The only other language i come close to knowing anything about is Russian. Last time i checked, when a Russian word or name is used in English, it is properly transliterated.

But what's with letting French words in full accent paraphernalia facadening as English words? Last time i checked (first grade or so), none of the letters being taught in school had anything dangling off of them. Furthermore, the only accent marks were the ones used in the dictionary to indicate which syllable takes the accent.

Is this French that we're speaking, or should i expect Hebrew and Cyrillic to start appearing in our dictionaries too?

Mature, adj

1. fully developed in body or mind, 2. complete in natural growth or development, 4. expressive of maturity: a mature appearance

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Maturity, Psychological

5. An important characteristic of the individual who becomes mature is that he is at home with reality.

6. The mature individual cannot look outer reality in the face unless he is prepared to look himself in the face, too. He is at home with himself.

14. The mature person knows that he has to go on choosing alternatives, that each alternative costs him something, and there are things he will never be able to do and experience. He also knows that there are things he will never be able to do again, that he can never recapture his youth or relive his first encounters with certain experiences. He knows that his integrity is continually threatened by practical demands, by seductive temptations, by concessions and compromises, by conflicting values, and can only be preserved at the cost of some psychic strain.

``Am i mature..? What kind of question is that?,'' i think to myself.

``Well, i guess i've never given it much though. Why?''

He turns from staring out the window at the endless brown and dirty green stretches of Texan desert that are scrolling by, to look at me with almost pleading eyes.

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``I always want to be more mature, but i'm not sure how.''

Stumped, i mumble something about it taking time and being a slow process, and he lets the subject drop, turning to gaze some more out the car window as we speed south towards Big Bend National Park

So many things in life are routine. I can think of only a handful of bicycle rides that stand out as unique, walks in the park, books read, music listened to--they all fade. Backpacking can never be called routine, or at least none of the backpacking trips which i've been a part of. Something about surviving off of what you can carry over steep hills, through extreme weather--something about pushing on with complaining muscles, blisters--something about replacing the complexities of modern life with the complexities of the wild--something about backpacking tests you, shows you your weaknesses, and taunts you to try again, only to show you that after the lessons you so well learned the times before were not enough.

Having recently moved to Texas, and feeling clostrophobic from the tiny parks and public land given to stretch ones legs on, i had budgetted for a week of backpacking during Christmas/New Years break. Originally i had planned to go alone, but eventually i met a few people who i thought might also enjoy such an excursion. Most of them had plans, but i was able to talk Elihud, an 18 year old i'd met at church, into going. It was his fist time backpacking and he was nervous, although he tried not to let it on. It was my first time backpacking in the desert where water is scarse, and in the winter months, so i was a bit nervous myself.

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Some may say that its just hacker traits (not to confuse hacker with cracker), others may point to the decalog--however it is, i eschew dishonesty. On this point it seems i'm relentlessly tested, such as when my second line manager strolled casually into my office and asked me how i was liking work and life in Texas. Retrospectively though, i have yet to regret the truth and rigidly living by such.

The drive from Austin to Big Bend took about 8 hours, and it was great to see wide open spaces with sparse signs of humanity. The most eventful part of the drive was some 30 miles outside of Big Bend sailing path a border patrol station for traffic of the opposite direction. Elihud evidently hadn't brought any ID with him, and given his Hispanic complexion i guessed that we could get grief on the way back, but we had plenty of time to sit and wait for his mother to mail his ID, if it came to that, so while a little nervous about our return, we sped on.

Big Bend is situated in south-west Texas, huddled between Texas and separated by Mexico only by the Rio Grande ``river'' (creek). While much of the land mass is flat, high desert scrub, the Chisos Mountains randomly disrupt the monotonous terrain, and grace the horizon with jagged volcanic beauty.

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After spending Christmas night in a conventional campground, we were first to the rangers station, beating the crowd that pilgrimages here during Christmas break, and thus getting our pick of backpacking camp sites. Since a gallon of water per person per day is advised, and since we had 6 gallons worth of water storage, we chose a 3 day journey, which would let us cover (sadly) most of the trail.

The first day, loaded down with the weight of such precious liquid, we ascended almost 2000 feet to our first camp--perched on the rim overlooking the South and South West valley floor. With plenty of time to spare before sunset, we ate dinner, and then sat there on the rim and watched the sun slowly sink over Mexico. With no cities within a hundred miles or more, the stars were so very bright; there were so many of them, it was simply breath-taking.

