To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education.
During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.
Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.” (Christian Science Monitor)
In his book, Shepard takes issue with the experience of Barbara Ehrenreich, who in Nickeled and Dimed found she was not able to make ends meet or progress beyond a series of menial jobs when she tried self=imposed poverty as a social experiment. Could gender and age be making the difference? Or could it be preconceptions? I haven’t read the book (but I heard him interviewed on NPR) and he sounds vivacious and unjaded, in contrast to Ehrenreich’s well-worn and well-founded cynicism and rage against the machine.
