WorldCon Reno

Last weekend, I went to WorldCon in Reno (for which I had signed up due to proximity). I had a blast! I'd been to WonderCon in San Francisco several times, but I'd never committed to a con before. It was amazing. I met several folks (especially from the Language Creation Society) whom I only knew from online, and could fully relax the guardedness of the science fiction fan among the general populace. The authors were friendlier than I expected, but I guess that comes of being a fan before a writer. I certainly didn't expect to meet a Vatican City astronomer! I also saw Paul and Rosemary, whom I will see again in the fall. The Hugo Awards were fantsstic, although the comedy was mediocre. My only regret is that I only went for Saturday and Sunday, but next year I'll go to Chicago for the entire con.

The Drowned World

On the lake, the water levels varies from year to year, no longer regulated by nature, but by artifice and treaty. The snows of this winter which filled the coffers also filled the lake, so much so that most of the rocky beaches are underwater and the woody plants of yesteryear stand, slowly drowning. Down at Bristlecone Beach, where Christ the King holds its Bible study, where banks of rich purple flowers bloomed last year, there is no longer a peninsula, not even an island, but only green and dying trees and a sign forlornly sticking out of the water like ruined tower off the Anglian coast.

Birthday

That was quite a birthday! My cousin, Zach, and his girlfriend, Katie, came up for the festivities on Thursday. On Friday, we tried for the river, but in the morning the raft company had not opened, so we decided to go on the boat around the lake. Katie had never been on the lake, although her friend had been to Tahoe may times. We went over to Thunderbird Lodge, the stately manor founded by the heir to PG&E and Richmond/Sunset real estate, former circus performer, and 1905 earthquake hero. The old woodie Thunderbird II was nowhere in sight.

We continued down the Nevada side of the lake and stopped at a cove and a group of rocks. Three of us jumped, and as usual, were stripped of our breath by the bone-chilling temperature. Two of us adjusted fairly quickly. We swam to the rocks and climbed up on them. The rocks were as warm as the water was cold; unfortunately, somebody had tagged the back of the rock.

Once we were back on the boat, we went southward, past the clothing-free beach. Since we had enough gas, we headed across the lake to Emerald Bay. The heavy snowfall of this winter, still abundantly evident in the peaks of the Tahoe Rim, had filled Emerald Bay nearly to its greatest extent, so that the water was a marine blue rather than emerald green. The waterfall behind Vikingsholm, usually a trickle at this time of year, was visible from the mouth of the bay as a foaming white spray. As we travelled around Fannette Island, I told the others about Mrs. Knight, who owned Vikingsholm, and her predecessor Cap'n Dick, who used to row to Tahoe City for drinks and rowed back drunk every night. Nobody wanted to swim to the island with me! The one unfortunate effect of the high water was this: the travel lanes in and out of Emerald Bay were not as idiot-proof as usual (and a lot of idiots go on vacation). The return trip was uneventful, except for gas.

Since we had missed lunch altogether, Zach, Katie, and I went into town and got a slice of pizza to tide us over. Later, Mom, Dad, Zach, Katie, Aidan, Kirsten, and I went to the recently reopened Hacienda del Lago. It was nice to have the place back, although the bar that they built for the (former) tapas bar places takes up a lot of room that used to be seating.

After dinner, Zach, Katie, and I went to The Blue Agave to kill some time before the movie, and ran into Aidan and Kirsten. Zach, Katie, and I then watched Captain America, which all of us (even Katie) enjoyed. Marvel is doing a good job of tranferring its interwoven narrative to the screen.

On Saturday, Aidan, Kirsten, Zach, Katie, and I floated down the Truckee (since the rafting had opened the afternoon of the previous day). The extra water that had been added that morning made navigation more hazardous, since the rocks which usually showed were underwater and all the gunk which heretofore had lain on dry, or least slight damp, land, had risen up and headed downstream in the current. Several groups of enormous size hit the river, so we had to avoid the logjams. I got suburnt, but it was a great last part to my birthday "weekend".

New Blog

Tomorrow is my birthday, so it seems an auspicious time to launch my new blog, The Tahoe Tongue, on the pre-settlement Washo language of the Tahoe basin. I plan to update it weekly while I work through Jacobsen's primer and beyond. I'd appreciate feedback on the clarity of the linguistic descriptions, since I want to make it as accessible as possible.

