Ninth Grade Summer Reading Students should arrive for Ninth Grade English with a completed “Ninth Grade Summer Reading Packet” in hand. 学生应到达九年级英语，完成“九年级夏季阅读包”。

From the teacher(从老师那里): ”I have assigned several documents for you to read and evaluate. Read the articles and answer the questions below on a word document on your computer and email them to [email protected] before the start of school. These articles have been selected because they’re well-written and because they pose interesting questions for us to think and argue about. I hope you enjoy them! Just answer the questions to the best of your ability. (我已经分配了几个文件供您 阅读和评估。 阅读文章，并在您的计算机上的 word 文档中回答以下问题， 并在学校开始之前将其发送至 [email protected]。 这些文章被选中是因为 它们写得很好，因为它们提出了有趣的问题，供我们思考和争论。 我希望你 喜欢它们！ 只是尽可能地解决问题。)”

Scroll down to see all of the articles and all of the questions to answer about each article. (向下滚动以查看所有文章以及所有有关每篇文章的问题 。)

Dear Ninth Graders, Instead of assigning a novel this year, I’ve elected to assign a “Summer Reading Packet” consisting of several documents for you to read and evaluate. The packet is a separate document—you can find the pdf on the Saint George’s website. Read the articles in the pdf and write your responses after the relevant question on this document. If you can’t get the document to work, feel free to write your answers down on paper. The answers are due the Tuesday after Labor Day. No excuses! These articles have been selected because they’re well-written and because they pose interesting questions for us to think and argue about. I hope you enjoy them! If you have questions about the grading, you can find a rubric at the bottom of the document. Mostly, just answer the questions to the best of your ability-- Document 1. “Build Your Own Light Saber” “Build Your Own Light Saber,” Hasbro. June 7, 2017. https://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/87625.pdf Consider this instruction manual for building a toy light saber. 1. What is the purpose of this document? [insert answer here] 2. How is the document organized? What methods does it use to communicate and advance its purpose? Include specific details and insights. [insert answer here] 3. Do you think these methods of communication effectively advance the purpose? Why or why not? [insert answer here]

Document 2. “Personnel Report, Hunter S. Thompson” Thompson, Hunter S. The Great Shark Hunt, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1979. The next two documents have to do with the military career of famed American journalist and troublemaker, Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005). The first is a personnel report written by Thompson’s commanding officer; the second is ghost-written by Thompson after his discharge from the Air Force. 1. What is the purpose of this document? [insert answer here. Are you getting the idea? Keep inserting answers for the rest of the document. . . ] 2. How is this document organized? 3. Please comment on the style of the document? What do you notice about the language? Do the language and the organization help the document fulfill its purpose? How?

Document 3. “News Release, Air Proving Ground Command, Elgin AFB, Florida” 1. What is the purpose of this document? 2. How is this document organized? 3. Please comment on the style of the document? What do you notice about the language? Do the language and the organization help the document fulfill its purpose? How? 4. Does the fact that the document was written by Hunter S. Thomspon—subject of documents 2 & 3—have any influence on your reading of this document? Stated another way, how does Thompson effectively comment on his own discharge? Discuss this at some length.

Document 4. Sei Shonagon, “Hateful Things” Shonagon, Sei. “Hateful Things,” The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Philip Lopate, trans. Ivan Morris. Anchor, New York, 1994. Japanese essayist Sei Shonagon (966-1017) lived as a woman at-court, serving the Empress Teishi. Shonagon eventually compiled her essays and diary entries into The Pillow Book, one of the most famous pieces of Japanese literature of all time. 1. What is the purpose of this essay? 2. Discuss the organization of the essay. How are the paragraphs built? What do you notice about them? 3. How do the tone, structure, and content of the essay’s concluding paragraphs differ from the rest of the essay? Describe. 4. Comment on the conclusion of the essay. How do these differences in tone, structure, and content relate to the essay’s overall meaning? State your opinion and discuss at some length.

Document 5. Jimmy Breslin, “It’s an Honor” Breslin, Jimmy. “It’s an Honor,” New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 1963. May 31, 2017. Over the course of his famed career, American journalist Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017) reported on everything from mob violence, to the civil rights movement, to global politics. “It’s an Honor” marks his reporting after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. 1. What is the purpose of this article? 2. How is the article organized? 3. Please comment on the language in which the article is written. What do you notice about it? 4. How do the organization and language advance the article’s purpose? 5. Breslin selects some details to pay attention to and some details to set aside. Specifically, what does Breslin emphasize in this article? How do you know what he thinks is important? 6. In your opinion, is Breslin’s purpose here meaningful or not? Why or why not?

Document 6. Burkhard Bilger, “The Ride of Their Lives” Bilger, Burkhard. “The Ride of Their Lives,” The New Yorker. Dec. 8, 2014. May 31, 2017. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/08/ride-lives Here, New Yorker columnist Burkhard Bilger reports on the world’s most dangerous youth sport: Youth Bull Riding. 1. What is the purpose of the essay? 2. What is Bilger’s thesis in the article? Find the sentence that you think best summarizes the essay’s argument, and then explain your reasoning. 3. How is the essay organized? Briefly outline the parts of the essay. 4. How does the author use techniques of fiction and storytelling to advance the article? 5. How does science create ethical concerns around bull riding? Explain. 6. After reading this essay, what is your opinion of Youth Bull Riding? Should parents allow their children to participate in it? Why or why not? Explain using plenty of evidence from the text.

Document 7. Jamaica Kincaid, “Time with Pryor” Kincaid, Jamaica. “Time with Pryor,” The New Yorker, Jan. 12, 1976. May 20, 2017. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1976/01/12/time-with-pryor Famed New Yorker columnist Jamaica Kincaid chronicles her first meeting with Richard Pryor. In his time, Pryor was revolutionary as an African American stand-up comic, who openly contended with issues related to racism. Most commentators regard Pryor as the greatest stand-up comedian of all time. 1. What is the purpose of this article? 2. How is the article organized? 3. What do you notice about the language? 4. How do the organization and language advance the article’s purpose? 5. The article starts with a definition of the word “bad.” How does this definition effectively advance the article’s purpose? 6. Throughout the article, there are a number of lists. In your opinion, what is Kincaid’s reason for using so many lists, and how do these potentially advance the article’s purpose?

Document 8. D.L. Rosenhan, “Being Sane in Insane Places” Rosenhan, D.L. “Being Sane in Insane Places,” Science, Jan. 1973. May 17, 2017. http://www.canonsociaalwerk.eu/1971_stigma/1973%20Rosenhan%20Being%20sane%20in%2 0insane%20places%20OCR.pdf Here, Rosenhan recounts a scientific investigation of systems of thought within psychiatric institutions. The results may surprise you. 1. What is the purpose of this article? 2. What is Rosenhan’s thesis in the article? Find the sentence that you think best summarizes the article’s argument and then explain your reasoning. 3. This article originally appeared in a scientific journal. If the article’s purpose has to do with advancing an idea or argument, what tools does the writer use to give the argument additional credibility? 4. Does this article affect your preconceptions of sanity and insanity? Explain. 5. Do you think this article raises important questions for areas outside of the psychiatric field? Does it have implications for your own life? Identify the essential concerns of the article and then explain why you think they’re important. If you don’t think they’re important, explain why not.

Document 9. Toni Cade Bambara, “Gorilla, My Love” Bambara, Toni Cade. “Gorilla, My Love,” Gorilla, My Love. Vintage, New York, 1972. The lone piece of fiction on the list, Toni Cade Bambara’s “Gorilla, My Love” tells the story of a girl who leads a riot in a “peanut gallery”—the segregated seating area in a Southern movie theater. 1. What is Hazel’s purpose in telling the story? How do you know? 2. Consider the setting of the story. Where does it take place? When? How do you know? 3. How is the story organized? Describe Hazel’s train of thought and selection of events as plainly as you can? 4. Why do you think it’s organized this way? How does this way of organizing the narrative serve the story’s purpose? 5. Bambara elects to have Hazel narrate the story in the “vernacular”—the language common to her time, place, and culture. How does this decision relate to the overall intention of the story? 6. Do you think that Bambara has the same intention in writing the story as Hazel has in telling it? Why or why not? Stated another way: what is Bambara’s purpose in writing the story? Make a claim and prove it using plenty of evidence from the text.

If you have questions about the way this assignment will be graded, check out the rubric below:

A. Understanding the texts How well do the responses demonstrate understanding of the subject? 0 None of the descriptors below apply.

1-2 The answers demonstrate a significantly flawed understanding of the texts.

3-4 The answers demonstrate mostly accurate understanding of the texts; description and evidence may be so general as to preclude confident judgment of comprehension in some places. 5-6 The answers demonstrate accurate and detailed understanding of the subject.

7-8 The answers demonstrate thorough and highly detailed understanding of the subject. 9-10 The answers demonstrate thorough, highly detailed, perceptive, and nuanced understanding of the subject.

B. Argument  How sophisticated are the student’s evaluations of tough questions? 0 None of the descriptors below apply.

1-2 The answers address the subject to some extent but do not attempt arguments in any substantial way; description or summary are offered in lieu of argument. 3-4 The answers attempt general, superficial arguments with little regard for an audience’s views, interests, and expectations; the logic may be seriously flawed; the evidence may be overly general and/or sometimes irrelevant. 5-6 The answers attempt purposeful, logical arguments and general consideration of audience; the evidence is relevant, though it may lack detail and precision. 7-8 The answers offer fully logical, valid arguments, demonstrating more detailed consideration of audience; the evidence is consistently relevant, specific, and generally tailored well to purpose. 9-10 The answers make arguments which are fully logical and highly persuasive, demonstrating detailed and insightful consideration of its audience; its evidence is consistently relevant, specific, and exactly tailored to specific purpose.

C. Organization and coherence  How well organized and coherent are the answers’ ideas?  How unified and coherent are the paragraphs?  How effective are the topic sentences?

0 None of the descriptors below apply

1-2 Ideas show virtually no organization or coherence

3-4 Ideas show some organization and coherence, but the topics of paragraphs are normally unclear and topic sentences are vague or missing; transitions between paragraphs may be unclear. 5-6 Ideas are mostly organized, though flow could improve; topic sentences are generally clear, though perhaps blunt, and evidence may at times stray briefly from the paragraphs’ purported purposes. 7-8 Ideas are logically organized and coherent; topic sentences are clear and pointed; paragraphs are fully unified. 9-10 Ideas are effectively organized and flow gracefully; paragraphs are fully unified; topic sentences and transitions are clear, precisely pointed, and artful.

D. Language  How clear, varied, and accurate is the language?  How appropriate is the choice of register and style? 0 None of the descriptors below apply

1-2 The answers’ language is rarely clear and accurate in grammar, mechanics, and vocabulary; register and style show little regard for the task. 3-4 The answers’ language is sometimes clear and accurate in grammar, mechanics, and vocabulary; register and style show some regard for the task 5-6 The answers’ language is mostly clear and mostly accurate in grammar, mechanics, and vocabulary; register and style are mostly appropriate to the task. 7-8 The answers’ language is clear and accurate in grammar, mechanics, and vocabulary; it shows a good degree of sentence variety and economy; register and style are appropriate to the task. 9-10 The answers’ language is varied, economical, clear, and accurate in grammar, mechanics, and vocabulary; register and style are wholly suited to the task.

Have an awesome summer! Chad

1.5VAA/R6 size x3 NOT INCLUDED BATTERIES REQUIRED Alkaline batteries recommended. Phillips/cross head screwdriver (not included) needed to insert batteries.

FCC Statement: 1.5VAA/R6 size This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for x3 NOT INCLUDED AGES 6+ a Class B digital device, pursuant to part 15 of the FCC Rules. These BATTERIES REQUIRED 87625/87623 Asst. limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful Alkaline batteries recommended. interference in a residential installation. This equipment generates, uses Phillips/cross head screwdriver (not and can radiate radio frequency energy, and, if not installed and used included) needed to insert batteries. in accordance with the instructions, may cause harmful interference to radio communications. However, there is no guarantee that interference will not occur in a particular installation. If this equipment does cause harmful interference to radio or television reception, which can be determined by turning the equipment off and on, the user is encouraged to try to correct the interference by one or more of the following measures: • Reorient or relocate the receiving antenna. • Increase the separation between the equipment and receiver. • Consult the dealer or an experienced radio/TV technician for help. WARNING: Changes or modifications not expressly approved by the party responsible for compliance could void the user’s authority to operate the equipment.

* Not suitable for children under 3 years because of small parts - choking hazard.

Product and colors may vary. © 2008 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or TM where indicated. All rights reserved. ®* and/or TM* & © 2007 Hasbro. All Rights Reserved. * TM & ® denote U.S. Trademarks. P/N 6769590000 Hilt PARTS STEP 1

The first step in building a lightsaber is to install the power-generating component.

Blade INSTALLING BATTERIES Using a Phillips/crosshead screwdriver (not included), loosen screw in door and End caps Tonfa handle remove door. Insert 3 x 1.5v “AA” or R6 size batteries (not included) into hilt. Alkaline batteries recommended. Replace battery door and tighten screw. Kyber crystals (3) Blade-emitter guard

Hilt sleeves (4) Sleeve rings (3)

1 2 STEP 2 CAUTION: TO AVOID BATTERY LEAKAGE Install one or more crystals 1. Be sure to insert the batteries correctly and always follow the into the chamber in the hilt. toy and battery manufacturers’ instructions; Each crystal causes the lightsaber 2. Do not mix old and new batteries or alkaline, standard CRYSTAL (carbon-zinc) or rechargeable (nickel-cadmium) batteries; to emit a different sound. After you complete your lightsaber, you can 3. Always remove weak or dead batteries from the product. always switch, add or remove crystals.