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I was really quite impressed that a rookie of the pack, not to mention long hikes in general, had done so well with so much weight. Unfortunately i was still brewing over his neglected identification: why are kids always going and forgetting important things? In the back of my mind was an incident Jose Rojas shared about having to deal with an unruly policeman who was convinced that he was an illegal alien--i wasn't excited about playing games with some stuck-up Texan law enforcer. I must admit that my mood was not the most pleasant: i was a little short and edgy.

The following morning we arose and had a leisurely pack around the Southern Rim, first working our way east, then north, and then finally down into the Boot Canyon where we pitched the tent and tried to find something to occupy time. Eventually the sun sank, and we used the excuse of the morrow to justify sleeping at 7pm.

Chilly we awoke at 5am to head out for Emory Peak, the highest point in Big Bend. The goal was to reach the top, and from its modest 7825 feet elevation, watch the sunrise. My new thermometer claimed that the temperature was 25F, but i couldn't see my breath so i figured that it must be goofy. Reaching the top, we sat huddled, shivering and waiting for the sun to break free from the horizon. It finally did so after 45 minutes, and most gloriously. By this time we had ice swimming around in our water bottles. I could see down to the basin floor where my car sat, keeping my coat safe.

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After a few hours of gazing out across the vast stretches, we ventured down to the canyon to pack up our gear and head for the car. A boring, over cultivated trail was our lot on the hike out. Views now most unimpressive, vegetation turning from pine back to prickle; excitement only in finding two left behind beanie caps.

The lose itinerary called for us to swing by the McDonald Observatory, visit Guadalupe, and finally spelunk at Carlsbad Caverns before making our way back to Austin.

With half a day left in Big Bend, we randomly visited sites. By this time my irritability was getting the best of me, and we finally had a confrontation. Elihud told me to quit worrying so much, he'd dealt with border patrol lots of time, and it was never a problem.

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When we awoke Monday morning in Rio Grande Village, the temperature was 20F. I warmed up by scrambling about the camp, reorganizing the car, cooking, eating, and cleaning up, and making all the rest of the preparations for heading out. Poor Elihud was freezing. I kept telling him to move around to warm up, but he would just stand there and stair at the ground.

``Confound it! Stay cold if that's what you want!''

``Can we stop on our way out at the laundry mat and wash those caps?''

``Waste 2 hours? I've got extra hats with me, we can use those!''

Soon we were off, gazing at the hills of Big Bend ``for the last time''. It felt weird to be driving 80 after 3 days of walking, and 2 days of slow park speed limits.

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Approaching the boarder patrol, i instinctively said, ``don't lie.'' There was no need getting a guilty conscience over some hassle and saving ourselves a few minutes.

``Why?''

``It's no good..'' was all i had time to say before we pulled between two officers, one on each side of the road, standing at attention in the cold dessert sunlight.

Patrol: ``Are you both Americans?''

sRp: ``I am.''

Patrol: ``And you?'' looking past me to the passengers seat.

Elihud: ``Uh..'' >silence< ``no sir.''

Patrol: ``And which country are you from?''

Elihud: ``Mexico.''

Patrol: ``Can i see your ID.''

Elihud: ``All i have it this,'' handing him his high school ID card.

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Patrol: ``What's that?'' Pause, then slightly provoked, ``This is great for school, but this is no good in the real world which is where we're at right now. Where's your card.''

Elihud: ``Which card?''

Patrol: ``The one you're suppose to carry at all times.''

Elihud: ``Nobody told me that.''

Patrol: ``Pull up and park in front of the brown shed.''

The border patrol tries find his name on their computers. Mean while we were out in the car praying.

Patrol: ``These names didn't pull up anything on our computer, could you write down for us your full name on this paper.''

Elihud returns the paper with 5 names scribbled on it, ensuing a discussion about which names are which and how they all fit into the typified convention of naming.

With no further luck at finding him in their database, Elihud is escorted into the office to help them with the names in the computer. Meanwhile the other officer tells me that it looks like he's illegal, which means they'll be deporting him, and that i'm liable for conviction of ``smuggling'' or ``trafficking'' across a US border. Miranda is read.

Through the blur the of the next eternity i'm sitting in an office uncontrollably, chair shaking from head to toe; Elihud is locked up in a cell, and the patrol are making phone calls, asking more questions trying to get the whole story. I do have to say, both of them were as kind as possible the whole time, while still rigidly following their procedures.