A Long Way From Wemyss

Recently I learned that my Scottish forebears, the Bealls, were exclusively from one village in Fife. Wemyss, the village in question, is pronounced "Weems" and derives from the Scots Gaelic noun uaimh, which means "cave". There are certainly many caves near Wemyss, some of which were inhabited in the Neolithic Age and feature typically frank drawings. My ancestors, the Bealls, derive their surname from the Scots Gaelic noun beul or beal - the "extra" a or u indicates a broad, rather than slender, final consonant. This feature reminds me of a comment of Tolkien regarding Elvish spelling of English, namely that an elf such as Legolas would spell "bell" as "beoll". beul means "mouth", either that of a river or a person, and as an adjective, may refer to physical location or rhetorical skill. It seems to me there is a third option: in a place that is named after caves, why couldn't beul refer to the mouth of the caves instead? Since one regional cave in particular is famous for its rock drawings, the family that lived at the mouth of the cave would have a unique appellation.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I recently watched Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third and (sadly) last installment of the Chronicles of Narnia movie line. The solid beginning arose great hopes in me, since the visual signature was definately Narnian, not Lord of the Rings nor Harry Potter. I can forgive the rejiggering of plot necessary to sustain a movie, since the literary form is more tolerant of episodic narrative than its cinematic cousin. The plot device was weak, albeit an obvious one (what aristocrat doesn't have a sword?) The mysterious fog seemed a bit more contrived. The addition of a second female passenger seemed gratuitous. The longer dragon-stage of Eustace, however, was used to good effect, especially since the conversation between Aslan and Eustace in the book is profound, but would not translate well to film. That brings me to my final point: the Christian elements were minimal and well-hidden by conflicting desires to capture both the Christian and the secular market. The salvific (and generally non-Evangelical, non-Apocalyptic) Christian element, though objectionable to many, is the thematic signature of the Chronicles of Narnia, as integral to its setting as Quenya and Sindarin are to Lord of the Ring.

Summer Hike

On Saturday morning in the parking lot, the sky over the City was gray, and there was some doubt whether it would lift in the East Bay as well. The intrepid hiing group, nonetheless, set off. It was still cool by the time we reach the Little Farm in Tilden Park, but not truly overcast. We hiked up to Memorial Grove, which was very windy and seemed distinctly ungrovelike to me. It resembled more strongly Dun Aonghas in Inishmore, although the viewing platform was in better shape. From the viewing platform, one could vast swaths of the East Bay and at least two reservoirs. After we had rested there, we descended to the actual grove, planted by the Rotary Club (an organization I know little about). Then we completed the short loop via a path that provided more shade. All of us went over to the Little Farm and patted the cows, although some were less than happy about cow slobber and the surprising sharpness of cow tongue.

The Lincoln Lawyer

I rented this on a misunderstanding: I thought this was the film, recently lauded on NPR, about the trial of the woman who sheltered John Wilkes Booth and his conspirators. By the time I realized my error, I had already returned home. The Lincoln Lawyer is a tightly scripted thriller about a defense lawyer whose cases intertwine. I especially enjoyed this film for two reasons: firstly, I come from a family infested with defense lawyers; secondly, said defense lawyers know Hell's Angels (some came to my aunt's funeral), and the group features prominently and more or less positively in the film.

Canoeing

This summer, in view of the absent Canoe Training trip in the late spring, I've pulled out my wooden canoe and taken in out in varying conditions. I welcome the shelter provided by the point and the boat field, but a lake (especially this one) does not have a direction of flow, which means you have work to move in any direction. The swells and winds are unpredictable, but there are enough obstacles (birds, boats, and rocks) to challenge my navigation skills.

The usual course is southwards first, between the rocks at the lakeside tennis courts and buoy field, outside the buoys at the pier which (in theory) prevent boats from ramming into the pier at high speed, down to the old pier near the end of the point, and back almost to the starting point. From there, I go around a smaller point that used to have rocks jutting out of the water, past the summer swimming raft off which I used to push my cousin Victoria, past the other summer swimming raft, and around back to the starting point. The round trip is a third to half a mile. Sometimes I reverse the direction.

In calm waters, I'll often overestimate the power of my strokes and have to correct for it; my old sailing instructor used to say the same of my tacking. The canoe, fortunately, has no draft whatsoever, so any rocks lurking six inches under the surface cannot threaten my craft.