IMPORTANT: BATTERY INFORMATION Please retain this information for future reference. Batteries should be replaced by an adult.

Store the extra crystals CAUTION: in the storage chamber. 1. Always follow the instructions carefully. Use only batteries specified Color Chart: and be sure to insert them correctly by matching the + and – polarity Red: red crystal markings. Blue: blue crystal 2. Do not mix old batteries and new batteries, or standard (carbon-zinc) Green: green crystal with alkaline batteries. Aqua: blue and green crystals 3. Remove exhausted or dead batteries from the product. Orange: red and green crystals 4. Remove batteries if product is not to be played with for a long time. Purple: red and blue crystals 5. Do not short-circuit the supply terminals. 6. Should this product cause, or be affected by, local electrical interference, move it away from other electrical equipment. Reset (switching off and back on again or removing and re-inserting batteries) if necessary. Note: If the crystals become 7. RECHARGEABLE BATTERIES: Do not mix these with any other types of misplaced or lost, turn the power battery. Always remove from the product before recharging. Recharge batteries under adult supervision. DO NOT RECHARGE OTHER TYPES on and off (see “Power Up” section OF BATTERIES. below) to cycle through the different blade colors and sounds.

3 4 Place blade on hilt and hold it in place. STEP 3

HILT BLADE CUSTOMIZE The above steps are the basic steps for building a lightsaber. Switch and combine the parts to STEP 4 Choose a sleeve ring and slide it over the blade. customize your lightsaber! NOTE: Some configurations will cover the power button. Please be sure that the power button is exposed when completing your configuration. SLEEVE RING

Choose a hilt sleeve and slide it on the hilt. STEP 5 POWER UP SLEEVE NOTE: Line up rib inside sleeve with slot on hilt. Practice your dueling skills! Press the button to “power up” your lightsaber. NOTE: When customizing your lightsaber, always make sure the button is exposed so that you can “power up”!

Choose an end cap and attach it to the hilt. When customizing your lightsaber, always make sure STEP 6 the button is exposed so that you can “power up”!

END CAP

5 FINISHED 6 Congratulations! You have assembled your lightsaber! llU'l A@Q 8.VI� 11 Vi It§ AU IP!@VBIN@ @IHHJND CCMMb\i\UJ UNITED STATES AIR FORCE !;Un Ah fil®rui ias@, frhvhh1

ADDl!IElilll llll!!i>&.Y Avvoo, Base Staff Personnel Officer Personnel Report: A/2C Hunter S. Thompson 23 Aug 57

1. A/2C Hunters. Thompson, AF 15546879, has worked in the Internal Information Section, OIS, for nearly one year. During this time he has done some outstandi�g sports writing, but ignored APGC-OIS policy,

2. Airman Thompson possesses outstanding talent in writing. He has imagination, good use of English, and can express his thoughts in a manner that makes interesting reading.

3, However, in spite of frequent counseling with explanation of the reasons for the conservative policy on an AF Base newspaper, Airman Thompson has consistently written controversial material and leans so strongly to critical editorializing that it was necessary to require that all his writing be thoroughly edited before release.

4, The first article that called attention to the writing noted above was a story very critical of Base Special Services. Others that were gtopped before they were printed were pieces that severely criticized Arthur Godfrey and Ted Williams that Airman Thompson extracted from national media releases and added his flair for the inuendo and exaggeration. 5. This Airman has indicated poor judgement from other standpoints by releasing Air Force information to the Playground News himself, with no con­ sideration for other papers in the area, or the fact that only official releases, carefully censored by competent OIS staff members, are allowed. 6. In summary, this Airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy or personal advice and guidance. Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members. He has little consideration for military bearing or dress and seems to dislike the service and want out as soon as possible. 7. Consequently, it is requested that Airman Thompson be assigned to other duties immediately, and it is recommended that he be earnestly considered under the early release program. B, It is also requested that Airman Thompson be officially advised that he. is to do no writing of any kind for internal or external publication unless such writing is edited by the OIS staff, and that he is not to accept outside employment with any of the local media.

W.S. EVANS, Colonel, USAF Chief, Office of Information Services NEWS RELE E AUi Pl!IH)VUNG @f!@UND COMMAND EGLON AUi F@IICI IASi!, Fl!.@[email protected]

@PfllDd @Ill 9Nl'@l!ijj£'f8@N IHVOCH � 26VU - 2&22

EGLIN AFB, FLORIDA-(Mov8)-S/Sgt. Manmountain Dense, a novice Air Policeman, w�s severely injured here today, when a wine bottle e�loded inside the 'AP gatehouse

at the west entrance to the base. Dense was incoherent for several hours after the disaster, but managed to make a statement which led investigators to believe the bottle was hurled from a speeding car which approached the gatehouse on the wrong

side of the road, coming from the general direction of the SEPERATION CENTER.

Further investigation revealed that, only minutes before the incident at the

gatehouse,.a reportedly "fanatical" airman had received his separation papers and was rumored to have set out i� the direction of the ga�ehouse at a high spead in a muffler-less car with no brakes. An immediate search was begUn for Huntef s. Thompson, one-time sports editor of the base newspaper and wisll-kru»m "fflOralG problem". Thompson was known to have a sometimes over-powering affinity for wina and was described by a recent arrival in the base sanatorium as "just the type of bastard who would do a thing like that".

An apparently uncontrolable iconociast, Thompson w&e discharged tod&y after one of the most hectic and unusual Air Force careers in recent histol?f. According to Captain Munnington Thurd, who was relieved of his duties as base classification officer yesterday and admitted to the neuropsychological section of the base hos­

pital, Thompson was "totally unclassifianble" and "ons of the momt saY&ga and

unnatural airmen I've ever come up against." "I'll never understand how he got this discharge", Thur& went on to smy. "I

almost had a stroke yesterday when I heard he was being given m'I honcrmbls

discharge. It's terrifying-simply terrifying."