``This is my job, and i don't like this part of it any more then you do, but it has to be done,'' one of the patrol later said somewhat apologetically.

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After the truth is pretty clear Elihud confesses, and they tell him that he has two options: they send him back to Mexico tonight and nothing goes on his record, or he goes to a judge which sends him to Mexico and puts on his permanent record that he over-stayed.

Their manager finally called back...

``We've got a couple of kids here...'' glances at myself, him looking about the same age as i am, ``i mean guys here...''

Evidently their manager was as kind as they were, because he told them to go ahead and let me go after seeing if i was wanted for murder.

Elihud would be sent back with only the clothes he had on and any money he had--precious little since i was paying for the trip. After checking with the guard, i offered my friend what money i had in my wallet, which should have been plenty to get him to his relatives once dropped off in Mexico. I promised to get his stuff back to his mom, and he apologized to me.

Taking him back in, the patrol told me i could be on my way, and still trembling horribly, i made my way across the desert. It would be nearly an hour to the next town of size, and a 8 hours back to Austin. Blurry hours of slowly putting together what had just happened.

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The question that persisted for 8 hours was of my role in saying ``don't lie.'' So many possible actions, so many construable motives, so many outcomes. I feel horrible, though not guilty. Replaying the situation the only thing i could, i should have done differently was in handling of irritability.

I also thought about maturity as i drove home. Although maybe too late, i now have an answer, Elihud. To find maturity you must be able to stand straight, look anyone in the eye, and not hide from who you are, what you are, where you are, and what you believe; you must be honest with yourself and with those around you. You have a lot of potential, don't throw it away, but persist--persist honestly and legally.

This article has been the hardest i've ever written. The temptation was to minimize the story since some may disagree with portions of it. The irony startled me--how could i see such a lesson in maturity and disregard it.

I'm sure you've tried to have an engaging discourse involving a person who couldn't keep their tongue still long enough to allow other persons the opportunity to add their twist to the mix, or what should have been a mix. I'm sure you've tasted a dish that had so much of one spice that there was no savory and subtle mixing of flavors. This is exactly the effect of traditional piano training.

Recently i was invited to join the company of some musicians. While in college i mostly ignored music given the dire need to finish and keep enough in-flow of earnings to continue to the finish. With the rigors of higher learning no longer blessing my existence, i have longed for expending more time on other activities, such as possibly playing music with other humans. You can imagine my delight on being invited to try playing music with some other people. You can imagine my dismay when i arrived and saw that a piano was to be involved.

The normal piano lessons that we infect our society with completely destroy a budding pianists ability to do anything then robotically read exact keyings from a paper, a dominate any amount of spotlight available. Playing almost any instrument with a pianist who hasn't broken free of the chains of his early piano lessons is a complete waste of time, and frustrating for all parties.

Central to the demise of such a wonderful instrument are the following elements:

Chord and ear training: how to be flexible

Pianists aren't trained how to nicely play music based off chords, nor are they trained to play by ear. The resultant ``musicians'' (robots) can only cipher the exact timings and key presses passed down to them by tedious typesetting of individual notes. When the effort is conducted to create this sheet music, it is done with no knowledge of what other instruments the piano will be playing with, so invariably the assumption is made that the piano will be alone, and the music is written so that the piano flowers on every epitaph of the resulting work. This is great until the given piece of music is chosen to be played by a piano and another instrument, at which point the piano does all the flowering, and crowds out the other instruments.

A plant that crowds out its neighbors is commonly refereed to as a weed.

Dynamics: how and when to share the stage

Pianists aren't instructed on how and when to back off and play minimally. Sure they are told how to play loudly (which they do and do well) and softly (which they forget to practice), but they learn this in the context of playing by themselves. If every instrument would use all of its advantage to play as if it were soloing one hundred percent of the time, what you have is not music but chaos. Somehow, somebody seems to forget about that when it comes to educating.

Attitude: realizing your culture is not the only culture

Finally, pianists need to realize that people are not interested in just hearing the piano, nor the guitar, nor the trumpet, nor any other interment; people are expecting to see a work or art, carefully woven together, carefully mixed so that a mixture of different voices and textures and colors interact to tell a story. This means that in timing, in dynamics, in chord transitions each instrument needs to be aware and accommodate each other so that a vibrancy and creativity are evoked. The pianist needs to realize that ``a system is a greater thing than its component parts''

I went to an art exhibition to enjoy a gallery. I was startled on arrival by walls filled with canvases, but none of which i was hoping to see. There was red with blue specs, and red with some green; red, red and red; red with thin line of gray. So while it was painted, there was not for a scene--when there's only one color, you can't make out a thing.