I Once Was Blind, But Now I See

I probably should be at a Maunday Thursday service right now, but the thought of washing someone else's feet is repulsive. So, in lieu of my bid for a book club meeting, I will share my thoughts on disabilities awareness.

As I was walking to class the other day, a group of admitted students came around the corner. All the students were blind, outfitted with red-and-white canes rather than guide dogs. One of the effects of my romantic history has been a heightened awareness of persons with disabilities in public settings. I stepped out of the way and let them pass.

This brief encounter remained in the back of my mind as I attended classes. After class, I picked up a university paper. One of the articles addressed the plight of persons with disabilities in light (pun intended) of the recent power outage. I shall skip over the fact that I probably know the cause and the foreman of the human cause of the power outage. Several students with disabilities that restricted and eliminated their movement were stranded when the power died, since the elevators did not work.

This highlighted the lack of an overall university plan for evacuation of students with disabilities. On the one hand, the university budget is tight, and the needs of the students are great, so a sparse distribution of human resources is not unexpected; the recent closing of a local bookstore (Thidwick Books) due to a somewhat petty threat of an ADA lawsuit disinclines me to use extremely harsh language. On the other hand, students with mobility issues have no choice about classes on the higher floors of the building. One suggested solution is a designated gathering area on each floor for the students with disabilities, but this solution does not work so well if any fire is involved.

What disturbs me most, however, about this incident, is the following sentence: “Students with disabilities who do not receive assistance from classmates and faculty ...” It is possible that this sentence refers to those persons with disabilities whom the classmates and faculty cannot help due to equipment issue (although one would think a university would have plenty of strong lads and lasses to move heavy equipment). If, however, the writer does indeed intend the verb “to do” rather than “to can”, it betrays a flaw in human nature even more than university policy. If one shares a class with a person with a disability, one should be willing to assist him or her if asked, If removal from the wheelchair is necessary (and here my Baden Powell obsession betrays me), there are carries designed for such purposes which do not require a long time to learn.

Ultimately, all of us who are able-bodied should be more aware of the needs of persons with disabilities willing to help when asked (because one of the side-effects of having a disability is a certain level of assertion obnoxious in the abled but necessary for those who are not).

Big Hike 2011 - Alamere Falls

I said I would write about the hike to Alamere Falls, and a Scout is trustworthy, so here it is. I should also point out that the addition of another Scout leader, more experience in photography than I, has exculpated me from the lack of photos herein.

We passed the bird sanctuary, and parked when we ran out of road. The weather was grey and chill, but everyone was in high spirits. We started walking north on the Coast Trail, past the picnic tables where less hardy souls might stop. The vistas of the ocean were stunning, and our path lay between a steep above and a steep below. There were several lakes along the Coast Trail, although most remained hidden from view, and those which were visible were small, even by the broad definition of the West. There was an element of track and field in our journey, for the recent deluge had brought down several trees and created stunted versions of the lakes along our path. None were so bad as the time my fellow trekkers discovered the end of a reservoir across our path, but they were big enough to present a dilemma. The haste of youth compelled many to keep a pace that forbade natural observation; the flora and fauna along the way were varied and denizens of mutiple biomes. There was plenty of miner's lettuce.The soup made from it is bland, but at least has less chance of poisoning the ravenous 49er than improperly prepared acorns.

We descended to Wildcat Camp, where we ate our lunch. The weather was still chill and windy. After all had finished their repast, we went down to the beach, or tried to. The path ended in a wide stream, impossible to cross without removal of shoes. Although such an action is one of the hazards of hiking, the temperature did not incline me to do this as a first option. One of the boys, however, leapt down from the collapsed mudbank and sank up to his knees. Others, less eager to cool their legs and feet, discovered the path across a higher and smaller part of the stream using logs: even here, a judicious leap was necessary.

The stroll along the beach to Alamere Falls was refreshing as a change from the usual packed dirt trails. The boys wandered close to the water and suddenly fled (with varying degrees of success) from the inrushing waves. The. Alamere Falls is a mile south of Wildcat Camp. It is forty foot high, and the recents rains had swollen it. The beach was very narrow here, so that the more timid boys had to retreat to the rock shelves below the cliff to remain dry. It reminded me a bit of Henneth Annu^n (although according to past Scouts, I should be in Orthanc, since they cast me as Saruman).