And.then Thurd siank into a deleriwn. -30- Hateful Things Sei Shonagon

N E I S I N A H O R RY T O L E A V E , but one's visitor keeps 0 chattering away. If it is someone of no importance, one can get rid of him by saying, "You must tell me all about it next time"; but, should it be the sort of visitor whose presence·· commands one's best behaviour, the situation is hateful indeed. One finds that a hair has· got caught in the stone on which one is rub­ bing one's inkstick, or again that gravel is lodged in the inkstick, making a nasty, grating sound. Someone has suddenly fallenill and one summons the exorcist. Since he is not at home, one has to send messengers to look for him. After' one has had a long fretful wait, the exorcist finally arrives, and with a sigh of relief one asks him to start his incantations. But perhaps he has been exorcizing too many evil spirits recently; for hardly has he installed himself and be­ gun praying when his voice becomes drowsy. Oh, how hateful! A· man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything. An elderly person warms the palms of his hands over a brazier and stretches out the wrinkles. No young man would dream of behaving in · such a fashion; old people can really be quite shameless: I have se'en some . dreary old creatures actually resting their feet on the brazier and rubbing· them against the edge while they speak. These are the kind of people who in visiting someone's house first use their fans to wipe away the dust from the mat and, when they finally sit on it, ·cannot stay still but. are forever spreading out the front of their hunting· costume or even tucking it up under their knees. One might suppose that such behaviour was restricted to people of humble station; but I have observed it in quite well-bred people, including a Senior Secretary of the Fifth Rank in the ':Ministry of Ceremonial and a former Governor of Suruga. I hate the sight of men in their cups who shout, poke their fingers in their mouths, stroke their beards, . and pass on the wine to their neigh­ bours with great cries of "Have some more! Drink up!" They tremble, · shake their heads, twist their faces, and gesticulate like children who are singing, "We're off to see the Governor." I have seen really well-bred people behave like this and I find it most distasteful. To envy others and to complain about one's own lot; to speak badly about people; to be inquisitive about the most trivial matters and to resent and abuse people fornot telling one, or, if one does manage to worm out some facts, to inform everyone in the most detailed fashion as if one had known all from the beginning-oh, how hateful! One is just about to be told some interesting piece of news when a baby ·. starts crying. A flight of crows . circle about with loud caws.. An admirer has come on a clandestine visit; but a dog catches sight of · him and starts barking. One feels like killing the beast. . One has been foolish enough to invite a man to spend the night in an i.·· · unsuitable place-and then he starts snoring. A gentleman has visited one secretly. Though he is wearing a tall, lac� quered hat, he nevertheless wants no one to see him. He is so flurried, in fact, that upon leaving he bangs into·something with his hat. Most hateful! is annoying too when he lifts up the Iyo blind that hangs at the entrance .of the room, then lets it fall with a great rattle. If it is a head-blind, things • are still worse, for being more solid it makes a terrible noise when it is . dropped. There is no excuse for such carelessness. Even a head-blind does not make any noise if one lifts it up gently on entering and leaving the room; the same applies to sliding-doors. If one's· movements are rough, ..even a paper door will bend and resonate when opened; but, if one lifts ..... :the door a little while pushing it, there need be no soun& .. tf( . . '-One has gone to bed and is about to doze offwhen a mosquito appears, i(tannouncing himself in a reedy voice. One can actually feel the wind made W>by his wings and, slight though it is, one finds it hateful in the extreme. \•\ A carriage passes with a nasty, creaking noise. Annoying to think that }jfhe · passengers may not even. be aware of this! If I am travelling in some­ ;{pne' s carriage and I hear it creaking, I dislike not only the noise. but also fthe. owner of the carriage. t\J%ne is in the middle of a story when someone butts in and tries to show fSihat he is the only clever person in the room. Such a petson is hateful, and s\§Q,' indeed, is anyone, child or adult, who tries to push himself forward. �:/,,-,: One is telling a story about old times when someone breaks in with a l·i�ttle detail that he happens to know, implying that· · ·one's own version is �5-1yipaccurate-disgusting behaviour! · ·· W;,/} .Very hateful is a mouse that scurries all over the place. ·\ ,1E?J Some children have called at one's house. One makes-·a great fuss of 0"\.ihem and gives them toys to play with. The children become accustomed tffothis treatment and start to come regularly, forcing their way into one's ff�rier rooms and scattering one's furni�hings and possessions. Hateful! F:}>A · certain gentleman whom one does _not want to see visits one at home }§r in the Palace, and one pretends to be asleep. But a maid comes to tell )'f�ne and shakes one awake, with a look on her face that .says, "What a t6�1eepyhead! " Very hateful. ·· · A· newcomer pushes ahead of the other members in a group; with a knowing look, this person. starts laying down the law and forcing advice upon everyone-most hateful. A man with whom one is having an affair keeps. singing the praises of some woman he used to know. Even if it is a thing of the past, this can be very annoying. How much more so if he is still seeing the woman! (Yet h sometimes I find that it is not as unpleasant as all that.) A person who recites a spell himself after sneezing. In fact I detest S. anyone who sneezes, except the master of the house. C Fleas, too, are very hateful. When they dance about under someone's clothes, they really seem to be lifting them up. The sound of dogs when they bark for a long time in chorus is ominous and hateful. I cannot stand people who leave without closing the panel behind them. How I detest the husbands of nurse-maids! It is not so bad ifthe child in the maid's charge is. a girl, because then the man will keep his distance. But, if it is a boy, he will behave as though he were the father. Never letting the boy out of his sight, he insists on managing everything. He ·regards the other attendants in the house as less than human, and, if anyone tries· to scold the child, he slanders him to the master. Despite this disgraceful behaviour, no one dare accuse the husband; so he strides about the house with a proud, self-important look, giving all the orders. I hate people whose letters show that they lack respect for worldly civilities, whether by discourtesy in the phrasing or by extreme politeness to someone who does not deserve it. This sort of thing is, of course, most odious if the letter is for one.self, but it is bad enough even if it is ad- dressed to someone else. As a matter of fact, most people are too casual, not only in their letters but in their direct conversation. Sometimes I am quite disgusted at noting how little decorum people observe when talking to each other. It is partic­ ularly unpleasant to hear some foolish man or · woman omit the proper marks of respect when addressing a person of quality; and, when servants . fail to use honorific forms of speech in referring to their-masters, it is very bad indeed. No kss odious, however, arethose masters who, in addressing their servants, use such phrases as "When you were good enough to do such-and-such" or "As you so kindly remarked.". No doubt there are some masters who, in describing their own actions to a servant, say, "I presumed to do so-and-soF' Sometimes a person who is utterly devoid of charm will try to create a good impression by using very elegant language; yet he only succeeds in being ridiculous. No doubt he believes this refined language to be just what the occasion demands, but, when it goes so far that ,everyone bursts out laughing, surely something must be wrong. It is most improper to address high-ranking courtiers, Imperial Advis- ers, and the like simply by using their names without any titles or marks ot respect; but such mistakes are fortunately rare. If one ·refers to the maid who is in attendance on some lady-in-waiting as "Madam" or "that lady," she wiU be surprised, delighted, and lavish in her praise. When speaking to young noblemen and courtiers of high rank, one should always (unless Their Majesties are present) refer to them by their official posts. Incidentally, I have been very shocked to hear important people use the word "I" while conversing in Their Majesties' presence. · Such a breach of etiquette is really distressing, and I fail to see why people · cannot avoid it. · A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him but who speaks in an affected tone and poses as being elegant. An inkstone with such a hard, smooth sqrface that the stick glides over · it without leaving any deposit of ink. · Ladies-in-waiting who want to know everything that is going on. · Sometimes one greatly dislikes a person for no particular reason-and then that person goes and does something hateful. A gentleman who travels alone in his carriage to see a procession or some other spectacle. What sort of a man is he? Even though he may not · be a person of the greatest quality, surely he should have taken along a few of the many young men who are anxious to see the sights. But no, there he sits by himself (one can see his silhouette through the blinds), with a proud look on his face, keeping all his impressions to himself. : A lover who is leaving at dawn announces that he has to find his fan and his paper. "I know I put them somewhere last night," he says. Since it is pitch dark, he gropes about the room, bumping into the furniture and muttering, "Strange! Where on earth can they be?" Finally he discovers the objects. He thrusts the paper into the breast of his robe with a great rustling sound; then he snaps open his fan and busily fans away with it. Only now is he ready to take his leave. What charmless behaviour! "Hate­ ful" is an understatement. Equally disagreeable is the man who, when leaving in the middle of the night, takes care to fasten the cord of his headdress. This is quite unneces­ sary; he could perfectly well put it gently on his head without tying the cord. And why must he spend time adjusting his cloak or hunting cos­ tume? Does he really think someone may see him �t this time of night and criticize him for not being impeccably dressec:l? . A good lover will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time. He drags himself out of bed with a look of dismay on his face. The lady urges him on: "Come, my friend, it's getting light. You don't want anyone to . find you here." He giyes a deep sigh, as if to say that the night has not ···-been nearly long enough and that it is agony to leave. Once up, he does not instantly pull on his. trousers. Instead he comes close to the lady and whispers whatever was left unsaid during the night. Even when he is dressed, he still lingers, vaguely pretending to be fastening his sash. Presently he raises the lattice, and the two lovers stand together by the side door while he tells her how he dreads the corning day, which will keep them apart; then he slips away. The lady watches him go, and this moment of parting will remain among her most charming memories. Indeed, one's attachment to a man depends largely on the elegance of his leave-taking. When he jumps out of bed, scurries about the room, tightly fastens his trouser-sash, rolls up the sleeves of his Court cloak, over-robe, or hunting costume, stuffs his belongings into the breast of his roh.e and then briskly secures the outer sash-one really begins to hate him. -Translated by Ivan Morris it’s an honor jimmy breslin Newsday’s Jimmy Breslin wrote the following article for the New York Herald Tribune in November 1963. at Arlington. The reverse hoe is a green machine with a yellow bucket that scoops the earth to- Washington -- Clifton Pollard was pretty sure he ward the operator, not away from it as a crane was going to be working on Sunday, so when he does. At the bottom of the hill in front of the woke up at 9 a.m., in his three-room apartment Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Pollard started the on Corcoran Street, he put on khaki overalls be- digging (Editor Note: At the bottom of the hill in fore going into the kitchen for breakfast. His wife, front of the Custis-Lee Mansion). Hettie, made bacon and eggs for him. Pollard 3 was in the middle of eating them when he re- Leaves covered the grass. When the yellow teeth ceived the phone call he had been expecting. It of the reverse hoe first bit into the ground, the was from Mazo Kawalchik, who is the foreman of leaves made a threshing sound which could be the gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery, heard above the motor of the machine. When the which is where Pollard works for a living. “Polly, bucket came up with its first scoop of dirt, Met- could you please be here by eleven o’clock this zler, the cemetery superintendent, walked over morning?” Kawalchik asked. “I guess you know and looked at it. “That’s nice soil,” Metzler said. what it’s for.” Pollard did. He hung up the phone, “I’d like to save a little of it,” Pollard said. “The finished breakfast, and left his apartment so he machine made some tracks in the grass over could spend Sunday digging a grave for John here and I’d like to sort of fill them in and get Fitzgerald Kennedy. some good grass growing there, I’d like to have everything, you know, nice.” 2 When Pollard got to the row of yellow wood- 4 en garages where the cemetery equipment is James Winners, another gravedigger, nodded. stored, Kawalchik and John Metzler, the ceme- He said he would fill a couple of carts with this tery superintendent, were waiting for him. “Sorry extra-good soil and take it back to the garage to pull you out like this on a Sunday,” Metzler and grow good turf on it. “He was a good man,” said. “Oh, don’t say that,” Pollard said. “Why, it’s Pollard said. “Yes, he was,” Metzler said. “Now an honor for me to be here.” Pollard got behind they’re going to come and put him right here the wheel of a machine called a reverse hoe. in this grave I’m making up,” Pollard said. “You Gravedigging is not done with men and shovels know, it’s an honor just for me to do this.” 1 Pollard is 42. He is a slim man with a mustache was walking into the history of this country be- who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a pri- cause she was showing everybody who felt old vate in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in and helpless and without hope that she had this World War II. He is an equipment operator, grade terrible strength that everybody needed so badly. 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of Even though they had killed her husband and his the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who blood ran onto her lap while he died, she could was the thirty-fifth President of this country, was walk through the streets and to his grave and a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and help us all while she walked. said it was an honor to dig the grave. There was mass, and then the procession to 7 5 Yesterday morning, at 11:15, Jacqueline Kenne- Arlington. When she came up to the grave at dy started toward the grave. She came out from the cemetery, the casket already was in place. It under the north portico of the White House and was set between brass railings and it was ready slowly followed the body of her husband, which to be lowered into the ground. This must be the was in a flag-covered coffin that was strapped worst time of all, when a woman sees the coffin with two black leather belts to a black cais- with her husband inside and it is in place to be son that had polished brass axles. She walked buried under the earth. Now she knows that it is straight and her head was high. She walked forever. Now there is nothing. There is no casket down the bluestone and blacktop driveway to kiss or hold with your hands. Nothing material and through shadows thrown by the branches to cling to. But she walked up to the burial area of seven leafless oak trees. She walked slowly and stood in front of a row of six green-covered past the sailors who held up flags of the states chairs and she started to sit down, but then she of this country. She walked past silent people got up quickly and stood straight because she who strained to see her and then, seeing her, was not going to sit down until the man directing dropped their heads and put their hands over the funeral told her what seat he wanted her to their eyes. She walked out the northwest gate take. and into the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. She walked with tight steps and her head was high The ceremonies began, with jet planes roaring 8 and she followed the body of her murdered hus- overhead and leaves falling from the sky. On band through the streets of Washington. this hill behind the coffin, people prayed aloud. They were cameramen and writers and soldiers 6 Everybody watched her while she walked. She and Secret Service men and they were say- is the mother of two fatherless children and she ing prayers out loud and choking. In front of the 2 8 grave, Lyndon Johnson kept his head turned to his right. He is president and he had to remain composed. It was better that he did not look at the casket and grave of John Fitzgerald Kennedy too often. Then it was over and black limousines rushed under the cemetery trees and out onto the boulevard toward the White House. “What time is it?” a man standing on the hill was asked. He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes past three,” he said. 9 Clifton Pollard wasn’t at the funeral. He was over behind the hill, digging graves for $3.01 an hour in another section of the cemetery. He didn’t know who the graves were for. He was just dig- ging them and then covering them with boards. “They’ll be used,” he said. “We just don’t know when. I tried to go over to see the grave,” he said. “But it was so crowded a soldier told me I couldn’t get through. So I just stayed here and worked, sir. But I’ll get over there later a little bit. Just sort of look around and see how it is, you know. Like I told you, it’s an honor.”

Adapted from content found at: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/digging-grave-an-honor.htm

3 Save paper and follow @newyorker on Twitter A REPORTER AT LARGE DECEMBER 8, 2014 ISSUE THE RIDE OF THEIR LIVES Children preparefor the world's most dangerous organized sport.

BY BURKHARD BILGER

Calfriders wait in the arena alley on the last day ofthe Youth Bull Riders WorldFinals, in Abilene, Texas. Rodeo bull riders learn as children by riding sheep, calves, and steers. Many ride their first bull before their teens. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JONNO RAHMAN

odeo bulls, like the boys who dream of riding them, are unpredictable creatures. They can startR out shy and skittish, then suddenly turn ornery. They'll lie down in the chute one day and try to gore you the next. The most dangerous bull ever ridden, by some accounts, began as a scrawny yellow calf in 1988. Half Charolais and half Brahman, he was still long and bony at age three, but liable to turn fat and ungainly if his breeding held true. His owner, Phil Sumner, named him J31-he wasn't sure the bull would live long enough to earn a real name. Sumner took him to a few scrubgrass rodeos in northern Oklahoma, but didn't see much fight in him. "I was thinking, Dude, you're going to have to step up your game plan or you're going to be going to McDonald's," Sumner told me.

Then one Sunday afternoon at a small arena outside of Okeene, Oklahoma, something in the bull snapped. The kid who was riding him got his hand caught in his rope. He was flopping around on J31's back, trying to dismount, when the bull suddenly went crazy beneath him. He leaped up and spun around, bucked forwardand kicked back, his legs so high behind him that he almost flippedend over end. By the time the boy pulled free,the bull had nearly gone over the fence. "It just freakedhim out," Sumner said.

Animals, as a rule, don't like to have other animals on their backs. Theyfind it strange and distressing-an attack or a violation, an act of dominance. This hasn't kept us from trying to ride them, of course. Horse, mule, donkey, camel, llama, yak, and elephant-the bigger the animal, the more likely we are to climb on top of it. People have sat on ostriches, orcas, alligators, and water buffalo, straddled giant tortoises, and set toddlers on St: Bernards. Their mounts may try to shake them offat first,but the contest is an unequal one, and they tend to knuckle under eventually. Some even learn to like it. Not rodeo bulls. Their brains aren't wired forsubmission. They not only refuseto be ridden; they find ever more inventive ways to cast people off.Watching old videos ofJ31, you can see him learn as he goes. At first,he just charges around the ring and jumps up and down. But the older he gets the crueller and less predictable he becomes. He spins one way, then the other, charges forward,and jerks to the side. His front and back ends start to uncouple, jackhammering the ground independently. His spine twists and rolls, leaving the rider with no balancing point, no center of gravity. By the age of five,he weighs nearly two thousand pounds and is built like a clenched fist: all hoof and horn and fast-twitch muscle.Sumner eventually sold him to another rancher, Sammy Andrews, figuringthat he was too much bull for the local rodeo circuit. It was Andrews who gave him a name to match his reputation: Bodacious.

"He was like a monster once he matured,"TuffHedeman,a four-time world champion, told me. "Even the good guys were super scared of him. You'd see world champions ride him for a jump or two and then get off."In 1993, at a rodeo in Long Beach, California, Hedeman drew Bodacious forwhat some consider the greatest ride in history-a near­ perfect exhibition of balance and anticipation. Two years later, the bull got his revenge. At the world championships in Las Vegas that August, Hedeman was leading the standings by what proved to be an insurmountable three hundred points when he drew Bodacious again. This time, a split second after leaving the chute, the bull bucked forward with all his might. Hedeman did what riders are supposed to do: he leaned high over the bull's shoulders and flunghis arm back as a counterbalance. But just as he came forward, Bodacious threw his head back-smashing it square into Hedeman's face.Hedeman stayed on somehow, his hand twisted in the rope, only to get head-butted again, thrown into the air, and bounced offthe bull's back like a rag doll.

The ride broke every bone in Hedeman's facebelow the eyes. It took thirteen and a half hours of reconstructive surgery and five titanium plates to repair the damage, and Hedeman'ssense of smell and taste never returned. "I told my buddy afterward,I must have broke my jaw, because when I bite down my teeth don't come together," he recalled. "People were looking at me and then turning their eyes away or putting their hands over their faces.I thought, I must look like Frankenstein or something."

Seven weeks later, when a rider named Scott Breding drew Bodacious at the National Finals Rodeo, he elected to wear a hockey mask for protection. It didn't help. In less than fourseconds, the bull had knocked Breding offwith the same move, fracturinghis left eye socket. The next day, Sammy Andrews retired Bodacious fromcompetition. "I didn't want to be the guy who let him kill someone," he told me.

he boys at the Camp of Champions couldn'twait to get on a bull like that. How else would they be world champions one day? Bull riding is a collaborative sport­ aT pairs competition in which one partner tries to kill the other, like an ice dance with an axe murderer. If a rider manages to hang on foreight seconds, he'll earn up to fiftypoints for his own formand fifty for the bull's. The meaner the animal the better the score. "Ooh, I really want to ride 44!"Wacey Schalla told his friendsTrigger Hargrove and Jet Erickson one morning. He jumped up and down on the catwalk along the arena, and pointed at a bony brown calf in the chute below. "I hear that sucker's rank!"

