Patterns Plus

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Chapter 7 / Process

How to Put Off Doing a Job

Andy Rooney

In this essay, Andy Rooney turns the process approach around, using it to show some steps you can follow to avoid accomplishing something.

Words to Knoxv

philosophize to speculate or think about

ML ebruary is one of the most difficult times of the year to put off doing some of the things you've been meaning to do. There's no vacation coming up, there are no long weekends scheduled in the immediate future; it's just this long, grim February. Don't tell me it's a short month. February is the longest by a week.

you've thought it through. You might be doing the wrong thing. There might be an easier way to accomplish what you want to do, so think it over carefully from every angle. Perhaps someone has written a

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Questions About the Reading

1. In paragraph 1, what does the second sentence mean? How do vacations and long weekends make it easier to put off doing things?

2.Why does the writer say that February is the longest month?

3.Which of the writer's methods for putting off a task can someone use when all the others have been tried?

Questions About the Writer's Strategies

1. What is the writer's thesis? Can you identify a thesis statement, or is the thesis implied?

2.In what way is the thesis ironic?

3.What makes this a process essay? Does it describe more than one process?

4.In what humorous way does the writer let us know that he is something of an authority on his subject?

Writing Assignments

1. Write a process essay describing how you do get down to work— school work, an odd job, or perhaps an athletic activity or practicing with a musical instrument. How do you discipline yourself to begin, and what steps do you take to get started?

2. Rewrite the essay you wrote for assignment 1, using the second person singular. That is, write a process essay instructing someone else how to get started on a task.

3. Write a process essay describing the steps you would follow if you wanted to teach someone to read.

portraits of a Cop

tf. R. Kleinfield

Sometimes there can be nothing as interesting as watching a true professional at work. jV. R- Kleinfield wrote this article after watching one of New York City's police sketch artists on the job. Although the process is painstaking, the contribution the artist makes to criminal investigations is undeniable. Kleinfield shows us how these artists do it.

Words to Know

befuddle confuse

embellishment decorative addition

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Mr. Hagenlocher prefers to deal with just one reliable witness, rather than with many conflicting voices that simply befuddle him. All too often when he works with several witnesses, there is a clash of facts. "The more witnesses there are, the more confusing it gets," the artist says.

Determining who makes the most reliable witness involves percep- 6 tion, interrogation and luck. "There's a lot of psychology involved," Mr. Hagenlocher says. "You can sort of feel a good witness. If someone hesitates, or changes his mind, he's no good. If you have to pull things out of someone, he's no good. If the person just starts telling you about mouths and ears right away, then he's good."

Usually, the younger the witness, the better. "Fourteen-year-old 7 kids make great witnesses," Mr. Hagenlocher says. "They remember everything. Old ladies make terrible witnesses. They can't remember anything. You ask a child about a nose, and he'll tell you about a nose. You ask an adult about a nose, and he'll start telling you about the color of the person's socks." Youngsters also tend to draw their own sketches to help out.

Initially, Mr. Hagenlocher tries to put witnesses at ease so they trust 8 him, rather than barging up and identifying himself as a police officer. When questioning someone, the artist tries to exact as much detail as possible about the suspect, though he can get by on remarkably few facts. As a rule, he looks for five features: shape of face, hair, eyes, ears, and mouth. Distinguishing scars, birthmarks, beards, and mustaches are an artist's dream for producing a useful sketch, but they don't often crop up.

Mr. Hagenlocher always carts along 150 to 200 of the 900,000 mug 9 shots the police force keeps. Witnesses are asked to leaf through these to try to find a similar face, and then subtle changes can be made in the sketch. "You could use just one photo, and work from that," Mr. Hagenlocher says. "Using that as a base, you have the witness compare the hair—is it longer or shorter?—the mouth—is it thinner or wider?—and so forth. But that's harder and takes more time. It's usually much quicker to show him a lot of photos and have them pick one that's close."

"But I remember one time," the artist goes on, "when a girl flipped 10 through a mess of photos and finally picked one. 'That looks exactly like him/ she said, 'except the hair was longer, the mouth was wider, the eyes were further apart, the nose was smaller and the face was rounder.' She was a big help."

Besides the five basic features, Mr. Hagenlocher also questions witnesses about a suspect's apparent nationality and the nature of the

language he used. This can be of subtle assistance in sketching the suspect, but it can also sometimes link several sketches together. For instance, if over a short period of time three suspects are described as soft-spoken, in addition to having other similar traits, then chances are they are the same person. It is also a good idea to ask a witness if a suspect resembled a famous person. Suspects have been compared to Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Winston Churchill, Nelson Eddy, Jack Palance, Jackie Gleason, Mick Jagger and a Greek god.