If Alamere Falls was like Henneth Annu^n, then the way up to the top of the falls was truly like the Pass of Gorgoroth (the movie version). The way up was hidden from a casual eye, steep and inconveniently stepped, and it would be inadvisable to look down. I would not recommend a second ascent, but everyone reached the top safely, and none will forget the experience.
The challenge of Alamere Falls, however, was not over. In order to reach the trail, it was necessary to leap across a deep channel, where a careless misstep would result in a twisted ankle at best. Some boys hesitated in their calculations, but eventually everyone made it across. It is sobering to think that this was a normal obstacle for my pioneering ancestors.

The weather worsened, as though the sky gods (and I don't know the name of the Miwok or Ohlone one) had been restraining themeselves until we were all homeward bound. The rain poured down and down, and did not cease. We were all eager to reach the shelter of the cars, but I marvelled at the sight of an ill-prepared trio headed out. One of the trio was carrying a city umbrella and wearing shoes more fit for Temple than trail. His female companion did not look pleased. I feel sure that their lack of preparation will strain their relationship. I was cold by the time we reached the cars, and made a note to protect my core more thoroughly next time.

'Comites' Before 'Clodia'

Catullus' poem 11 continues his post-Lesbian life. If poem 8 is Catullus enduring the psychological travails of the breakup, poem 11 is his drunkenly exaggerated thanks to his friends, followed by a relapse into bitter anger.

Furius and Aurelius seem to have assured Catullus that they have his back, in a "bros before hoes" manner, and suggested a road trip. Although the actual suggestion is more likely to have been a trip to Baiae rather than Bithynia, Catullus exaggerates this offer to cover the entire world. It is unclear whether this is happily drunken fraternity or a test born from Catullus' lingering insecurity. The epic language and scale of the proposed world tour (11.2-12) could suggest either possibility. A world tour, however, is not what Catullus wants his friends to do; what he really wants is the delivery of an abusive message (11.15-24) to his former lover.

This message begins somewhat elegantly (11.15-11.17), as though it were a neoteric poem within another neoteric poem. The last word of 11.17, "moechis", marks the descent into abusive language. First, Catullus refuses to believe that Lesbia's sexual liaisons could have any element of true love (11.18-20), and then witholds the love he alone possesses (11.21). The last image of the poem, a flower in a field which has been fatally damaged by a plow (11.22-24), indicates not only sexual congress and the generation of a precious and beautiful thing, but also an affection that is dying, rather than dead, in Catullus' heart.

Shining Suns

Catullus, in the eighth poem of his collection, has encapsulated the complicated feelings of a messy breakup. The poem opens with a wonderful expression (8.2), which may or may not be a proverb:

quod vides perisse perditum ducas
"what you know has died you should consider lost"

This is excellent advice, but cold comfort to one who had lost something precious.
Such sentiments, rather than sufficing - it is only the second line, after all -, spurs Catullus to dwell on what is lost. The perfect tense of "fulsere" establishes the connection of the past and present, while the following imperfects provide a sense of both pastness and frequency; it is notable that Catullus is the passive partner in these activities.

In line 8.9, Lesbia has rejected Catullus; Catullus retains his feeling of impotence, and even his attempts to get her back (8.10-13) are impotent and his self-pity pathetic. He must announce his renunciation of her to make it stick. The embarrassing antics of jilted lovers trying to revive the sparks ("soles") of a dead relationship is mixed with wavering self-confidence.

In lines 8.14-18, Catullus turns from strengthening his own resolve to degrading that of his former lover. Although the descent into rhetorical abuse is a stylistic demand of this poetic genre, it is also a realistic psychological depiction, the dark side of the irritating presumption of a unique relationship that lovers often display. It is testimony to the passion of the relationship that Catullus ends the poem not with a final sting to Lesbia, but one last reminder to himself (8.19).

Ad rem Aegyptiae intelligendam

One of the forms of the Egyptian verb, and one which we recently studied, is called the "pseudo-verbal" form. This consists of a limited number of prepositions followed by the Egyptian "infinitive". The citation forms for the most common pseudo-verbals are transliterated conventionally as "Hr sDm", "m sDm", and "r sDm". Although it is difficult to describe concisely an English structural parallel, students of the Romulan tongue might find a better comparison between the Egyptian pseudo-verbal form and the Latin gerundive.

