A new post

I've worked hard, for me, these last several days, getting ready for Saturday's craft show and finishing Nomadland, by Jessica Bruder. Like Finding the Mother Tree, this book compelled me. It may be because I seriously contemplated this life style. Remember when I thought about getting off the grid? The pictures are still on the post:

The Mercedes Benz is a lovely illustration; not in my budget . I looked at used models and other brands. I could have done that in my budget. I drove a bigger van for twenty years. But this is after I'd broke my leg and the better part of valor was do not do it. And especially, do not need to work.

Nomadland is a report on people my average age surviving in homes on wheels. The author spent several years following groups of "houseless" people, documenting their pleasures and pain. They may be a larger group than ever, swept from the American dream by the Great Depression. The houseless have always been with us, from Westward Migration through the Great Recession. The houseless are everywhere and all time; Tinkers, Romani, migrant workers. 

The people in this book are relentlessly cheerful, can-do, helpful and sufficient. They work the mean hours, jobs and pay of places like Amazon warehouses, this country's national parks, fields of produce, stocking groceries. They mourn the passing of friends, often alone, without family or friends, and carry on to the next job.

Linda, the center traveler of the book, works the mean jobs and searches the country for the place to settle down. She finds her acre a few miles from the Mexican border and we leave her contemplating beginning construction of an Earth Ship, a home built from sand filled tires. She may do it, or give it up and find a new dream.

Quoting the author,  “America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves . . . Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.”

Paraphrasing the author, life seems to be growing more difficult for people who use the free parking places. Park rangers are using modern electronic methods to track vehicles that stay more than forty five days on public lands. City law enforcers are doing the same. And people of color certainly could never consider this life style.

The people in this book never considered this life style while they were CEO's, CFO's, managers. brokers, owners of traditional homes, apartment renters, consumers of everything they must dispose of to live in a small or tiny vehicle. Now, they are an America no one knows of or thinks about.