Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

With mass transportation and quantities of scale, America's cities may be the best place to live simply. Meet Chicago's Sadhu & Manda Johnston & Jane Zawadowski who show us the way & hear Mayor Richard Daley's green pledge. Visit Chicago's fabled City Hall roof garden and Ken Dunn's moveable Urban Farm. Additional footage was shot in St. Louis, San Diego & Los Angeles.

Find ways to lower your carbon footprint from such leading thinkers & activists as author Bill McKibben; former President Jimmy Carter; & Worldwatch Institute's Christopher Flavin & Gary Gardner. Wanda meets students at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania who are tackling climate change. And, hear the youthful concerns from a 10-year-old in Topeka, Kansas.

Discover the vital link between art & simplicity, as well as your own "artist within. " Wanda visits North Carolina's legendary Penland School of Crafts' glass-blowers, painters & weavers, & visits the studio of mosaicist Jan Detter. New York City's pop singer Dana Parrish & composer Andy Hollander complete the show by offering an inspired performance in Mount Airy, NC.

Bryan Welch shows off his Lawrence, KS farm - which he calls "Rancho Cappuccino" - & explains why hobby farming is increasingly popular in America. Grit editor Hank Will gives us advice about how to get started with small farming. And, join Wanda as she visits farmers' markets in Lancaster, PA & Greensboro, NC to find out why they've become the "cat's meow."

Join Wanda & green living "poster boy" Ed Begley Jr., wife Rachelle & daughter Hayden at their modest by-Hollywood-standards home. At Local Burger in Lawrence, KS, learn why "local" is the new "organic." Pull up a chair at Zaytoon Mediterranean Café to hear from proprietors Annah & Masoud Awartani. And, watch Wanda's son Henry prepare a "zero-waste" school lunch.

Check out these treasured old "Things" - items still in use past the date of planned obsolescence - from a favorite Simple Living recurring feature, including Arlen Diamond's 1930s gold watch in Springfield, MO; the giant 1976 Jimmy Carter campaign peanut from Plains, GA.; Mary Ann Cook's 1967 Electrolux vacuum cleaner in New Orleans, and many more!

Join us as we visit some of America's favorite parks - Millennium Park in Chicago, St. Louis's Forest Park, New York's Central Park & Greensboro, NC's brand-new, community-planned Center City Park. Learn the significance of parks and public places to community life, while meeting the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation's Houck Medford; and Seattle-based parks advocate Al Runte.

Join Wanda as she explores the question of why sound sleep is so elusive. Visit a sleep clinic & hear recommendations from specialists. Check out herbal remedies from Herbs for Health's K.C. Compton. Then, learn how the "simple life" includes a healthy connection to our elders, by seeing the bond between HGTV founder Ken Lowe and his parents & Dr. Aldona Wos & hers.

Join Wanda for an exclusive interview with architect & designer William McDonough whom Time magazine named a "Hero for the Planet": "(H)is utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that ... is changing the design of the world." Then, meet Van Shields who is partnering with McDonough to create the new green Kanawha Development & Museum in York County, SC.

This episode lays out the steps needed to overcome "nature deficit disorder" for children and adults. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and revered author Thomas Berry are featured. Visit a farm where nature education is taught & learn how to start your own organic garden, featuring Mother Earth News editor-in-chief Cheryl Long, Topeka, KS.

Join Wanda as she embarks on the green remodel of her mid-century brick ranch house in Mount Airy, NC. Green building guru David Johnston & Natural Home editor-in-chief Robyn Griggs Lawrence guide the work. Part I of two programs identifies remodeling goals & the work begins on such basics as deconstruction, upgrading insulation & adding low-e windows.

Work continues on the remodel, including the addition of Energy Star® appliances, locally sourced North Carolina salt-and-pepper granite countertops, reclaimed wormy chestnut mantle; locally built bathroom furniture & low-VOC paints and aesthetic touches, such as hemp window treatments and bedding. In Part II, work on the house reaches its grand finale.

This special program features Chatham County, NC's impressive farmland preservation initiative and Beau Turner at his family's bison ranch outside Bozeman, MT. Wanda speaks to Royce Hanson in Montgomery County, MD, creator of Transfer Development Rights (TDR) initiative that land trusts around the country are emulating.