In this case, the Egyptian forms "Hr sDm", "m sDm", and "r sDm" correspond (with due allowance for prepositional semantics) to the Latin forms "de aliquo audiendo", "in aliquo audiendo", and "ad aliquid audiendum". The Latin trio, however, is crippled in its syntactical ability compared to that of the Egyptian, which can support a complex noun phrase.

Since the meanings of the constructions differ, I am presenting this as a mnemonic rather than a detailed grammatical analysis.

Strangers Passer-ing In The Night

Ash Wednesday, and instead of penitence my thoughts turn to the passer poems (2 and 3) of Catullus. Since I was assigned poem 16 for St Valentine's day, I must wonder if the class is not meant as some sort of cosmic counterpoint. Maybe it's just part of the Chairman's plan (Philip K. Dick is always a good source of metaphors for the action of the Powers that be).

What can we make of poems 2 and 3? The first is a mock hymn, the second mock dirge, both of which follow upon the heels of poem 1. If poem 1 is a dedicatory epigram which provides the name of the dedicatee, the genre, and a devout desire for the work to last, then poem 2 is an invocation to the mortal goddess of the work. If poem 2 announces Catullus' infatuation with Lesbia, poem 3 describes its irrevocable end. These poems are as programmatic as poem 1 by providing the plot, such as it is, of a work characterized by variatio.

The passer, whose msgical companions pull the chariot of Aphrodite, appears only in these two poems because he has encompassed the entire book by being the book itself. The passer also represents the amores in the sense of physical poetry. That which Lesbia holds in her lap, to which she offers a finger, that which is a beloved comfort to her is the material on which Catullus' poetry is written. If we subscribe to this interpretation, the non-passerine lines 11-13 are not an aberration of overzealous annexation, but rather an appropriate comparison between the passer of Lesbia and the golden apple of Atalanta, both of which were instruments of unbinding girdles. The passer in poem 3 encompasses both the death of the poet as passer and the death of the poetry itself as evidence of a still-living affair. The terms with which the poet eulogizes the passer are actions characteristic of the lover (although the comment about being closer than family acquires ambivalence if Lesbia and Clodia are the same). The imprecation against Hades can be both metapohorical and literal: both the death of a pet bird and a love affair are things which cannot be undone.

Best of the Bath-Thieves

I am greatly enjoying re-reading Catullus, although his subject matter often restrains me from public translation (at least aloud) into English. The two poems of which I speak here are poems 15 and 33, which share the hendecasyllabic meter and themes of breach of trust and travelling (forced or otherwise).

Poem 15 is about breach of trust. Catullus has entrusted his lover (I apologize for the euphemisms, but I know a few minors have found my blog before) to Aurelius while Catullus goes travelling. If I were inclined to attribute absolute historicity to individual poems of the Catullan corpus, I would say that Catullus displays extremely poor judgement in his choice of close friends - but then who knows how many of these violations Catullus himself committed? Lines 6-8 display an chummy elitism that suddenly descends into obscenity
in lines 8-9. This eloquent vulgarity continues to the end of the poem, where the ubiquitous labial plosives and nasals (p, b, m, ph) accumulate in the final insult of the poem (lines 17-18):
"quem attractis pedibus patente porta,
percurrent raphanique mugilesque"

In poem 33, Catullus wishes the titular bath-thieves, whose pricipal predilection to cutpursery is an inherent breach of trust, and whose other predilections are not fit for American minors to discuss, would leave Rome. The alliteration here is focused on p and q/c - the p's in particular are used to good effect(along with n) in the final lines (7-8):
"notae sunt populo, et natis pilosas,
fili, non potes asse uenditare?"

Hebrew, Hebrew Everywhere

This morning at church, soon after the service had started, the Hebrew words within me rose. It is a peculiar sensation, and perhaps one applicable to me alone, that once I learn a sufficient amount of a language, the words arise unbidden in appropriate contexts. The trigger this time was the Hebrew/English Sh'ma, in Max Helfman's setting. Once my mind was primed, it was easy to think "Shalom aleichem" at "Lord be with you". If you have learned some basic Biblical Hebrew, the linguistic structure of the Psalms (in this case 27:1, 5-13) is glaringly obvious. My mental translation is partial and in places doubtless ungrammatical, but it is remarkable how many phrases in the service are automatically translatable - I already have switched from hearing 'Alleluia' as a rote response to an imperative plus the Name of the Most High.

