Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Note From Wanda

On our website, you can learn everything you need to know – well, most everything – about the television show, SIMPLE LIVING WITH WANDA URBANSKA, now entering its fourth season on public television stations nationwide. Join the Simple Living gang as we experience the “slow life” in Mount Airy, North Carolina, a town of some 8,400 people in Northwest North Carolina. Mount Airy is coincidentally the real-life hometown of actor Andy Griffith, but it was known as “friendly city” before Andy put it on the map as “Mayberry.” But we also travel the nation and globe in search of hands-on solutions to fast-paced, cluttered, eco-unfriendly lives.

In addition to giving you tips for simplifying your own lives and letting you behind the scenes from our production, you can browse the site and find basic information, actionable tips, view a photo gallery from our production and learn about upcoming events, and much more. Please make yourself at home here, and visit us again soon. Please send us your ideas for simple living, as well as ideas for the show. As always, let your PBS station know about your interest in our series and how it benefits your life.

Wanda's Diary

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

I just returned from a remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime meeting called “Poland in the Rockies,” a 10-day intensive study program about “things Polish,” held in Canmore, Alberta, Canada. With its magnificent, jagged peaks, the Canadian Rockies provided a fitting setting for this consciousness-raising-cum-Polish culture and history course. Convening a group of forty-four impressive college and graduate students, young professionals and assorted Poloniophiles (most of Polish origin) from Canada, the U.S., South Africa and Poland, we came away with the understanding that while Poland is making steady progress in nation-building, many mountains remain to be climbed.

Our days were packed with lectures on Poland’s rich, diverse culture and literature and complicated, often tragic, history from a stellar cast of scholars. We were briefed on the contemporary geopolitical scene by John Micgiel, director of the East Central European Center at Columbia University, and Andrzej Rabczenko, minister-counselor at the Polish Embassy in Washington DC. Lynn Lubamersky, an associate professor of history at Boise State University in Idaho, presented an overview of women in Polish history, making the case that women held a more prominent role in myth and reality in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth than stereotype might suggest. Piotr Wrobel, chair of Polish studies at the University of Toronto, delivered passionate lectures on the nation’s stormy history, the legacy of the Partitions, the interwar period, the Holocaust and Solidarity. John Bukowczyk, professor of history at Wayne State University in Detroit, spoke about the emigration patterns of Poles in America and ethnic identity. (The bad news: Polishness still ranks low on the list of desirable ethnicities in America, while, for instance, Japanese and Chinese heritage have shed their historically low ratings. The unwritten challenge of the conference was: How can Polish-Americans and Polish-Canadians shift this paradigm?)

Rabbi Eli Rubenstein, Canada’s director of The March of the Living and participant in national Polish-Jewish dialogues, charmed us with his stories and screened, then commented on, the acclaimed 2004 PBS documentary, “Hiding and Seeking.” The doc is a must-see about an American Jewish man who seeks out the Polish Catholic farmers who risked their lives to save his father-in-law during World War II. Against a context of anti-Polish stereotypes in Rubenstein’s own community growing up and even to this day, the Rabbi revealed that he’d “opened” himself up “to what the Polish people experienced in World War II.” (“Did you know that Poland was the only country in which no Nazi collaborating government was created?” he asked me privately, with obvious admiration. I did know that, but was glad that he did, too.) Rabbi Rubenstein challenged the group: “You need to go out and tell your story.”

Norman Davies, Britain’s best-selling author of “Europe: A History”; “God’s Playground,” the definitive history of Poland; and many other tomes, was the flagship presence throughout the conference. A gifted speaker endowed with great charisma, Davies divides his time between his home in Oxford and flats in Krakow and Wroclaw, Poland. He delivered the opening, keynote presentation at the conference on his latest book, “No Simple Victory,” which persuasively challenges the conventional Western wisdom that the Allies won World War II. Could it be that the Soviets, our pseudo-ally, really outfoxed us and “won” the War, he queried? (I won’t give away the rest; you have to read his book.)

Davies’ 21-year-old son, Christian, attended every session, his warm, supportive relationship with his father openly on display. After I screened my show, “The Poland Special” that aired in Season #2 of “Simple Living” (and continues to air in reruns), Christian sought me out to say that he was “very moved” by it.

A number of us traded the anti-Polish slurs that we’ve experienced on our life journeys; while Polack jokes appear to be on the wane in this age of political correctness in the West, they still occasionally rear their ugly heads.

While working as a bartender in Oxford, Christian Davies encountered one such moment of bigotry at a high-end bar. Speaking the Queen’s English, he served a patron who muttered, “At least you’re not one of those bloody Poles.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, sir,” Christian retorted with his father’s signature composure and a twinkle in his eye. “I happen to be half-Polish.”

Though we were treated to rich content, and wonderful films, including Wanda Koscia’s powerful 2005 BBC documentary “The Battle of Warsaw,” and several of Eric Bednarski’s excellent short films, the main offering of the conference was the fellowship, the networking that occurred on bus rides to Banff, as we hiked up to Johnston’s Falls and Sulphur Mountain and dined together, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Business cards were exchanged; entrepreneurial ideas launched; a few romances kindled. A couple of students kicked around the idea of starting up a new Polish-audience television show and web component in Canada. The outgoing president of Columbia University’s Polish club counseled the incoming president of Cornell University’s Polish club on how to draw and maintain membership. Norman Davies and I explored the idea of co-hosting a tour of some of the vanished kingdoms in and around Poland in 2010.

To a person, we all remarked about the high calibre of the venue — how those of us who’ve attended gatherings of Polonia for years, even decades, had never encountered anything quite like this: smart, serious, even audacious. We could never quite express our appreciation to organizers Tony Muszynski, the gifted, upbeat attorney from Calgary whose brainchild PITR is (Tony also managed to raise the funds to make it a first-rate experience), and Irene Tomaszewski, president of the Canadian Foundation for Polish Studies, who arranged the program.

The high moment of the conference for me, though, was a quiet one.

One afternoon, Professor Davies, Wanda Koscia and I gathered for tea in my suite. Equipped with one ceramic cup and two disposables, I asked Professor Davies which he’d prefer.

He answered me indirectly. “I know which one I prefer.”

I served his tea in the ceramic cup.

He looked me in the eye. “How very Polish of you.”

It was the highest compliment imaginable.

Diary archive

Tip of the Day

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - Explore your heritage

So much richness and so many personal connections are made when you spend time exploring your personal heritage. If you’re a polyglot like I am (I’m part Polish, Danish and WASP), delve into all of your multiple strands. It’s a journey that offers great richness.

Tips archive