After Mr. Hagenlocher completes a sketch, he shows it to the wit12 ness or witnesses for their reaction. Usually, there will be lots of minor, and sometimes not too minor, changes to be made. When it's finished, the sketch isn't intended to approach the polished form of a portrait. "We're just trying to narrow down the possibilities," Mr. Hagenlocher says. "If you've just got a big nose and a thin mouth to go with, then at least you've ruled out all the people with small noses and thick mouths. There are still millions of people still in the running, but millions have also been eliminated."

From time to time, Mr. Hagenlocher produces no sketch at all. This 13 happens when he receives too many conflicting reports from witnesses, or when a witness can't make up his mind or can't supply sufficient detail. "The whole point is to completely satisfy the witness," Mr. Hagenlocher says. "If the witness isn't satisfied, then I don't turn in

a sketch. Some women have cried when they saw my sketch. Others have said, 'No way, no way. That's nothing like him.' " . . .

Once a sketch is completed, two photographs are taken of it. These 14 go to the detective who requested the sketch, who can then order copies that can be distributed among police precincts and other forces and departments. The sketch itself, designated by an identification number, the case number, the date drawn and the artist's initials, is filed away in the sketching room. When a suspect is apprehended, the sketch is filed in a different place. Though they are supposed to, detectives don't always notify artists when culprits are caught because they are tied down with new cases. . . .

For the time being, Mr. Hagenlocher is content with turning out 15 sketches of people he doesn't know. "There's a tremendous satisfaction," he says. "If you can take a picture of a person after he's apprehended and have it look like your sketch, you say, 'Wow, I can't believe

I did that.' But you did."

Questions About the Reading

1. What do all the people whom Mr. Hagenlocher sketches have in common?

2.What is the first step Mr. Hagenlocher takes before drawing a police portrait?

3.What are the five facial features Hagenlocher looks for in making a sketch?

4.Under what conditions does Hagenlocher decide not to make a sketch?

Questions About the Writer's Strategies

1. The writer uses dialogue to describe the witnesses Hagenlocher thinks are most helpful. What is the effect of dialogue? Could the author have chosen another technique and not used dialogue? In which paragraph does he describe the "best" witnesses? Why are they best?

2.Which paragraphs develop the thesis of the essay? State the thesis of the essay in your own words.

3.What is the purpose of paragraphs 1 and 2?

4.What are the basic steps of the sketching process, according to the essay?

Writing Assignments

1. Perhaps you are familiar with another aspect of detective work, such as fingerprinting. Choose one aspect of a detective's work and describe the process used.

2. Describe any work of art that you have created, such as a painting or a piece of furniture, and explain the steps you took to make it.

Pithing a Frog

Irene Szurley (Student)

Irene Szurley is offering us more than instructions here. Her running commentary on the process she is describing leaves us asking more questions than just "are we doing it right?" She wants us to wonder "are we right to do this?" Be careful. After she gets through with you, you may never want to go to biology class again.

Words to Know

annihilation death cephalic of the head

cranial pertaining to the brain dubiously questionably flaccid soft, limp

grotesque distorted intricate complex middorsal mid-back

occipital the back part of the head posteriorly along the back part of the body

During the course of biological events, it often becomes necessary 1 to kill in order to learn about life. Biologists have devised many intricate procedures to accomplish this annihilation, and pithing is one of these.

This procedure is used as a means of destroying the central nervous 2 system in order to eliminate sensation and response in the frog, so that it can be properly dissected. Anaesthesis cannot possibly be used as an alternative method, because it wears off, and that could prove disastrously disadvantageous.

To begin this dubiously humane procedure, you, the aspiring muti- 3 lationist, must hold the cool, dry frog in your left fist, positioning your fingers and thumbs in the grotesque attitude of a vise-like grip. The index finger must press down on top of the poor, defenseless frog's head, exerting pressure so that the spinal cord will be bent at the neck.

Next, take your right index finger and use your nail—the longer, 4 the better tactile response—to find the junction of the frog's vertebral column with its occipital bone. If a nail doesn't work, bring the point

Chapter7/Process

of a dull dissecting needle—we don't want any more pain than is absolutely necessary—posteriorly along the animal's middorsal line until the first bulge of a vertebra can be felt twinging through the skin.

Now cast aside your dull needles. You are ready to begin the actual 5 rupturing—the mutilation. Procure a sharp needle and puncture the skin at the junction you have just located. Neatness is important, so remember to make only a hole in the skin; no lengthy gashes, please.

