Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Monday, November 7, 2005

Imagine my surprise when Frank forwarded me an email from a professor in Chicago to whom I’d last spoken in the 1990s. He is a demographer and professor at Loyola University in Chicago and is an expert on the subject of the “Rural Rebound” of the 1990s. His name is Kenneth Johnson, and we quoted him extensively in our book. Dr. Johnson and I had made friends over the phone at the time that Frank and I were writing our 1996 book, Moving to a Small Town.

This time, he called out of the blue to say that he was updating his research on rural activity since the ‘90s. He commented that the movement to small town America had slowed since he and I were last in discussion. But he had a foundation grant and looking to at what was happening in Surry County, North Carolina. He had already identified this county as one to study and then realized that I lived there! We had a lively discussion about Surry County, and he vowed that he’d come visit—maybe next summer. I told him that our SIMPLE LIVING crew would love to come shoot in Chicago for our next season. So in one case or another, at long last, we might meet in person!