Wacey, Trigger, and Jet were eight years old. The tops of their heads barely cleared my waist, yet they already had the rangy look of seasoned riders. They wore saddleman jeans and paisley Western shirts, tooled leather boots and straw cowboy hats, oversized to fend offthe broiling June sun. Wacey was the smallest of the three and the most intensely focussed.His eyes would turn to slits above his freckled cheeks as he visualized his next ride. Trigger was taller and leaner, with a natural swagger-he was an excellent roper as well as rider. Jet was the shyest and the most delicately built. While Trigger kept up a running monologue-"That 36 nearly yanked my arm off!But then the next one didn't hardly buck at all"-Jet slumped against the rails, adrift in his own thoughts. "He's kind of a floater," his father,Everett, told me. "But when he scoots up on that calf and it takes off,his body takes over and he just rides." He laughed. "It kind of reminds you of the legends of the past, watching them kids."

In the past two decades, selective breeding has made rodeo bullsmore dangerous and valuable than ever before.The best ones cost ha!fa million dollarsand their semen canfetch thousands.

Almost every weekend, the three boys would ride against one another at some small-town rodeo in Oklahoma. The previous Saturday, it had been Elk City, with Wacey coming in first, Trigger second, and Jet third. But the order could easily have been shuffied."It's just back and forthwith those three,"Trigger's grandfather,Eddie, told me. "They're the fiercest competitors and the best of friends."All three were the sons of professionalrodeo riders. They'd gone frombouncing around on sheep at the age of three or four-"mutton busting," it was called-to riding calves at six and now the occasional steer. In two or three years, they'd get on their first bulls. Their winnings came mostly in the form of engraved belt buckles and prize saddles-"I've got a bunch more in my closet somewhere,"Wacey told me, when he showed me a fewbuckles at his house-as well as small cash purses. But they'd grow more substantial soon enough. Caden Bunch, one of the eleven-year-olds at the camp, had made more than a hundred thousand dollars.

The Camp of Champions was a final tuneup for the biggest rodeo of their lives: the Youth Bull Riders World Finals. The event would draw the top fifty riders fromsix age groups to Abilene, Texas, in July. It would feature rougher stock than most of them were used to riding, so they wanted all the help they could get. The camp, foundedby a bull rider turned cowboy preacher named Andy Taylor, was a combination rodeo school and revival meeting. The first half of the week had been devoted to girls' events-barrel racing, goat tying, and breakaway roping-and the second half to boys' events: calf roping, bull riding, and bronco busting. The camp was held on the grounds of the Tr inity Fellowship, a budding megachurch in Sayre, Oklahoma, on the short-grass prairie just east of the Texas Panhandle. There were livestock pens and dusty red arenas to one side and a striped tent to the other, where the campers met for church services every morning and evening. "You know what's cool, boys?"Ted Nuce, one of the trainers and a former world-champion bull rider, told them. "Riding bulls is a Jesus trap. You guys are going to pray because you want to. You need some protection out there."

Earlier that day, the boys had been to the firstof the morning services. These had a comforting sameness to them. The house band, led by a local bulldozer operator and his sons, would play some Southern-flavored Christian rock. Andy Taylor would drawl a few lines of Scripture, then some retired bull riders would come up to testify.These were small, wiry, tightly wound men-"the bantam roosters of the rodeo world," one calf roper called them-accustomed to keeping their pain to themselves. They'd talk, haltingly, about the injuries that had laid them low at the height of their careers, and how little they knew about earning a living in the real world. How they'd succumbed to drink and drugs, disloyalty and meanness beforethe Lord pulled them through. "Some of my family members just abandoned me," a young, bespectacled bull rider named Matt Austin confessed. "I was broken. But I'm here to tell you that God will never leave you."

I couldn't tell how deeply this registered with the eight-year-olds. Riding calves is less life-threateningthan riding bulls, and Wacey and his friends seemed to think they were immortal anyhow. They were by turns the best-behaved boys I'd ever met-they addressed adults as sir and Ma' am, took offtheir hats in church, and lowered their eyes and mumbled "Excuse me" when they bumped into you-and the rowdiest, the least domesticated. "They make me proud," their counsellor, Keith Hutton, told me on my firstnight at camp. He was about to say more when a chorus of screams and shouts erupted from the bunkhouse below, in the church basement. "He's bleeding!" a high voice was squealing. "There's blood everywhere!" Hutton sighed and blew out his cheeks. He waited a moment for the noise to subside, then lurched up fromthe couch and trudged downstairs.

Reports on the incident would remain muddled and contradictory. As faras Hutton could tell, Wacey was jumped by another boy after beating him in a game of H-0-R-S­ E. Trigger waded in to defend him, and in the ensuing fracasthe assailant fell and smacked his head, opening up a gash. "It was kind of a freakydeal," Hutton told me the next morning. "It looked like his head had fallenoff, there was so much blood." By then, in any case, the boys were all friendsagain, monkeying around in the breakfast line while Trigger practiced his roping tricks. A little blood, they knew, came with the territory. Trigger's uncle had torn offa thumb roping steers, and Jet's fatherhad snapped the Cl vertebra in his neck when a bull named Stoney tossed him on his head. He spent the next six months immobilized in a halo, not sure if he could ever get on a bull again. "We know it's dangerous," he told me. "But there's more glory in it than injuries, I'll promise you that. And the pain always goes away. Sometimes you just have to wait longer than others."

hen breakfast was over, Hutton corralled the boys into a little trailer hitched to a golf cart and hauled them over to the arena. (He was legally blind, so he couldnW t drive a van.) "The Calf-Rider Express is pullin' out!" he shouted, then turned and fixedthem with a balefulglare. "Hey! I don'tneed to hear a bunch of yellin'! We had enough of that foolishness last night. And don'tgo jumpin' offthe trailer! That freaks me out." Bald and gap-toothed, with bright, bewildered eyes, Hutton grew up an Army brat in England. He got deported forselling black-market cigarettes, and spent the next few decades smoking weed and paying rent, as he put it, until he foundJesus. "This hot blonde was on me to come to church," he said. "I thought she might give me a little, but I ended up crying out thirty years of being pissed. I've been clean ever since."When he wasn't volunteering at the church, Hutton worked as a roofer, a substitute teacher, and a drug counsellor. It sometimes seemed like he'd treated someone in almost every family in his town.

Western Oklahoma is a tough place to live in the best of times. The soil is poor and full of gypsum and clay. The winds can rise to catastrophe out of a clear blue sky.In the right light, there's a kind of grandeur to its vast, featureless sweep, where every truck stop and water tower can take on totemic power. But any sense of self-importance has long since been wrung fromthe local population. People age quickly here. The young men with hips cocked and thumbs hooked through belt loops turn into swaybacked old ranchers soon enough, beer guts tucked into embroidered shirts. The girls in ponytails and rhinestones weather into creased, careworn women. They know that the eyes of the world are focussedelsewhere-on Texas, perhaps-and do their best to get on with it.

Early that morning, a towering thunderhead had rumbled in from the east, stripping branches from the cottonwoods and flooding the streets of Oklahoma City. But the sky blew clear within minutes, leaving only muddy ruts behind. "They're saying that this is going to be the next Mojave Desert if we don'thave a weather change," Hutton said. "It's been going on forten or twelve years now."The frackingindustry had brought new jobs to the area-Elk City was growing fast-but without waterthe boom might not last long. And what with the low minimum wage and the high teen-pregnancy rate, methamphetamines and prescription-drug addiction, life was lived ever closer to the bone. Around here, the notion of childhood as a safe, protected place-a benign bubble -seemed like poor training forlife. Religion and rodeo made more sense.

Rodeo campfeatures calf roping and bronco bustingfarboys;far gi rls, there'sbar rel racing, goat tying, and breakaway roping. When the eight-year-olds had arrived at the arena and put on their helmets and protective vests, one of the trainers gathered them around him in a circle. "We don't do this for the money," he told them. "We do this because the very firsttime we got on a bull­ the first time we got bucked offand hit the ground and got up-right there we knew that this is what we were meant to be doing." He cast his eyes around the circle, peering hard at each one of them. "God has a, plan foryou being here," he said. "What you learn in bull riding you're going to be able to apply to everyday life. When life gives you a storm, you can sit back and let it toss you wherever it wants to toss you, or you can have the confidenceto know that God created you to be a winner, and to have honor and glory."

The boys didn'tneed convincing. A bucking calf seemed like the ultimate amusement­ park ride to them-a bumper car and extreme coaster rolled into one. When they weren't in line for another ride, they were practicing their moves on the Mighty Bucky: a padded barrel perched on a steel pivot and springs. I never saw a serious injury among the eight­ year-olds, but plenty of boys were bawling by the time they picked themselves up offthe ground. Yet they couldn'twait forthe next round. The teen-agers, if anything, were even more eager. Nearly every ride left one of them hobbling to the gate, clutching an arm or leg. I saw one boy's cheek split open by a bull's horn and another boy dragged across the ground like tin cans behind a bumper, then stomped on for good measure. Both were back on another bull the same day.

I thought about a playground near my house in Brooklyn, in Park Slope. A couple of years ago, it was beautifully renovated by the city, with a rock-lined stream meandering through it and an old-fashionedpump that children could crank to set the water flowing. The stream was the delight of the neighborhood for a while, thronged with kids splashing through the shallows and floating sticks down the current. Yet some parents were appalled. The rocks were a menace, they declared. The edges were too sharp, the surfaces too slippery. A child could fall and crack her skull. "I actually kept tapping them to check if they were really rocks," one commenter wrote on the Park Slope Parents Web site. "It seemed odd to me to have big rocks in a playground."Within two weeks, a stonemason had been brought in to grind the edges down. The protests continued. One mother called a personal-injury lawyer about forcing the city to remove the rocks. Another suggested that something be done to "soften''them. "I am actually dreading the summer because of those rocks," still another complained. The parents at the camp flipped this attitude on its head. They valued courage over caution, grit over sensitivity. They revelled in the raw physicality of boys. The mothers sat in the bleachers taking videos and hollering advice-"Wyatt, just ride the way Daddy taught you!"The fathersstraddled the chute, leaning over their sons to cinch the rope and shove the calf into position: ''Are you ready?""Yes, sir!""You've got to take the fight . to h1m."" 'T..res, sir. · l ""V.1ou ' ve got to want 1t.· "W h en t h e gate bl ew open, t hey 1eape d up on the rail and watched their sons with clenched fistsand narrowed eyes. They weren't stage parents, forthe most part. They just took followingyour bliss to its logical extreme. "I'd let my kid do whatever he has a passion for,"one mother told me, "even if he wanted to be a piano player."

ow dangerous is bull riding? The best numbers come froma sports epidemiologist tinamed Dale Butterwick. In 2006, when he was at the University of Calgary, utterwick set up a registry of rodeo injuries and spent three years fillingit with data from rodeo medics and riders' self-reports. Between 1989 and 2009, he found,twenty­ one contestants had died in the United States and Canada. Sixteen were bull riders, including one twelve-year-old boy. Another twenty-eight sustained "life-changing" injuries.

Butterwick's study didn't track the riders' less grievous accidents-the breaks, tears, gashes, dislocations, concussions, and contusions that can occur on almost any ride. But, according to a twenty-five-yearstudy that used data fromthe Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, injuries tend to cluster in four areas: the head and face(sixteen per cent), the neck and back (fifteenper cent), the knees (twelve per cent), and the shoulders (twelve per cent). "It's not ifyou're gonna get hurt; it's when," some of the parents at the camp acknowledged. Others downplayed the risk, saying they'd rather have one bull try to kill them than eleven footballplayers. Yet bull riders are ten times more likely than footballplayers to be seriously injured. Theirs is the most dangerous organized sport in the world.

Butterwick's data ended with an alarming spike: in the last two years of the study, the rate of catastrophic injury was more than double that of the twenty-year average. This came as no surprise to Cody Custer, the senior trainer at the camp. "The quality of the stock just keeps getting better," he told me. "When we were riding, you might go to ten rodeos and maybe get one bull that bucked really hard. Now, out of a herd of thirty, twenty-two will be buckers. It's an epidemic, really."

Custer's son Brett was a sixteen-year-old bull rider at the camp. He was a little stud, Custer said. "But all it takes is one time to break an egg in there-or kill a kid or paralyze him."The Camp of Champions played it safe byrodeo standards. The boys had to wear helmets and vests, the trainers stressed caution, the livestock were somewhat less than homicidal. But at the Youth World Finals all bets would be off: the previous year, among the oldest contestants, three out of four had been bucked off. When Custer was born, in 1965,rodeo still seemed an extension of ordinary cowboying. He joined his first roundup at the age of four,on his family's ranch south of the Grand Canyon, and spent much of his youth riding bareback.He learned to loosen his hips and shift his weight, to roll with every pitch and yaw.He learned to ride with his feet, clamping them tight to an animal's sides and reacting to the slightest twitch.He learned to use every inch and ounce of his lariat-thin frame,sitting tall to increase his leverage and send pressure down his legs.By the age of fourteen, he'd ridden some twenty-five hundred steer.These were castrated animals, not nearly as strong and wild as an uncut bull,which was just what he needed."Most of them just went straight up and down," he told me. "But my confidencegot skyhigh and so did my skills."