Each passing year our backpacking trips have gotten progressively sophisticated as the group of us have slowly become better equipped, better refined in the art, and wiser from experience. The experience department has typically been well learned lessons which have come from a mistake or equipment failure drastic enough for a death march out--retracing the last few days steps on in long haul.

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Until this year food has remained unchanged: buy one box of cheesy noodle pasta per person per day for dinners, a few boxes of instant oatmeal for breakfasts, bagels for lunches, and plenty of granola bars and trail mix. Given the assorted health materials which i've been digesting recently, it was clear that a revamp of our menu was in-store.

Dehydrated fruit seemed like a good start, but somewhere along the line a muse told me that other things could be dehydrated. Google quickly found me a nice sounding black bean enchiladas (which seems to have disappeared now) which an avid backpacker highly suggested. That was one meal, but for 7 days, diversity is not only pleasant, but essential in providing the strained body with the variety of substances it needs.

In the meantime it was time to find a dehydrator. The local stores seemed to have a pathetic lineup of dehydrators; only Walmart had anything, and since i was going to be cooking for six males on a quickly approaching trip, its cheaply made contraption made me nervous. I decided to go for quality, and was quite happy with the spendy, but well designed Excalibur Model #3500/3526T (the 5 trayed edition). I have not at all regretted purchase of this device.

The dehydrator, on arrival, came with 3 Teflon tray liners, which are slated to be used for making fruit leather. The recipe for enchiladas called for using those sheets to make enchiladas-mix-leather, which could be boiled in water to rehydrate. This opened a whole new world of ideas--for example why couldn't spaghetti sauce be dehydrated...?

It turned out that creating dehydrated spaghetti sauce was not that difficult, at least not from canned sauce. The process was quite simple:

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For the next few weeks my life revolved around this routine turned ritual, as i fed the machine round after round of sauce. It was almost like having a child; my daily schedule revolved around the machine and keeping it fed.

When i was done, i had a paper box full of dehydrated spaghetti sauce, hash brown potatoes, fruits, spices, olives, and mushrooms. The food looked quite strange--the potatoes were a weird grey color, the mushrooms these little black dots--i was more then a little concerned that the airport security was going to suspect me for carrying drugs. Luckily there were no incidents.

Spaghetti leather tastes very strong! To rehydrate, we unfolded and ripped apart as best as possible the mass of dried sauce, and dropped into a pan of water, and then simmered until re-hydrated, which was practically indistinguishable from the original product. The most difficult part was that in the colder environment the leather became quite still and didn't want to unfold or rip apart easily.

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In continued quest for nourishing foods, i decided that cooking whole rice and buckwheat would consume a lot of time and fuel, but was a necessary evil. Luckily one maddhatt strongly objected, and found a better solution--a pressure cooker.

I was doubtful until i saw REI's Hawkins 4 liter pressure cooker, which weighed just over 3 pounds; too much for a single person, but easily divided between 6 people.

The pressure cooker was simply amazing; we had cooked noodles in not much more then the amount of time it took to bring the pot to a boil over the dragonfly, and when whole grain brown rice only a few additional minutes.

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The result was simply delightful. Each meal was consumed with gleeful compliments, the most memorable was Joe's exclamation that he ``thought that such delicious food and such a great view were mutually exclusive.''

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Unfortunately food also turned into the trips lesson learned, although it was the first time what said lesson didn't enforce a death march. The problem was that we somehow managed to bring about twice as much food as was needed. The realization of this was that my pack weighed 65 pounds, and others were quite similar.

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We met a group of men in their forties who couldn't stop laughing at the weight of our packs. I was told my legs must be ``strong like ox''. On hearing we were hoping to get up on a mountain, they tried telling us a ``scary'' story, which we had problems keeping composure on hearing. It was perfect darwin award material: one of their dentists was taking a group of boy scouts across a glacier, evidently without proper equipment. Telling his boy-scouts ``watch how you can slide,'' he proceeded to sit down and slide down part of the glacier. Evidently the sliding worked better then expected, so much so that he wasn't able to stop before a fatal sized drop-off at the edge of the glacier.

