Edward Abbey’s Hoboken: An Earth Day Celebration

Press release from the Hoboken Historical Museum:

April 12, 2023

Edward Abbey’s Hoboken: An Earth Day Celebration

April 22, 2023 (Earth Day) 4 p.m., at the Hoboken Historical Museum

1301 Hudson Street Hoboken NJ 07030

This live public event will feature four notable writers celebrating legendary writer and environmentalist Edward Abbey who lived in Hoboken from 1956 to 1963. The writers taking part are Robert Sullivan, David Crews, Basia Wilson, and Lynne Shapiro, hosted by Hoboken Historical Museum’s Poet in Residence Danny Shot.

Following an intermission with light refreshments, 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.

These events are free and will also be livestreamed on the Hoboken Historical Museum’s YouTube page.

Directions and a schedule of events are available at www.hobokenmuseum.org.

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 who 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 First Earth Day
Earth Day was the idea of Wisconsin Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson. 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. 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.

This press release was produced by the Hoboken Historical Museum . The views expressed here are the author's own.