In his twenty years on the circuit,Custer had his share of injuries: a collapsed lung, several broken ribs, and a broken jaw that had to be wired shut forfive weeks. He had major surgeries on both shoulders and one of his knees and suffered a string of severe concussions, the worst of which knocked him out for more than half an hour.Yet he counts himself lucky.Custer won a world championship in 1992, was elected to the ProfessionalBull Riders Ring of Honor in 2003,and was still walking when he retired, that same year."I got away pretty good, all things considered," he told me."You probably won't be hearing about twenty-year bull-riding careers anymore."

odacious changed the way rodeo animals are bred. Beforehim, most bulls were a g dubious commodity-worth more for beef than forbucking cowboys. A rancher m g t get a hundred dollars every time his bull was ridden,twice that much at big events. The riders made the real money-they were the ones that people came to see.Bodacious changed that equation.People who'd never heard of TuffHedeman knew the name of the bull who'd "rearranged his face,"as Hedeman's wifelater put it.After Bodacious was retired,he toured the country like a war hero, appearing in GQ and Penthouse, making personal appearances at restaurants, casinos, and car dealerships. "It was unreal," Sammy Andrews told me."I thought we'd sell two or three T-shirts. But we had tour buses coming around to see him."There were Bodacious coffeemugs, belt buckles,jewelry lines, and condoms."If a Brahman bull ever were a superstar, then Bodacious just might be," the band Primus sang."He's a cream-colored,beefy-brawn, full-fledged, four-footed bovine celebrity."

Wacey Schaf/a (left) and]et Erickson practice on an oil­ barrel bull. Withfewer andfewer ordinary animals to practice on, the learning curve gets steeper every year.

It wasn't long beforebreeders foundthat they didn't really need riders to make money.As Bodacious's brand of notoriety spread to other bulls-Wolfman,Dillinger ,Asteroid, Bushwacker­ ranchers began to earn more from selling sperm, swag, and licensing agreements than they did fromrodeos. At events called futurities,the bulls could now compete directly against one another, carrying dummy cowboys on their backs while judges rated their bucking ability. The top bull could earn a quarter of a million dollars at a single event, and as the purses grew so did the sport's attention to genetics. Ranchers once content to breed any bull that leaped around now turned to outcrossing and in-vitro fertilization to select specific behaviors: the dropkick, the side spin, the twisting belly roll. The result was a succession of ever more powerful,more athletic, more murderous bulls. The only question was who could ride them.

When Custer won his world championship, in 1992, he rode more than three-quarters of the bulls he drew. Last year's world champion rode just hal£ The change has been especially hard on young riders. Their learning curve gets steeper every year, and there are fewer and fewer ordinary animals for them to practice on. "These kids that are eleven, twelve, thirteen years old-they're getting on bulls that we never saw until we were pros," Custer told me. "It's like a phenomenal little football player being put in with a bunch of college kids who want to knock his head off."

Custer is a hard man to rile up. The dashing young cowboy fromthe old videos now wears tinted glasses and button-down shirts and ends every conversation with "God bless." But when he talks about rodeo politics you can see the old bull rider in him. Four years ago, when his son was still in junior high, Custer sent a letter to the National High School Rodeo Association asking forsteers to be used rather than bulls forthe smaller contestants. A number of retired rodeo stars co-signed the proposal, but the request was ignored. "The guys who are raising the bulls, most of them have dollar signs in their eyes," Custer told me. "Their interest is not in that little boy. Their interest is in the bull."

couple of weeks beforethe Youth World Finals, I went to visitDillon Page, the co­ owner ofD&H Cattle Company, in south-central Oklahoma. Page's familyhas Araising livestock in the bottomland along the Washita River forthree generations. When he bought his firstset of bucking bulls, thirty years ago, there were a few dozen rodeo stock contractors in the country. Now there are close to a thousand. For the past fewyears, Page has managed the ranch with his son HoytDillon, at one point winning the Professional Bull Riders Stock Contractor of the Year award for six years running. H.D., as his son is known, runs the breeding operation and shuttles the bulls to rodeos, whileDillon directs the day-to-day workings of the ranch. On the morning I visited, he'd been up since seven, haying the fields.

"We've got some bulls acting like queers back there," he told me as we walked toward his truck to begin the morning feeding."Seems to happen every time you get a weather change. A couple of bulls start ridin'each other, then they go to fightin',and it just turns into a blasted mess. That's how you end up with a lot of your cripples." Page, who is sixty-three, has the crouched, sinewy build and the flinty manner of an old deputy sheriff in a We stern. He holds the small of his back as he walks and rubs his neck, which is deeply creased and baked red by the sun. As he muttered instructions to the cowboys on his property, a gold tooth flashed from time to time in his upper jaw.

Some five hundred bulls were scattered across the ranch's fifteen hundred acres. Tawny, black, mottled, white-rodeo bulls are almost always mutts-they grazed under spreading pecans, in thirteen pastures separated by tall steel fences. The best of them could go for half a million dollars in their prime, but the ranch made even more by selling half-interests in calves. An investor might pay twenty-five thousand for a yearling, cover all its expenses and entry fees, then split the winnings with Page and his son. If all went well, the bull would get sent to thirty-five or forty rodeos a year, earning fiveto ten thousand in fees and up to a hundred thousand in futuritiesand other winnings. After eight or nine years, he'd be retired, then used to sire calves foranother decade or more. A single straw of champion semen could go for upward of five thousand dollars.

When we reached the first pasture, Page jumped out of the truck to open the gate and drove over to a row of galvanized troughs. He put the truck in neutral to set it rolling slowly beside them and flippeda toggle beneath the steering wheel. This triggered an auger in back to release the feed-a mixture of cracked corn, cottonseed, soybean hulls, and dried distiller's grain. As it poured down the length of the troughs, Page jumped out of the cab again and ran back to pull some hay fromthe truck bed. He scattered it around the troughs, ran back to the cab, climbed in, and drove to the next gate, then started the process all over. At one point, a big white bull came shouldering toward him, testicles hanging nearly to the ground. Page shouted and waved his arms. When that didn'twork, he bent down and picked up a dirt clod and pelted him with it. The bull stood his ground and gave a deep grunt, then shook his horns and clattered off."You just hope they don't decide to run over you," Page said when he got back in.

Beforehe bred bulls, Page tried his hand at riding them for a few years. He was never good enough to make a career of it, he told me, but he got offeasy where injuries were concerned-just a few broken bones and a ruptured spleen. Although there was that one ride, when he was seventeen or eighteen-the one that left him with three ribs broken offinto his lower belly. "I was pissin' and shittin' blood for four days," he said. "I don't knowif it was my bladder or my kidneys, but something wasn't right in there."The pain got so bad that he had a friend haul him to the emergency room in Ardmore. But the doctors kept him waiting forfour or five hours, so he went back home. Two weeks later, the bleeding finally stopped. "I guess it wasn't life-threatening," he said.

I asked him how he would have fared on bulls like the ones he breeds now, and he laughed. "Oh, not very well, I guess. I rode some pretty good ones in my day-one of'em, J's Pet, hadn't been rode in fiveyears. I thought I'd done a pretty good deal. But he couldn't even hold a light to some of these things that we buck today." ucking bulls are like human athletes: every generation has a fewthat are unaccountably great. The Peyton Mannings and LeBron J ameses can'treally be reproducedB or used to gauge the average level of play. It's when you look down the bench that you start to see a pattern. "Take Stone Sober over there," Page said. He pointed to a red bull pacing inside a trailer next to the pasture, soon to be taken to a rodeo. He was built like a middleweight wrestler, with bunched shoulders and thick veins ridging his muscles. "We'd rather have him a little bigger," he said. "He's probably thirteen hundred, fourteenhundred pounds-his mama was little bitty. But he can jump as high as this fence with somebody on it. He can turn back and spin and go the other way, and he has a lot of kick and a great big belly roll. Shucks, there ain't no telling what he's gonna do. I don't think he knows hissel£" In the past three years, Stone Sober had bucked offtwenty­ two out of twenty-three riders, most of them in under fourseconds.

]adeyn Lara (left) and Shayne Spain aftercompleting the third round ofmutton busting. Spainfinished third over all,·Lara finished eighth. They have becomefriends through competing together.

An animal like that is a freakof nature, Page said. It's a petri dish fullof exotic mutations-of tics and phobias, spastic nerves and explosive rages, carefullyculled and combined. The sperm froma champion sire is usually collected off-site,mixed with eggs froma proven dam, and transplanted into a rancher's cows. It doesn't always work. Genetic recombination is a crapshoot, and the outcome depends as much on psychology as on physiology. "Confidence plays a big part in it," H. D. Page told me later, on the phone. "If a bull gets rode every time he pokes his head out the gate, he'll either quit buckin' or change his buckin' pattern to win. Some of them just figure it's not worth the effort, and someof them learn to enjoy their jobs. They get addicted to the adrenaline."

The result can be as unhealthy for the bull as forthe rider. When a two-thousand-pound animal leaps sixfeet in the air and hammers down on his back legs, things can go wrong: joints pop, tendons snap, backs get thrown out of kilter. One of the pastures on the Pages' ranch was fullof hobbled old gladiators, kept around for semen or sentiment. "This one here broke his leg at the finals,"Page said, pulling up next to a white-headed bull with a black eye patch. "Hard Twisted. Won a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars as a two-year-old, but you can't set a broke leg. See how crooked it is?" He let the truck idle a little farther,then pointed to a big brown bull stepping gingerly beside the fence. "His leg? He broke it so bad that it drawed up. It don't even touch the ground." He shook his head. "I shoulda done killed him. They make the best hamburger meat there is-well muscled and lean. Ain't nobody that'll have better hamburger meat. But sometimes you get to thinkin' too much and you keep 'em around when you shouldn't." I asked Page if he ever wonders if things have gone too far. His son tried to ride Bodacious three times, yet here they are trying to make bulls even meaner. Is there a limit to how dangerous a bull can or should be? "I hope not," he said. "Because I intend on making one that's a whole lot ranker than we've had before."He smirked. "You know the bad thing? We can't breed cowboys. If you could figureout how to get a set of women and three or four sires that had all that heart and the other ingredients that it takes, then you could match the sires and the dams up like we do the bulls. Then maybe we'd have a great bull rider."

In the meantime, there's only one alternative: start them young.

he Taylor County Expo Center, in Abilene, must have looked like the Taj Mahal to Wacey and his friends.They'd been to a lot of rodeos by then-dusty little arenas atI t e edge of town, with a rickety concession stand on one side and some bleachers on the other-but never one like this. The parking lot was as big as an airport, with what looked like a giant spaceship in the middle. It had a hallway inside that went clear around it, filled with folks selling cowboy hats and rifle cases, saddle soap, tooth guards, rope rosin, and T-shirts that said things like "Mama Tried" and "The Hurrier I Go, the Behinder I Get."When you walked down the tunnel and out into the arena, the seats went up and up on every side. The roof looked like it was five stories high. The floor was covered in a maze of pens and chutes fullof livestock, with cowboys hanging offall the rails. There was even air-conditioning-at a rodeo! Imagine that.

The World Finals are really six separate competitions, each fora different age group and animal. The four-to-six-year-oldsride sheep, the seven- and eight-year-olds are on calves, the nine-to-eleven-year-olds on steers, and the rest on increasingly fearsome bulls. Each contestant rides once a day for three days, earning up to a hundred points per ride from the fourjudges stationed around the arena. On the fourth day,the top fifteen scorers out of the fiftyin each group compete for their division championship. There are cash prizes forthe highest scores every day and a big pot at the end foreach champion­ more than sixtythousand dollars altogether.

''Alot of this event is about the luck of the draw," Curtis Spain, one of the event's organizers, told me. The best buckers earn the best scores for theirriders, but they're also the most likely to toss a rider off."We call that thinning the herd." Back home in Forney, Texas, Spain had his own rodeo arena as well as a mechanical bull. His son Mason was one of the top eleven-year-olds in the finals, and his daughterShayne, age seven, was an excellent mutton buster-one of only two girls in the finals.Girls could qualifyfor the older age groups as well, but most dropped out before that-often at their parents' urging. "The world's most dangerous sport is not something you really want to let your little girl do," her fathertold me. "This is Shayne's farewelltour ." The first round was rough on Spain's kids, as it was on the boys from Oklahoma.All of them rode well but drew sluggish animals, earning mediocre scores. Trigger was the exception. He drew one of the feistiest calves in the pen-a big black Holstein-but got bucked offright before the buzzer. "He came out and took two big blows and then started lopin' ,"Trigger told me the next morning. "The second blow put me over on the side, and it's really hard to stay on when he's lopin' and bouncin'like that." I told him that I was sure he'd do better this time, but he didn't look convinced. "Hopefully,"he said, picking at his chaps.

"The Star-Spangled Banner"was blaring over the loudspeakers by then-a taped version by LeAnn Rimes, sounding like a country girl who'd just walked out on her worthless lover. Over by the chutes, the mutton busters were getting ready to start the second round. Shayne Spain leaned against a rail and glanced up at J adeyn Lara, the only other girl in the finals. Shayne was a year older and half a head taller, with a gap in her front teeth. Her stringy blond hair fellloose across her shirt-her brother's, which she'd worn for good luck. J adeyn had on a pink vest that said "Ridin'Dirty" and pink chaps stitched with dollar signs-her nickname was J. Money. She'd positioned herself at the highest point in the arena, on a platformabove the center chute, and was kneeling there with her head lifted high, like the figurehead on a ship's prow. She and Shayne had both dominated their local rodeo circuits-Shayne in north-central Texas andJadeyn in the southeast-and both wanted badly to be the first girl to win the finals."The boys hate it," Curtis Spain told me. "They hate losing to a girl. But little girls develop faster thanlittle boys, and Shayne is fearless, man. She likes rubbing their noses in it."

