A new memoir charts the decline and resilience of an Ohio town- Urbana

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Source-https://www.npr.org/2025/10/06/nx-s1-5396616/a-new-memoir-charts-the-decline-and-resilience-of-an-ohio-town

Transcript at source, 8 minute audio.

snip-"But she has watched Urbana go from a town with stable factory jobs and good schools in the 1970s and '80s to a place bearing the heavy weight of unemployment, addiction and plummeting graduation rates. Macy is now an award-winning author and journalist. And for her new memoir, "Paper Girl," she returns to her hometown to understand why Urbana has transformed so dramatically, and what Urbana can tell us about this country. I asked Macy, when did she first notice the changes in her hometown?

MACY: I first noticed it in my family. Just a lot of division. And we never used to talk about politics, but around when Trump was elected, my brother, Tim (ph), unfriended me on Facebook 'cause of, quote, "all the liberal crap you post." And we had been very close. And then kind of the pinnacle moment happened at my mom's deathbed in 2020. It happened to be the Saturday after the election, when I was sitting with the hospice nurse and my evangelical sister, who had previously never spoken of politics. And the nurse's phone blinged, and she goes, oh, they're calling it for Biden. And my sister said, you wait. It's fraudulent. He won't win. And Mama's (ph) literally laying in her death bed going (imitates labored breathing). You know, she could die at any moment. And I just thought, oh, my goodness, what has happened? I had noticed in my hometown, which was a hotbed of abolitionist activity and an underground railroad haven, but there were now Confederate flags flying.



Much more there.