Retrieve your dull needle and insert it through this gaping hole, 6 plunging it into the spinal cord as far as it will go. Don't be timid now. At this point, the frog will become totally limp and flaccid, as he is in a state of spinal shock. You will no longer have to worry about his squirming and wiggling efforts to free himself, all in vain. Tsk.

As soon as the probe is in the cord up to the hilt, turn it and direct 7 it forward into the cranial cavity. Move it parallel to the external surface, which by this time is awash with cephalic blood, but don't let this minor problem deter you. If the needle is positioned correctly in the cranial cavity, it will be possible to feel bone on all sides of the needle.

Begin, slowly at first, then progressively more rapidly, to twist the 8 needle; thrash it right and left. Complete destruction of the brain is inevitable, even if you are clumsy.

After this step, the frog is single-pithed. Since our knowledge must 9 know no bounds, we must invariably explore further. Place the needle at right angles to the body surface, turn its handle towards the vacant head, parallel to the external surface. Gently, since we must maintain the essence of humanity at all times, push the needle into the spinal cord. A quick way to test your aim, and to amuse your friends, is to see if the frog's legs have spastically jerked out straight. If so, then you may proceed to slowly rotate your implement of destruction until all the nerves are disconnected and frayed. The frog is now double-pithed and unable to offer any resistance to your further exploratory efforts

in the name of science.

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Questions About the Reading

1. What does the writer mean by the phrase "kill in order to learn about life"?

2. What is pithing? First describe it as you understand it from the essay and then check a dictionary.

3, What is the purpose of destroying the frog's brain? 4, What further steps are necessary to double-pith?

Questions About the Writer's Strategies

1. What tone is established in this essay? What words or phrases establish the tone? What is the effect of this tone on the reader?

2.Is the technical terminology clearly defined for the nonscientist? What additional terms would you like to see defined by the writer?

3.Where does the writer define pithing? Is the definition necessary? Is that the most effective placement for it?

4.In what order does the writer organize her material?

Writing Assignments

1.Describe any other common procedure, using descriptive words to convey your personal feeling about the procedures. For example, tell how to iron a shirt, wash the car, clean the bathtub, or take out the garbage. Tell your feelings and reactions after each step.

2.Rewrite the paragraph eliminating the emotionally charged or sarcastic words, and compare the effectiveness of the two paragraphs.

3.Give a new owner an explanation of how to housebreak a dog or how to care for a bird or cat. Describe some of the less pleasant sides of these tasks.

Topic

Cause

IN YOUR LOCAL newspaper you notice a story about a car accident that took place late on a Saturday night. The driver missed a curve, slammed into a tree, and was badly injured. Police investigators reported that the young victim had been drinking heavily with friends and lost control of the car on the way home. This news article is a relatively clear example of a cause, heavy consumption of alcohol, and an effect, a serious accident.

Sometimes you can recognize immediately that cause and effect is part of a writer's mode of development because the writer uses words that signal a cause-and-effect relationship—words like because, therefore, as a result, and consequently. However, writers will not necessarily indicate cause and effect so directly. Sometimes a cause- and-effect relationship will be clear only from the arrangement of ideas or the narrative sequence of events. Usually, though, the topic sentence or thesis statement will indicate that the writer is describing a cause-and- effect situation.

A cause-and-effect explanation tells why something turns out the way it does. In some cases, a single cause may contribute heavily to a single effect or result. In the following paragraph, the writer says that a single c a u s e - attention to children's needs—led to the addition of family rooms to houses.

Tn the suburban houses of the late 1940s and 1950s, attention to children's needs—some would say the creation of children's needs—produced a special place for their activities. First labeled the don't-say-no space or the multipurpose

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room, it was later called the family room in a 1947 Parent's L Magazine model house. Sometimes no more than an extension of the kitchen, the family room was usually accessible from the outside through a sliding glass door. It had a linoleum floor for dancing, a table for bridge games, and comfortable furniture for the new family pastime of watching television. In 1946, the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] authorized four hundred television stations, and antennas went up on the first eight thousand rooftops across the country Although the family room most often served as a place where children could do as they pleased in the midst of clutter and noise, it was also an architectural expression

of family togetherness.

Gwendolyn Wright,

"Levittown and the Postwar Baby Boom"

At other times, the writer explains that several causes contributed to or resulted in a particular effect.

For example, in the following essay, the writer suggests three causes for the disappearance of moonshining—the undercover manufacturing of whiskey—as a fine art.

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(effect 5) exposes humans to radiation disease (an effect). So you can see that the cause-and-effect relationships can be complicated and require careful analysis by the writer.