Sheep aren't all that into bucking. Truth be told, they don't like to run that much, either. It takes a sharp spur and a clanging cowbell to get most of them moving, and even then they're a pretty smooth, well-cushioned ride. Still, the mutton busters foundways to fall off.Some lost their grip on the wool and keeled over sideways. Others held on tight and pulled their mounts down on top of them. One or two hit the arena wall and got peeled off,or flippedhead over heels when their sheep came to a dead stop. Shayne and Jadeyn both managed to hang on, but Shayne got the better draw. Her sheep had been sheared recently, so it was harder to hold but also fasterand jumpier. She scored a sixty-four,for fifthplace over all.J adeyn started offwell, or at least upright, then slowly began to tip over. By the time the buzzer sounded, she was hanging offher sheep at three o'clock, yet she never fell:fifty-four points-enough foreighteenth place.

Ajunior bullrider loaded in the bucking chute in the final moments before a ride. Contestants at the Youth Bull Riders WorldFinals range in agefrom four to nineteen. By the time the calf riders' turn came, the crowd was getting giddy. "Sweet Child O' Mine"was playing on the P.A., with a ragged chorus of bleats and bellows behind it. As the contestants lined up, the m.c. introduced each one with a verbal drumroll: age, home town, championships, and sponsors. Tiger Mart, B&BTo wing, Pop's Honey Fried Chicken. A lot of the boys already had stage names: Dusty Rhodes, Colt Christie, Fate Snyder, Tater To t Wilcox. Their parents knew that rodeo is one part extreme sport, one part show business. Some of the riders looked as gaudy as rodeo clowns in their embroidered shirts and lizard-skin boots, crested Roman helmets, and vests that read "Cowkids for Christ."But it was up to the calves to make them look good.

Wacey drew a big white Holstein with mean-looking eye patches. The calf looked promising at first,but proved to be a halfheartedbucker. It was all Wacey could do to score sixty points, leaving him in thirteenth place-just enough to make the championship round, if he rode well the next day.Jet drew one of the rankest calves in Abilene: a twisting, half-spinning specimen who'd bucked offhis rider the day before. For a second or two,Jet looked loose and in control. Then he leaned a touch too far forward, the calf changed directions and kicked up its back legs, and just like that the boy was tumbling through the air. A few minutes later, Trigger met the same fate.He came out looking stiffand offcenter, got thrown to one side, and bounced offjust before the buzzer. Both boys got up crying but dried their tears by the time they reached the gate. They would not qualifyfor the finalround.

"He hit the ground trying,"Jet's father told me afterward. "That calf would dang sure have been hard for any kid to ride."Trigger's dad was less philosophical. "He's in a slump,"he said. "First time I've seen it in his life.It's just really frustrating-he's got so much natural talent. When he's locked in, he can't be beat, but he's been riding like an average kid. Those first two calves, he could ride those with his eyes closed."

he next morning, before the national anthem, one of the event directors made his way to the microphone. A tall, barrel-chested Texan named Danny Malone, he workedT as a lineman northwest of Fort Worth and had a sixteen-year-old boy in the Open Bull competition. It had been brought to his attention, he announced, that some parents had been acting inappropriately-using foul language and "whuppin' on'' boys who'd been bucked off."Well, I'm here to tell you that that will not be tolerated," he said. "It's the reason we have U.S. Marshals and Texas Rangers here. If you are caught, you will be asked to leave this property and you will not be allowed back." He paused, then added, almost beseechingly, "Guys, come on! They're young and they're trying their best. If they're not-hey, we don't know what's going on in their heads. Maybe they're just having an offday. Now, I know I'm not their parent. I can'ttell you what to do with your kids in private. But if I see you whuppin' on them I will not tolerate it. And, yes, I know who you are." Most parents at the World Finals weren't used to seeing their kids bucked off,much less three out of four times. At one point, I watched one of the fourteen-year-olds leave the arena aftergetting thrown offhis second bull. He sat down, took offhis helmet, and smashed it into his forehead.Then he did it again, methodically, five times in a row. "That's gotta hurt," someone next to me said. It was the first time I'd heard that at a rodeo. When I asked Malone fora rundown of the week'sinjuries, he mentioned "the usual bumps and bruises"-rodeo-speak foreveryt hing fromdeep lacerations to hobbling hematomas. Then he went on to list a dislocated hip, a fracturedeye socket, and a stock contractor whose incisors had been knocked in by a swinging gate. "We had to put his teeth in saline and send him to the trauma center," Malone said..

Malone's son Austen was one of the best riders in Abilene, as well as one of the most injury-prone. A lanky,sweet-faced kid with long curly blond hair, he'd had several concussions, broken arms, and a dislocated neck. He'd shattered his right leg so badly that the tibia and the fibula were snapped offcompletely, the footturned around backward. The previous year, Austen had spent a week in the hospital after a bull jumped on his chest. Yet he'd come back to win the World Finals. "I worry about it. I do," his father told me. "We discuss it all the time. If something serious happens in the arena and God calls his number-if a fatalityhappens to my son bull riding-it'll be a struggle. I'm not going to lie to you. But I'll know that my son will be at peace. That he died happy and enjoying what he was doing."

A few minutes later, the mutton busters came out to kick offthe third round. Shayne was just seven points out of the lead, but her father didn't have much faith in the sheep she'd drawn: its last rider had scored only fifty-four points. Shayne's only hope was to spur it out of its torpor, working its sides with both heels, though she'd have a harder time keeping her balance. "I told her to let fly the leg," Curtis said. "Just let fly.Get all the points you can."The tactic worked. The sheep pelted across the arena with sudden vigor, the girl kept her seat, and the ride earned sixty-two points. "You know what they say," the m.c. shouted. "Sometimes the best cowboy for the job isa cowgirl!" Shayne was now in third place forthe championship round. Even better, she'd outscored her rival, J adeyn, who hadn't been as luckyin her draw and was stuck back in eighth. "We're making our way up!" Curtis told me. "We're like a shark, circling, circling, looking fora chance."

Wacey was in a tougher spot, twenty-one points out of first. He needed both a great ride and some help from theleaders to win. When I found him on the catwalk, waiting for his third ride, his brow was furrowedand his eyes fiercewith concentration. "Just thinking about the business of what I've got to do," he said. At his parents' ranch, in Eakly, Oklahoma, he'd spent hours watching bull-riding videos to perfecthis form.He'd been working on keeping his freehand high to help control his upper body, and his other hand pulled tight against the rope. When the calf kicked up, he needed to lean forward offits haunches, and when it broke to the side, he had to keep his butt down, centered and correct. "Riding bulls is such a mind game," his father,Luke, told me. "You can buck yourself offjust as easily as anything. But he's a little young for that. The truth is he's on top of his game."

Earlier that morning, the third-round draw had been posted on the wall of the tunnel to the arena. Luke peered at it fora second, then nodded with a tight grin. For once, Wacey had a bucker. Calf No. 99992 had tossed his rider on the first day and hadn't been ridden the second, so he'd be fresh."That's good," Luke said. "He can score some points on that one after those sorry calves he's had." His wife, Nikki,wasn't so sure. She'd seen what happened to Jet and Trigger. "I was kind of hoping for something a little more average," she said, her face pale and drawn behind her shades. Wacey, though, had no doubts: he wanted that cal£

Afarmer champion who is angry about the breeding of fiercer and fiercer bulls says, "You probablywon't be hearing about twenty-year bull-ridingcareers anymore." Riders know that injury is a matter ofwhen, not if.

When his turn finally came, he punched his helmet and climbed into the chute. He clamped his legs around the calf 's bony, squirming back, rubbed some rosin into his rope, and wrapped it tight around his fist. "Ride him like a champ, Wace!" Jet yelled, from the catwalk above him. Trigger was there, too, grinning down at him. Then the gate flew open and the calf charged out, leaping and flexing across the arena like a steel spring shot froman old tractor. He twisted one way and the other, jackknifed in the air and rolled his belly, but could not get the rider off.Wacey matched him rhythm forrhythm, free arm waving and heels flying,spurring him on even harder. When the buzzer sounded and he'd tumbled to his feet, he gave one of the bullfightersa high fiveand ran off.A little later, the m.c. announced the judges' tally: 74.5 -the highest score for a calf rider all week.

Wacey would go on to win the round and finishthe rodeo in style, riding his last calf cleanly for a sixty-two. It wasn'tquite enough to win the championship: his calf was game but underpowered, and he finishedthird. But his record from the previous round would stand. Shayne ended on an even better note, winning the last round. She finished third in her group as well. She and Wacey each earned a little more than a thousand dollars for their efforts-enoughto cover their families' costs and perhaps a dinner at Applebee's on the way home. By the time the judges had cut their checks and passed them out in the hall, the Expo Center was nearly empty, its booths packed up and the parking lot deserted. The other parents had headed home hours ago. Their boys had a long road ahead of them, and it would soon be past their bedtime. atching the medics put away their ice packs and syringes, painkillers and rolls of bandages, I thought about the last time TuffHedeman drew Bodacious. It was DecemberW of 1995, just seven weeks afterthe bull had nearly killed him. Hedeman had lost twenty-fivepounds and his body was still healing, but he'd managed to qualifyfor the National Finals Rodeo anyway. Like Cody Custer and Lane Frost-the hero of the movie "8 Seconds," who was killed by a bull named Takin'Care of Business in 1989- Hedeman belonged to a generation of riders who prided themselves on never backing down. "They just had something the guys don't have today," Dillon Page told me. "They were raised up in the country and they got on bullsto win."Yet when Hedeman drew Bodacious again, in the sixth round of the finals, he knew what he had to do.

"I thought at first that I might have done something wrong the last time," he told me. "But when I watched a video of the ride, the fact is that I was in perfect position fora bull of that calibre with that bucking pattern. There was nothing I could do. If I'd tried to lean back to avoid his head, I would have been stretched out vertically, and when his back legs hit the ground the forceof the downdraftwould have jerked me off.That's why most people really feared him. He was a great bull, but he got to the point where you could ride him correctly and still nearly get killed."And so, when Hedeman's turn came to ride that night at the National Finals Rodeo, he climbed into the chute and onto Bodacious's back. But when the gate swung open, Hedeman let the bull charge through without him. Then he tipped his hat to him and leftthe arena. Three rounds later, Scott Breding put on his hockey mask and gave Bodacious his final ride.

Hedeman wouldn't trade his bull-riding experiences for anything.The closest he's come to that feeling has been flying in an F-16 fighter jet. "It's just this explosion of adrenaline," he told me. "It's indescribable." Still, when one of his sons started to get interested in the sport a few years ago, Hedeman took him into his trophy room and showed him some pictures of the guys he used to ride with. "I told him, 'Just look at them. Those are the best guys that rode every year.'Then I pointed at a few and said, 'I watched this guy die, this guy die, and this guy die.This guy's in a wheelchair and this guy's in a wheelchair.' For me, ninety per cent of it was good. I never had a life­ threatening injury. But the last thing I would ever want my son to do is ride bulls. It's msane.. "

His son never did take up bull riding, but for other boys Hedeman's story was just the sort of cautionary tale that hooked them on the sport forlife. At the Camp of Champions, I'd watched a succession of stiff-backedand patched-together men walk up to the microphone and, as the Oklahoma sun flamed and guttered on the horizon, do their best to warn the boys about what lay ahead-what a brutal, debilitating world this could be. Yet the result was only to earn more converts. "Blessed be the Lord, oh, my soul," as the cowboy preachers sang. "For I am fearfullyand wonderfullymade." On the last afternoon, a cattle trough was hauled under the tent and twenty or thirty boys lined up to be baptized in it. Andy Taylor had asked the campers if any of them were ready to be born again, and Trigger,Jet, and Wacey all raised their hands. When the time came, though, only Trigger and Wacey went down easily.Jet, stripped to his swim trunks, climbed in willingly enough but then seemed to change his mind. He pushed his feetup against the end of the trough and gripped the rim tight with his hands. For just a moment, he hung there like a spider perched above a water glass. Then one of the church elders cradled his head and slowly, quiveringly,Jet let himself go under. +

