{"id":15952,"date":"2021-11-04T19:01:09","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T23:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15952"},"modified":"2021-11-04T19:01:09","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T23:01:09","slug":"the-wellerman-comes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15952","title":{"rendered":"The Wellerman comes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wellerman Official Music Video by The Longest Johns | Between Wind and Water (2018)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E_8tAyecj2g?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Work has descended<\/strong> on me today, like a squall off Cape Horn. It had been a long-ish calm, and I was getting nervous about it. But today, first of all, I got a referral from a satisfied customer, recommending me to another possible client. That\u2019s gratifying in the extreme. Don\u2019t know if it\u2019ll come to anything, but approval is approval, and I suffer from a constitutional deficiency. Then a substantial script came in for translation, which means a decent pay day coming up over the horizon. Which, as it happens, I can use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019ve been reading a book (I\u2019ll review it whenever I get it finished) about the last days of the great sailing ships. I read this stuff with a special fascination, knowing that some of my ancestors were involved in merchant sailing (one of them is supposed to have sailed to China). The author is doing an excellent job describing the hellish conditions under which those old sailors worked, even late in the 19<sup>th<\/sup> Century \u2013 insanely dangerous duties up in the rigging, miserable food, brutal discipline, dreary drudgery and heart-in-your-throat peril from the elements. For little pay. (That explains the shanty performance I embedded at the top of this post.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I think about the fact that I can eke out a living working at a keyboard under my own supervision, in a warm, dry house with enough food to keep me fat, I realize that I certainly belong to the 1% of humanity, from a historical perspective. And so, probably, do you, unless you\u2019re a Chinese or Muslim slave, just because you were born into a lucky century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Work has descended on me today, like a squall off Cape Horn. It had been a long-ish calm, and I was getting nervous about it. But today, first of all, I got a referral from a satisfied customer, recommending me to another possible client. That\u2019s gratifying in the extreme. Don\u2019t know if it\u2019ll come to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15952\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Wellerman comes<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[3931,3929,3187,3930],"class_list":["post-15952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-reading","tag-sailing","tag-the-longest-johns","tag-translation","tag-wellerman"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15954,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15952\/revisions\/15954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}