After the first full day of carrying those overly heavy packs, and trying unsuccessfully to hoist 150 or more pounds off the ground to keep bears out, it was obvious that something(s) was going to have to go. Unfortunately there were few good options:

Not an `outhouse', just an `out'.
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buried food would easily be dug up by animals or would at least attract them, dried fruits wouldn't dissolve and wash away in the creek, and fire was much too slow. Reluctantly, we were left with the ``out'', into which we poured our excess food.

Six days in the mountains, enduring rain, and heavenly views, we finally had to make our way back to humanity. Due to all the fires in the North Cascades, there were an endless stream of people coming in. I overheard one set of mountain climbers boasting to another group of backpackers how they were going to be home by the end of the day and would be eating delicious steaks. I had to smugly grin to myself thinking about the delicious meals i had eaten each and every meal.

Sometime this weekend was the recurrence of fiddling with our local offset from UTC, created so that we somehow save sunlight. Basic intuition will correctly lead you to guess how we arrived at such a brilliantly stupid idea--the same guy who was into making coinages about saving, and thus earning, pennies was also into ``saving'' time.

While it may have made some sense a hundred years ago, ``changing'' the clock has little societal benefit today. First of all, sadly, we are no longer an agriculture centric society, and even those who still have the privilege of praedial pursuits, can now work independent of daylight, and the few remaining that can't can find the moral courage to wake up at a differing clock read-out. The rest of us work in offices that have inadequate windowing, but even aside from that, all our machines require the same amount of power regardless of the presence of sunlight. We're essentially complicating the clock, so that we can solve a problem that doesn't exist anymore!

Now lets look at a problem that does exist: sRp doesn't work right on 24 hours. Our planet revolves slightly too fast such that there are too many interesting things to be done when it is suppose to be time to go to bed, so sleep gets put off. But if there are scheduled activities on the following day, then the sleep bank gets cut short, and deprivation occurs. Given a total lack of scheduling constraints, the personal ``timezone'' will naturally slip until the body is soon running on a timezone somewhere in China. This is a serious problem, because stores have this obsession with closing, and churches meetings once a week come just in time to completely throw off the natural timezone slip leaving a wake of jet-lag.

The fix to this problem is obvious. We need to rid ourselves of daylight's ``savings'' time, and replace it with a new system: ``sRp savings time''. This new system of savings works quite simply: all new clocks are made to cycle through 26 hours instead of 24, older clocks get two hours subtracted each night (officially at 2am). This would minimize continual local jet-lag: productivity would soar, moral would be bolstered, and confusion over our meddling twice a year with the clock for no reason would be a funny story we could tell our blissfully ignorant offspring.

I was getting tons of phone calls on my phone number, most of them asked for people I had never heard of (presumably for the people that owned the number before myself). Hanging up on them did no good, more called. Then i got the idea of refusing to speak English to them; did that twice and i haven't gotten a single call since then!

We were driving back to school, and listening to a teenage punk band named Relient K. I had listened to this music before, and had carefully analyzed the lyrics of some of the more interesting songs, but hadn't come to any firm conclusions. Most elusive was the song Failure To Excommunicate. I had a pretty good start on it though: it had to be about how we as humans have preconceptions and how that globally causes biases which religiously discriminates...--but i just couldn't quite get it to fit.

Pondering now again, i finally commented on the elusive depth of the song to my traveling companion. Giving me a puzzled look, he asked me what i was talking about. When i tried to explain, amused, he scolded me, ``you over analyze everything! They are a teenage punk band! They are singing in complaint of their principal kicking them out of school!'' Thinking over the lyrics, how right he was, and how blind i was.

Thinking over this several days later, and his advice to not over analyze things, i started applying the same principals to other facets of my life where my analysis had, for the life of me, been failing.

In calculus we are trained how to write equations to model systems and then manipulate the equation in such a way as to maximize or minimize the system. In fact, that is what a lot of higher math is involved in, in one way or another.

Using the mathematical mindset, i'm always trying to analyze people so that i can maximize my interactions with them. And by maximizing i'm not suggesting trying to manipulate people to get whatever end i choose, that is rather low in my book. By maximizing i'm simply referring to having cohesive, meaningful, productive interactions with others; for the benefit of all involved parties.

So now i understood why all the brain power i could muster, trying to analyze and understand women, was constantly yielding no fruit--i was trying to over-analyze them! How could i have been so blind all along, to think that i could find a function that would map to a random number generator?