Burkhard Bilger published his firstpiece in The New Yorker in 2000 and became a staffwriter the followingyear. Time with Pryor Jamaica Kincaid, The New Yorker, January 12, 1976. Two things we know about Richard Pryor for sure: he is the funniest man in America, and after Muhammad Ali, he is the baddest person anywhere. “Bad” here does not mean rotten or no good. It means being so extraordinarily good at doing something that for someone to call you the greatest, or anything like that, does not quite measure up to describing how incredible you are. Only the word “bad” will do. For instance, not long ago we saw Pryor performing at the Felt Forum, in Madison Square Garden, and he said things that are usually considered uncomplimentary about blacks, whites, and women, and the audience, which was made up of blacks, whites, and women, laughed and laughed. He was in town the other day, and around dinnertime we stopped by his suite at the Regency Hotel for a chat with him. Before we had a chance to say hello, he stuck a finger out and showed us a ring he was wearing and said, “Look at this ring. It’s nice. Ain’t pimpy at all.” We looked. It was a slim, plain gold band decorated with three delicately set diamonds. Then we looked at him. We had never before seen him close up, and noticed that he is quite handsome. He is tall, slim (he was dieting, he said), with a boyish face that is especially nice when he smiles. He was wearing tapered gray trousers, a mottled black-and-white sweater, and brown mules. In his rooms with him were a woman he introduced as his girl friend; his manager; his valet; and his jeweler. We spent three hours with him, and during that time this is what happened: he bought a gold necklace with a heart-shaped, diamond-studded pendant for the woman he had introduced as his girl friend; he bought a gold ring for his manager and a gold ring for his valet; he wrote a check for sixteen hundred dollars to his jeweler; he ordered a dinner of sweet-and-sour fish from Greener Pastures, a health-food restaurant not far from the hotel; he picked up his spinach with his bare hands and said with a British accent, “I like my spinach squeeze-dried, don’t you?; when the telephone rang, he spoke into his mules; during dinner he watched “The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite” and mimicked Walter Cronkite many times; after dinner, he disappeared for a while with a copy of U.S. News & World Report. When he was not mimicking Walter Cronkite, these are some of the things he said: “I am now a vegetarian. I was standing at the corner of Forty-Second Street, and this man came up to me and said, ‘Rise and go forth and be a vegetarian.’ One thing I can say—I was lucky he didn’t pick my pocket. Vegetables are funny. They have a great sense of humor. You drop their seeds in the ground and they rub around in the dirt and then they grow up and you can eat them. Politicians are always doing things to Negroes. One will be standing on his head, another on his ass, and another on his foot. Politician to Negro: ‘Look, buddy, this is what I can do for you.’ Negro to politician: ‘Man will you take your foot off my mother?’ I’m trying to figure out things to sell to the Chinese. They don’t dig Joe DiMaggio. How about an album of Man’s greatest hits? I was born under the sign of funny. I haven’t met the other people born under that sign yet, but I think a couple of them became scientists. You know how I get to be funny? I go to sleep for about a year. I wake up with cobwebs all over my face. I roll them up in a large ball with milk and sugar, eat it quickly, and then I start laughing. People say, What’s so funny? I tell them. They start laughing. Then I have lunch. Some of the things I say are true, some are not, but it all happened. Being Sane in Insane Places D. L. ROSENHAN

If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know this view, are in the minds of the observers and them? are not valid summaries of characteristics dis- The question is neither capricious nor itself played by the observed insane. However much we may be personally Gains can be made in deciding which of these convinced that we can tell the normal from the is more nearly accurate by getting normal people abnormal, the evidence is simply not compel- (that people who do not and have never ling. It is commonplace, for example, to read suffered, symptoms of serious psychiatric disor- about murder trials wherein eminent psychia- ders) admitted to psychiatric hospitals and then trists for the defense are contradicted by equally determining whether they were discovered to eminent psychiatrists for the prosecution on the be sane and, if so, how. If the sanity of such matter of the defendant's sanity. More gener- pseudopatients were always detected, there ally, there are a great deal of conflicting data on would be prima facie evidence that a sane indi- the reliability, utility, and meaning of such terms vidual can be distinguished from the insane con- as "sanity," "insanity," "mental illness," and text in which he is found. If, on the other "schizophrenia" Finally, as early as 1934, hand, the sanity of the pseudopatients were Benedict suggested that normality and abnor- never discovered, serious difficulties would mality are not universal What is viewed as arise for those who support traditional modes normal in one culture may be seen as quite aber- of psychiatric diagnosis. Given that the hospital rant in another. Thus, notions of normality and staff was not incompetent, that the pseudopa- abnormality may not be quite as accurate as peo- tient had been behaving as sanely as he had been ple believe they are. outside of the hospital, and that it had never To raise questions regarding normality and ab- been previously suggested that he belonged in a normality is in no way to question the fact that psychiatric hospital, such an unlikely outcome some behaviors are deviant or odd. Murder is would support the view that psychiatric diag- deviant. So, too, are hallucinations. Nor does nosis betrays little about the patient but much raising such questions deny the existence of the about the environment in which an observer personal anguish that is often associated with finds him. "mental Anxiety and depression exist. This article describes such an experiment. Psychological suffering exists. But normality Eight sane people gained secret admission to 12 and abnormality, sanity and insanity, and the hospitals Their diagnostic diagnoses that flow from them may be less sub- riences constitute the data of the first part of stantive than many believe them to be. this article; the remainder is devoted to a de- At its heart, the question of whether the sane scription of their experiences in psychiatric in- can be distinguished from the insane (and stitutions. . . . whether degrees of insanity can be distinguished from each other) is a simple matter: do the sa- lient characteristics that lead to diagnoses reside Pseudopatients and Their Settings in the patients themselves or in the environ- ments and contexts in which observers find The eight pseudopatients were a varied group. them? . . . [T]he belief has been strong that pa- One was a psychology graduate student in his tients present symptoms, that those symptoms The remaining seven were older and "es- can be categorized, and, that the sane Among them were three psycholo- are distinguishable from the insane. More re- gists, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter, cently, however, this belief has been ques- and a housewife. Three pseudopatients were tioned. . . . [T]he view has grown that psycho- women, five were men. All of them employed logical categorization of mental illness is useless pseudonyms, lest their alleged diagnoses embar- at best and downright harmful, misleading, and rass them later. Those who were in mental pejorative at worst. Psychiatric diagnoses, in health professions alleged another occupation in

Reprinted from Science, Vol. 179 (January 1973), pp. 250-258, by permission of the publisher and author. Copy- right 1973 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

