and power of the short form. The Festival is an international juried competition open to all genres and filmmakers across the globe. The Festival’s touring program reaches out to diverse audiences in diverse settings with screenings of cutting-edge, cross-genre films including narrative, experimental, animation, and documentary. The Festival’s homebase is the Hoboken Historical Museum where we work together to enrich the community.

This program is made possible through the generous support of the Hudson County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs Tourism/Development. To learn more about the Thomas Edison Film Festival visit www.tefilmfest.org, to learn more about the Hoboken Historical Museum visit https://www.hobokenmuseum.org.

The Littleman Parking-Independence Garage (Shipyard Lane, at 12th St.) offers 3 hours of free parking with Museum validation. Make sure to bring your ticket to the event at the Hoboken Historical Museum for validation. On-street parking is limited. Commercial blocks are controlled by multi-space meters, which accept cash or credit card and allow parking for up to 2 or 4 hours, depending on the location. Meters are in effect 9 am – 9 pm Monday – Saturday.

The First Earth Day

Earth Day was Wisconsin Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson’s idea. He recruited Pete McCloskey a Republican representative from California (who by the way is still alive) to serve as his co-chair in Congress. On April 22, 1970, Americans marched and demonstrated in the streets for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive rallies across the US. It was estimated 20 million people, from 10,000 elementary and high schools, 2,000 colleges, and over 1,000 communities participated that day. (It is rumored that the date April 22 was chosen because it fell between colleges’ spring breaks and final exams). 

Not only did the first Earth Day turn out an impressive amount of people, it also achieved an unusual political alignment. Republicans and Democrats and people from all demographics – union members, farmers, scientists, and politicians – came together for the environment

The first Earth Day gave environmental issues national and political attention. It influenced the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency and numerous laws that protect our environment.