Washo, Simplified

I posted recently on my mental test of Washo, but it seemed appropriate to separate the results of that test from some speculations which arose from the difficulties experienced, cross-fertilized with thoughts from John McWhorter's Great Courses lecture series "The Story of Human Language" and some browsing of articles on Riau Indonesian. As I scoured a my gray fields for words in Washo, I thought to myself that simplified languages (creoles, mixed languages, and pidgins) start with a reduction of vocabulary to essentials. I recalled the words for "eat", "drink", "go", "have come", and so on, but remembered little of the specialized vocabulary. I remembered the words for "tree" and "rock", but not the species of those genera. The other possible simplification which I noted (but resisted for the sake of completing my test) was the difficulty in remembering the subject-object prefixes. Were I not such a diligent amateur linguist, I might have decided to forsake the daunting prefixal pine barrens in favor of the independent pronouns, easier to use. Why say "labali'a'" "he shot me", when you can say "le bali'a'" "he shot me", without having to consider the appropriate subject-object prefix and vowel harmony? I love the complexities of language, but that choice is based in aesthetics not pragmatism.

In reality, I could not imagine a mixed language developing which contained Washo as a component: the native speech community was too small and the Ute-Aztecan tribes around the Washoe formed a dialect continuum which offered a much better selection for a lingua franca - I am considering it for a Scout campfire. The Plains Native American seem to have preferred to learn Hand Talk (Plains Indian Sign Language) rather than yet another language with medium-complexity words such as "milelshymshihayasha'esi" "We two will not cause you to wake up."

A simplified Washo (and I am aware that the Washo with which I am familiar has already been simplified) would have the following features: it would be SOV, use independent pronouns where possible, and possess a reduced vocabulary. It would proabably use new words for negation and causation, since the current suffixes are too grammaticalized to survive (this isn't Esperanto, after all!). The glottal stop and the voiceless sonorant and liquids would disappear.

Washo Review

As I was waiting for a friend this weekend at a BART station, I found myself with substantial time on my hands. After I had paced up and down a few dozen times, I decided to do a mental review of the Washo vocabulary I knew. This was a true test, as I had neither the book from which I learned it nor the dictionary which I created for the terms I had learned. I decided to start with the verbal roots (although there is no true distinction between verbal and nominal roots in Washo), since verbs are often associated with actions, and perhaps my muscle memory would aid the big grey muscle in my skull. The verbs went well; I could conjure up most of the basic verb roots, even if I temporarily flipped the verbs in the wake/sleep contrast. I even went over the reduplication process for certain plurals, although some verbs, such as 'dance', did not lend themselves to such project.

I experienced some difficulty in remembering the various movement verbs, of which there are many in Washo, more than in Russian. My eye for language patterns tells me that all these movement verbs are ultimately connected, but I lack a sufficient overview to analyze them properly. It was difficult to generate several, and I am sure I missed few: perhaps this reduction is typical of individuals who do not speak a language well (and, Lord knows, I stumble over the words of the Washo tongue). It is nice to distinguish between various means of locomotion, but a simple 'go' will suffice.

As confident in my verbal score as I could be without recourse to a lexicon, I decided to try to conjugate a verb for every combination of subject and direct object. Although this task was made simpler by the lack of grammatical number marking on the verb, a characteristic of many Native American languages, I had to pick two verbs because the subject-object prefixes differ if the root begins with a consonant or vowel. I was successful save in one regard: I could not recall the prefix for 'he Xs me' if the root began with a consonant. Nonetheless, I decided that I had passed my test with an A-, considering how long it had been since I studied the material.

(I notice that I have not finished the drafts of posts on the Washo language regarding vowel coloring and the development of subject-object prefixes. I need to remedy that and add something on the reduplication process of Washo.)

Duty and Responsibility

I find myself in a solemn mood returning from The King's Speech, an excellent movie about George VI (Bertie) and his stammer. Although the focus of the movie was Bertie, I find my mind turning to the themes of responsibility and duty in the face of challenges. Sometimes we earn the rank bestowed upon us; sometimes we are not worthy of it. In either case, our duty is to perform our office as well as we are able, and not to shirk our obligations. If we neglect our appointed office, we make a mockery of our post, bring shame upon ourselves, and reduce our symbols of office to shiny trinkets not more valuable than a shiny tourist pin from the pier. Responsibility and duty means placing the needs of others before that of oneself, and by helping others we advance ourselves in experience and character.