Reading for all seasons

Blogista C.  an interesting, hugely talented,  rl friend who went and moved away, and is now an engaged long-distance blogista, gave me yet another great book reminder, on the subject of van life.

I now have it  borrowed from the library on my Kindle and it's very worth reading. There's a movie, but I hadn't realized it was originally a book, not a screenplay.

Here's the movie shot. 

And here's the book

It's a very readable account of the other world of van life, the side where there's no choice, because all the other housing and work options have vanished, and relatives are themselves struggling so can't bail them out. 

Quite different from the people we were just talking about, who choose tiny homes for the freedom and mobility, and are self employed on the road. Not affluent, but keeping solvent. Often they're young and usually very fit, outdoor types.

Many of these other modern nomads, driving their whole lives' possessions around in old vehicles, are what used to be called retirement age. But they've seen their jobs and businesses and homes go, often in the recession, or the housing crisis, or because their products became obsolete or offshored.

Many have degrees, some were college instructors, all are bravely sharing the skills of living in vehicles often not designed for living in, while driving the country doing seasonal work. 

It's usually low paid, physically demanding and takes all the grit a person can summon up to survive each day. Always one car repair away from disaster, like the workers in Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, but typically with more education, they see no prospect of retiring.  

It's grim but important reading, because you realize how it could happen to a  supposedly secure, middle class, employed, person, through no fault of their own. Layoffs, a divorce, an illness, can quickly wipe out the security of savings if they had any. 

And trying to reestablish a work-life as an unemployed middle aged or older worker is close to impossible today. Ask any unemployed tech or management worker, for instance,  whose job was offshored or wiped out by technological advances, or deleted from the client's budget.

If you need a bit of lighter relief, I'm also reading this,

by an Australian writer, about a young woman in the sixties, fighting to be a reporter in Sydney and London. The women's and social pages are the only way  for a woman to get hired at that point.

It's fiction which also draws in a lot of the news of the time, and the obligatory love interest.  It's not all royals, though there's enough to please Margaret watchers, not all clothes, though Mary Quant shows up, not all scandal though Christine Keeler, the lady who brought down a government, features, too. 

So that's us Chez Boud today. If the promised storms keep off, it's knitting group. If not, it's  something else, TBD!

Cheers!

Anyway, fun read.