You should keep two factors in mind when you are writing a cause-and-effect essay. First, be sure that you have actually thought through the causes and effects very carefully. You should not be satisfied with considering only the most obvious or simple causes. For example, we tend to oversimplify and cite one cause as the reason for most wars—the attack on Pearl Harbor for the United States entering World War II, the firing on Fort Sumter for the start of the Civil War, and so on. For the most part, these tend to be the last of many contributing causes that have led to the war. A thoughtful discussion of such a topic in your writing would include an explanation of some of the contributing, less obvious but perhaps more important causes.

Second, you should be careful that you do not mistake some event as a cause simply because it preceded a particular effect. For instance, if a child swallows a coin and then comes down with measles, it would be inaccurate and faulty reasoning to assume that swallowing the coin was a cause of the measles.

Even though you need to guard against faulty assumptions, you should also be aware that writers do not always state a cause-and-effect relationship directly. Sometimes they leave it to the reader to infer such a relationship. That is, the writer does not state the relationship, but gives certain information arranged in such a way that the reader will be able to conclude that the relationship exists, as in the following sentences.

On the ground next to the parked Jeep, the compass glinted in the moonlight. Deep in the woods, shielded from the moon, the hungry teenager circled in the dark with little idea where he had been or how to get where he wanted to go.

Although the writer does not directly state what happened, it is not hard to infer that the teenager dropped his compass without realizing it, with the effect that he is now lost.

You will need to make inferences when you read cause-and-effect writing as well as other modes of devel-

opment. When you make an inference, be sure that you can pinpoint the information and trace the logic on which your inference is based. When you are writing cause and effect, be sure to give enough information, directly or indirectly stated, that your reader can determine the cause-and-effect relationship.

You use cause-and-effect reasoning every day in solving problems and making decisions. Legislators create laws to address or prevent the causes of certain problems. In a similar way, scientists find cures for diseases when they are able to isolate the causes of those diseases. Understanding the relation between causes and effects is extremely important both in day-to-day living and in long-range planning. Communicating your understanding in writing is significant evidence of your ability to reason clearly and accurately.

In the selections that follow, the writers use different methods to express interesting cause-and-effect relationships clearly. As you read, try to be aware of when you are inferring these relationships and when they are directly stated. The questions and assignments at the ends of the readings will help you analyze the writers' styles and will give you practice with the cause-and-effect mode of development.

A Momentous Arrest

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was catapulted into international fame when, working for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he organized blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, to boycott that city's segregated buses in 1955 and 1956. King, preaching nonviolent resistance to segregation, became the most important leader in the civil rights movement that changed American life so radically over the next decade. Here, in a simple, matter-of-fact tone, King tells of the incident that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott.

Words to Know

accommodate to make space for, oblige

complied carried out willingly

on December 1, 1955, an attractive Negro seamstress, Mrs. Rosa Parks, boarded the Cleveland Avenue Bus in downtown Montgomery. She was returning home after her regular day's work in the Montgomery Fair—a leading department store. Tired from long hours on her feet, Mrs. Parks sat down in the first seat behind the section reserved for whites. Not long after she took her seat, the bus operator ordered her, along with three other Negro passengers, to move back in order to accommodate boarding white passengers. By this time every seat in the bus was taken. This meant that if Mrs. Parks followed the driver's command she would have to stand while a white male passenger, who had just boarded the bus, would sit. The other three Negro passengers immediately complied with the driver's request. But Mrs. Parks quietly refused. The result was her arrest.

Questions About the Reading

1. Was Mrs. Parks breaking any law or custom in sitting where she did?

2.Why didn't Mrs. Parks move when the bus driver asked her to do so? Do you think she would have moved if the white passenger had been a woman instead of a man?

3.Was Mrs. Parks thinking about the civil rights movement when she refused to move? Explain your answer.

Questions About the Writer's Strategies

1. Which sentence states the cause in this paragraph? Which one states the effect?

2.Do you think the writer presents the incident objectively or subjectively? Use words and phrases from the paragraph to support your answer.

3.Other than cause and effect, what mode of development dominates in this paragraph?

4.What is the order in which the incidents in the paragraph are arranged?

5.Do you sympathize with Mrs. Parks? Explain your answer, citing examples from the essay that influence your feelings.

Writing Assignments

1. If you have never done so, read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech (page 376). Isolate one or a few statements in the speech and, using them as your cause, write a paragraph explaining their effect on your own attitudes.

2. Think of a situation that has made you angry enough to defy authority and risk discipline or even arrest. Perhaps you have protested an unfair grade, a silly dormitory rule, an unjust traffic ticket, or something of more consequence, like investment in South Africa. Using cause and effect as your mode of development, describe in a paragraph what happened. Try to write objectively.