179 180 The Effects of Contact with Control Agents order to avoid the special attentions that might visited a psychiatric ward; even those who had, be accorded by as a matter of courtesy or nevertheless had some genuine fears about what caution, to ailing colleagues With the excep- might happen to them. Their nervousness, then, tion of myself (I was the first pseudopatient and was quite appropriate to the novelty of the hos- my presence was known to the hospital adminis- pital setting, and it abated rapidly. trator and chief psychologist and, so far as I can Apart from that short-lived nervousness, the tell, them alone), the presence of pseudopatients pseudopatient behaved on the ward as he "nor- and the nature of the research program was not mally" behaved. The pseudopatient spoke to pa- known to the hospital staffs tients and staff as he might ordinarily. Because The settings were similarly varied. In order to there is uncommonly little to do on a psychiatric generalize the findings, admission into a variety ward, he attempted to engage others in conver- of hospitals was sought. The 12 hospitals in the sation. When asked by staff how he was feeling, sample were located in five different states on he indicated that he was fine, that he no longer the East and West coasts. Some were old and experienced symptoms. He responded to in- shabby, some were quite new. Some were re- structions from attendants, to calls for medica- search-oriented, others not. Some had good tion (which was not swallowed), and to dining- staff-patient ratios, others were quite under- instructions. Beyond such activities as were staffed. Only one was a strictly private hospital. available to him on the admissions ward, he All of the others were supported by state or fed- spent his time writing down his observations eral funds or, in one instance, by university about the ward, its patients, and the staff. Ini- funds. tially these notes were written "secretly," but After calling the hospital for an appointment, as it soon became clear that no one much cared, the pseudopatient arrived at the admissions they were subsequently written on standard tab- office complaining that he had been hearing lets of paper in such public places as the day- voices. Asked what the voices said, he replied room. No secret was made of these activities. that they were often unclear, but as far as he The pseudopatient, very much as a true psy- could tell they said and chiatric patient, entered a hospital with no fore- "thud." The voices were unfamiliar and were of knowledge of when he would be discharged. the same sex as the pseudopatient. . . . Each was told that he would have to get out by Beyond alleging the symptoms and falsifying his own devices, essentially by convincing the vocation, and employment, no further al- that he was sane. The psychological stresses terations of person, history, or circumstances associated with hospitalization were consider- were made. The significant events of the pseudo- able, and all but one of the pseudopatients de- patient's life history were presented as they had sired to be discharged almost immediately after actually occurred. Relationships with parents being admitted. They motivated and with spouse and children, with peo- not only to behave sanely, but to be paragons of ple at work and in school, consistent with the cooperation. That their behavior was in no way aforementioned exceptions, were described as disruptive is confirmed by nursing reports, they were or had been. Frustrations and upsets which have been obtained on most of the pa- were described along with joys and satisfac- tients. These reports uniformly indicate that the tions. These facts are important to remember. If patients were "friendly," "cooperative," and anything, they strongly biased the subsequent "exhibited no abnormal results in favor of detecting sanity, since none of their histories or current behaviors were seri- ously pathological in any way. The Normal Are Not Detectably Sane Immediately upon admission to the psychiat- ric ward, the pseudopatient ceased simulating Despite their public "show" of sanity, the any symptoms of abnormality. In some cases, pseudopatients were never detected. Admitted, there was a brief period of mild nervousness and except in one case, with a diagnosis of schizo- anxiety, since none of the pseudopatients really phrenia [9], each was discharged with a diag- believed that they would be admitted so easily. nosis of schizophrenia "in remission." The label Indeed, their shared fear was that they would be "in remission" should in no way be dismissed as immediately exposed as frauds and greatly em- a formality, for at no time during any hospital- barrassed. Moreover, many of them had never ization had any question been raised about any Being Sane in Insane Places 181 pseudopatient's simulation. Nor are there any was arranged at a research and teaching hospital indications in the hospital records that the whose staff had heard these findings but doubted pseudopatient's status was suspect. Rather, the that such an error could occur in their hospital. evidence is strong that, once labeled schizo- The staff was informed that at some time during phrenic, the pseudopatient was stuck with that the following 3 months, one or more pseudopa- label. If the pseudopatient was to be discharged, tients would attempt to be admitted into the psy- he must naturally be "in remission"; but he was chiatric hospital. Each staff member was asked not sane, nor, in the institution's view, had he to rate each patient who presented himself ever been sane. at admissions or on the ward according to The uniform failure to recognize sanity cannot the likelihood that the patient was a pseudopa- be attributed to the quality of the hospitals. . . . tient. . . . Nor can it be alleged that there was simply not Judgments were obtained on 193 patients who enough time to observe the pseudopatients. were admitted for psychiatric treatment. All Length of hospitalization ranged from 7 to 52 staff who had had sustained contact with or pri- with an average of 19 days. The pseudopa- mary responsibility for the tients were not, in fact, carefully observed, but nurses, psychiatrists, physicians, and psycholo- this failure clearly speaks more to traditions asked to make judgments. Forty- within psychiatric hospitals than to lack of op- one patients were alleged, with high portunity. to be pseudopatients by at least one member of Finally, it cannot be said that the failure to the Twenty-three were considered suspect recognize the sanity was due to by at least one psychiatrist. Nineteen were sus- the fact that they were not behaving sanely. pected by one psychiatrist and one other staff While there was clearly some tension present in member. Actually, no genuine pseudopatient (at all of them, their daily visitors could detect no least from my group) presented himself during serious behavioral indeed, this period. could other patients. It was quite common for The experiment is It indicates that the patients to "detect" the the tendency to designate sane people as insane sanity. . . . "You're not crazy. You're a journal- can be reversed when the stakes (in this case, ist, or a professor [referring to the continual prestige and diagnostic acumen) are high. But You're checking up on the hos- what can be said of the 19 people who were sus- pital." While most of the patients were reas- pected of being "sane" by one psychiatrist and sured by the pseudopatient's insistence that he another staff member? Were these people truly had been sick before he came in but was fine "sane?" . . . There is no way of knowing. But now, some continued to believe that the pseudo- one thing is certain: any diagnostic process that patient was sane throughout his hospitalization lends itself so readily to massive errors of this The fact that the patients often recognized sort cannot be a very reliable one. normality when staff did not raises important questions. Failure to detect sanity during the course of The Stickiness of hospitalization may be due to the fact that . . . Psychodiagnostic Labels physicians are more inclined to call a healthy person sick . . . than a sick person healthy. . . . Beyond the tendency to call the healthy sick The reasons for this are not hard to find: it is tendency that accounts better for diagnostic clearly more dangerous to misdiagnose illness behavior on admission than it does for such be- than health. Better to err on the side of caution, havior after a lengthy period of to suspect illness even among the healthy. data speak to the massive role of labeling in psy- But what holds for medicine does not hold chiatric assessment. Having once been labeled equally well for psychiatry. Medical illnesses, schizophrenic, there is nothing the pseudopa- while unfortunate, are not commonly pejorative. tient can do to overcome the tag. The tag pro- Psychiatric diagnoses, on the contrary, carry foundly colors others' perceptions of him and with them personal, legal, and social stigmas his behavior. It was therefore important to see whether From one viewpoint, these data are hardly the tendency toward diagnosing the sane insane surprising, for it has long been known that ele- could be reversed. The following experiment ments are given meaning by the context in which 182 The Effects of Contact with Control Agents they occur. . . . Once a person is designated phrenic reaction Nothing of an ambivalent abnormal, all of his other behaviors and charac- nature had been described in relations with par- teristics are colored by that label. Indeed, that ents, spouse, or friends. . . . Clearly, the mean- label is so powerful that many of the pseudopa- ing ascribed to his verbalizations (that is, am- tients' normal behaviors were overlooked en- bivalence, affective instability) was determined tirely or profoundly misinterpreted. Some exam- by the diagnosis: schizophrenia. An entirely dif- ples may clarify this issue. ferent meaning would have been ascribed if it Earlier I indicated that there were no changes were known that the man was in the pseudopatient's personal history and cur- All pseudopatients took extensive notes pub- rent status beyond those of name, employment, licly. Under ordinary circumstances, such be- and, where necessary, vocation. Otherwise, a havior would have raised questions in the minds veridical description of personal history and cir- of observers, as, in fact, it did among patients. cumstances was offered. Those circumstances Indeed, it seemed so certain that the notes were not psychotic. How were they made con- would elicit suspicion that elaborate precautions sonant with the diagnosis of psychosis? Or were were taken to remove them from the ward each those diagnoses modified in such a way as to day. But the precautions proved needless. The bring them into accord with the circumstances of closest any staff member came to questioning the pseudopatient's life, as described by him? these notes occurred when one pseudopatient As far as I can determine, diagnoses were in asked his physician what kind of medication he no way affected by the relative health of the cir- was receiving and began to write down the re- cumstances of a pseudopatient's life. Rather, the sponse. "You needn't write it," he was told reverse occurred: the perception of his circum- gently. "If you have trouble remembering, just stances was shaped entirely by the diagnosis. A ask me clear example of such translation is found in the If no questions were asked of the pseudopa- case of a pseudopatient who had had a close tients, how was their writing interpreted? Nurs- relationship with his mother but was rather re- ing records for three patients indicate that the mote from his father during his early childhood. writing was seen as an aspect of their patho- During adolescence and beyond, however, his logical behavior. . . . Given that the patient is in father became a close friend, while his relation- the hospital, he must be psychologically dis- ship with his mother cooled. His present rela- turbed. And given that he is disturbed, continu- tionship with his wife was characteristically ous writing must be a behavioral manifestation close and warm. Apart from occasional angry of that disturbance, perhaps a subset of the com- exchanges, friction was minimal. The children pulsive behaviors that are sometimes correlated had rarely been spanked. Surely there is nothing with schizophrenia. especially pathological about such a history. . . . One tacit characteristic of psychiatric diag- Observe, however, how such a history was nosis is that it locates the sources of aberration translated in the psychopathological context, within the individual and only rarely within the this from the case summary prepared after the complex of stimuli that surrounds him. Conse- patient was discharged. quently, behaviors that are stimulated by the en- vironment are commonly misattributed to the This white 39-year-old male . . . manifests a long his- patient's disorder. For example, one kindly tory of considerable ambivalence in close relation- nurse found a pseudopatient pacing the long hos- ships, which began in early childhood. A warm rela- pital corridors. "Nervous, Mr. X?" she asked. tionship with his mother cools during his adolescence. "No, bored," he said. A distant relationship to his father is described as be- The notes kept by pseudopatients are full of coming very intense. Affective stability is absent. His attempts to control emotionality with his wife and chil- patient behaviors that were misinterpreted by dren are punctuated by angry outbursts and, in the well-intentioned staff. Often enough, a patient case of the children, spankings. And while he says that would go "berserk" because he had, wittingly he has several good friends, one senses considerable or unwittingly, been mistreated by, say, an at- ambivalence embedded in those relationships also. . . . tendant. A nurse coming upon the scene would rarely inquire even cursorily into the environ- The facts of the case were unintentionally dis- mental stimuli of the patient's behavior. Rather, torted by the staff to achieve consistency with a she assumed that his upset derived from his popular theory of the dynamics of a schizo- pathology, not from his present interactions with Being Sane in Insane Places 183 other staff members. . . . [N]ever were the staff often wake patients with, "Come on, you found to assume that one of themselves or the out of bed!" structure of the hospital had anything to do with Neither anecdotal nor "hard" data can con- a patient's behavior. One psychiatrist pointed to vey the overwhelming sense of powerlessness a group of patients who were sitting outside the which invades the individual as he is continually cafeteria entrance half an hour before lunchtime. exposed to the depersonalization of the psychi- To a group of young residents he indicated that atric hospital. . . . such behavior was characteristic of the oral- Powerlessness was evident everywhere. The acquisitive nature of the syndrome. It seemed patient is deprived of many of his legal rights by not to occur to him that there were very few dint of his psychiatric commitment He is things to anticipate in a psychiatric hospital be- shorn of credibility by virtue of his psychiatric sides eating. label. His freedom of movement is restricted. A psychiatric label has a life and an influence He cannot initiate contact with the staff, but of its own. Once the impression has been formed may only respond to such overtures as they that the patient is schizophrenic, the expectation make. Personal privacy is minimal. Patient quar- is that he will continue to be schizophrenic. possessions can be entered and exam- When a sufficient amount of time has passed, any staff member, for whatever reason. during which the patient has done nothing His personal history and anguish is available to bizarre, he is considered to be in remission and any staff member (often including the "grey available for discharge. But the label endures and "candy who beyond discharge, with the unconfirmed expec- to read his folder, regardless of their tation that he will behave as a schizophrenic to him. His personal hy- again. Such labels, conferred by mental health giene and waste evacuation are often monitored. are as influential on the patient as The [toilets] may have no doors. they are on his relatives and friends, and it At times, reached such pro- should not surprise anyone that the diagnosis portions that sense that acts on all of them as a self-fulfilling prophecy. were invisible, or at least unworthy of ac- Eventually, the patient himself accepts the diag- admitted, I and other pseudo- nosis, with all of its surplus meanings and expec- patients took the initial physical examinations in tations, and behaves accordingly . . . a semipublic room, where staff members went about their own business as if we were not there. On the ward, attendants delivered verbal and Powerlessness and occasionally serious physical abuse to patients Depersonalization in the presence of other observing patients, some of whom (the pseudopatients) were writing Eye contact and verbal contact reflect con- it all down. Abusive behavior, on the other cern and their absence, avoidance terminated quite abruptly when other staff and depersonalization. The data I have pre- members were known to be coming. Staff are sented do not do justice to the rich daily encoun- credible witnesses. Patients are not. ters that grew up around matters of depersonali- A unbuttoned her uniform to adjust her zation and avoidance. I have records of patients brassiere in the presence of an entire ward of who were beaten by staff for the sin of having viewing men. One did not have the sense that initiated verbal contact. During my own experi- she was being seductive. Rather, she didn't ence, for example, one patient was beaten in the notice A group of staff persons might point to presence of other patients for having ap- a patient in the dayroom and discuss him animat- proached an attendant and told him, "I like as if he were not Occasionally, punishment meted out to One illuminating instance of depersonalization patients for misdemeanors seemed so excessive and invisibility occurred with regard to medi- that it could not be justified by the most radical cations. All told, the pseudopatients were ad- interpretations of psychiatric canon. Never- ministered nearly pills. . . two were theless, they appeared to go unquestioned. Tem- swallowed. The rest were either pocketed or de- pers were often short. A patient who had not posited in the toilet. The pseudopatients were heard a call for medication would be roundly not alone in this. Although I have no precise excoriated, and the morning attendants would records on how many patients rejected their 184 The Effects of Contact with Control Agents medications, the pseudopatients frequently in because craziness resides in them, as found the medications of other patients in the it were, but because they are responding to a toilet before they deposited their own. As long bizarre setting, one that may be unique to in- as they were their behavior and the stitutions which harbor nether people? own in this matter, as in other [4] calls the process of socialization to such in- important went unnoticed throughout. stitutions apt metaphor Reactions to such among that includes the processes of depersonalization pseudopatients were intense. Although they had that have been described here. And while it is come to the hospital as participant observers impossible to know whether the and were fully aware that they did not "belong," responses to these processes are characteristic they nevertheless found themselves caught up of all were, after all, not real pa- in and fighting the process of depersonaliza- is difficult to believe that these pro- tion. cesses of socialization to a psychiatric hospital provide useful attitudes or habits of response for living in the "real world." The Consequences of Labeling and Depersonalization REFERENCES AND NOTES Whenever the ratio of what is known to what 1. P. Ash, Soc. Psychol. 44, 272 (1949); needs to be known approaches zero, we tend to A. T. Beck, Amer. J. Psychiat. 210 (1962); A. T. invent "knowledge" and assume that we under- Boisen, Psychiatry 2, 233 (1938); N. Kreitman, J. stand more than we actually We seem unable Sci. 107, 876 (1961); N. Kreitman, P. Sainsbury, to acknowledge that we simply don't know. The J. J. Towers, J. Scrivener, p. 887; needs for diagnosis and remediation of behav- H. O. and C. P. Fonda, J. Abnorm. Soc. Psychol. ioral and emotional problems are enormous. But 52, 262 (1956); W. Seeman, J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. rather than acknowledge that we are just em- 541 (1953). For an analysis of these artifacts and sum- barking on understanding, we continue to label maries of the disputes, see J. Zubin, Rev. patients "schizophrenic," "manic-depressive," Psychol. 18, 373 (1967); L. Phillips and J. G. Draguns, and "insane," as if in those words we had cap- 22, 447 (1971). 2. R. Benedict, J. Gen. Psychol. 10, 59 (1934). tured the essence of understanding. The facts of 3. See in this regard H. Becker, Outsiders: Studies the matter are that we have known for a long in the Sociology of Deviance (Free Press, New York, time that diagnoses are often not useful or reli- 1963); B. M. Braginsky, D. D. Braginsky, K. Ring, able, but we have nevertheless continued to use Methods of Madness: The Mental Hospital as a Last them. We now know that we cannot distinguish Resort (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, insanity from sanity. It is depressing to consider G. M. Crocetti and P. V. Lemkau, Amer. Sociol. Rev. how that information will be used. 30, 577 (1965); E. Goffman, Behavior in Public Places Not merely depressing, but frightening. How (Free Press, New York, 1964); R. D. Laing, The Di- many people, one are sane but not rec- vided Self: A Study of Sanity and Madness (Quad- rangle, Chicago, 1960); D. L. Phillips, Amer. Sociol. ognized as such in our psychiatric institutions? Rev. 28, 963 (1963); T. R. Sarbin, Psychol. Today 6, 18 How many have been needlessly stripped of (1972); E. Schur, Amer. J. Sociol. 75, 309 (1969); T. their privileges of citizenship, from the right to Szasz, Law, Liberty and Psychiatry (Macmillan, New vote and drive to that of handling their own ac- York; 1963); The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations counts? How many have feigned insanity in or- of a Theory of Mental Illness (Hoeber Harper, New der to avoid the criminal consequences of their York, 1963). For a critique of some of these views, see behavior, and, conversely, how many would W. R. Gove, Amer. Sociol. Rev. 35, 873 (1970). rather stand trial than live interminably in a psy- 4. E. Goffman, Asylums (Doubleday, Garden City, chiatric are wrongly thought to be N.Y., 1961). mentally ill? How many have been stigmatized 5. T. J. Scheff, Being Mentally A Sociological Theory (Aldine, Chicago, 1966). by well-intentioned, but nevertheless erroneous, 6. Data from a ninth pseudopatient are not incorpo- diagnoses? . . . diagnoses are rarely rated in this report because, although his sanity went found to be in error. The label sticks, a mark of undetected, he falsified aspects of his personal history, inadequacy forever. including his marital status and parental relationships. Finally, how many patients might be "sane" His experimental behaviors therefore were not identi- outside the psychiatric hospital but seem insane cal to those of the other Being Sane in Insane Places 185

7. Beyond the personal difficulties that the pseudo- diagnosis has a more favorable prognosis, and it was patient is likely to experience in the hospital, there are given by the only private hospital in our sample. On legal and social ones that, combined, require consider- the relations between social class and psychiatric diag- able attention before entry. For example, once ad- nosis, see A. B. and F. C. mitted to a psychiatric institution, it is difficult, if not Social Class and Mental A Community Study impossible, to be discharged on short notice, state law New York, 1958). to the contrary notwithstanding. I was not sensitive to 10. It is possible, of course, that patients have quite these difficulties at the outset of the project, nor to the broad latitudes in diagnosis and therefore are inclined personal and situational emergencies that can arise, to call many people sane, even those whose behavior but later a writ of habeas corpus was prepared for each is patently aberrant. However, although we have no of the entering pseudopatients and an attorney was hard data on this matter, it was our distinct impression kept "on call" during every hospitalization. I am that this was not the case. In many instances, patients grateful to John Kaplan and Robert Bartels for legal not only singled us out for attention, but came to im- advice and assistance in these matters. itate our behaviors and styles. 8. However distasteful such concealment is, it was 11. J. and E. Community a necessary first step to examining these questions. 135 (1965); A. Farina and K. Ring, J. Without concealment, there would have been no way 70, 47 (1965); H. E. Freeman and to know how valid these experiences were; nor was O. G. Simmons, The Mental Patient Comes Home there any way of knowing whether whatever detec- (Wiley, New York, 1963): W. J. Johannsen, Ment. tions occurred were a tribute to the diagnostic acumen giene 53, 218 (1969); A. S. Linsky, Soc. Psychiat. 5, of the staff or to the rumor network. Obvi- 166 (1970). ously, since my concerns are general ones that cut 12. For an example of a similar self-fulfilling across individual hospitals and staffs, I have respected prophecy, in this instance dealing with the "central" their anonymity and have eliminated clues that might trait of intelligence, see R. Rosenthal and L. Jacobson, lead to their identification. Pygmalion in the Classroom (Holt, Rinehart & 9. Interestingly, of the 12 admissions, were diag- ston, New York, 1968). nosed as schizophrenic and one, with the identical 13. D. B. Wexler and S. E. Scoville, Ariz. Rev. symptomatology, as manic-depressive psychosis. This 13, 1 (1971). 5

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