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Caitlyn Jenner, photographed in her Malibu home. “If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life,’ ” she says.

 On March 15, the day of the Los Angeles Marathon and myriad street closures, Bruce Jenner left his bunker-style home above Decker Canyon in Malibu at 4:15 in the morning to avoid any possibility of being late. Detection seemed unlikely this early in the day; even the paparazzi go back to their wormholes for a few hours’ sleep before the body count begins again. But anything could happen, as it had in January of 2014 in the space of roughly five feet from the back door of a medical office to the car, with Jenner’s neck in a bandage from a tracheal shave, his picture snapped and disseminated into the Internet infinity of insatiable gossip at warp speed. So the more nondescript the car the better, which is why the black 2014 BMW sedan, in the conspicuous consumption of Los Angeles, was inconspicuous. Jenner had already been taking hormones. The hair on his body and his facial hair had been removed. He had had his nose fixed twice and the tracheal shave. On this Sunday his destination was the office of a surgeon specializing in what is known as facial-feminization surgery. Pioneered in the 80s and 90s by San Francisco plastic surgeon Douglas Ousterhout, it can involve such procedures as hairline correction, forehead contouring, and jaw and chin contouring. There would also be a procedure to augment his breasts. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz. The car made its way to the surgical center in Beverly Hills without incident. Jenner was nervous. He knew there would be pain, and he hated taking any kind of drug to alleviate it because of the way it made him feel. But there was more than just physical dread. Several days earlier I had walked with him as he played golf at the exclusive Sherwood Country Club, in Thousand Oaks. He has been a member there for 15 years, ever since Kris Jenner, feeling generous toward her husband, paid the roughly $225,000 initiation fee. He played by himself because he almost always played by himself, a loner who said he wasn’t lonely, although it was hard to see the difference. He didn’t take his game very seriously: he could have been a scratch golfer if he had. He often played two balls at a time, voicing the usual golfer epithets of “Sit!” and “Get down!” He liked the peace of it, the Santa Monica Mountains safeguarding the holes like a cupped hand. It was perhaps the only open space he could go to without getting besieged by the paparazzi, not only with their cameras hanging from their necks like evil eyes but also with their questions: “Are you a woman yet?” “Do you still have a penis?” “You wonder if you are making all the right decisions,” he said as he played in the anonymous uniform of blue sweater and gray slacks and hat and sneakers, parring the 517-yard par-five second hole because he, as usual, drove it at least 280 yards off the tee, being the kind of athlete who can pick up anything instantly. “I wish I were kind of normal. It would be so much more simple. “The uncomfortableness of being me never leaves all day long,” he continued. “I’m not doing this to be interesting. I’m doing this to live.” Given his sense of humor, he couldn’t resist adding, “I’m not doing this so I can hit it off the women’s tee.” After all the confusion and shame and self-conflict and dishonesty for virtually all of his 65 years, was this the right decision? Could he go on living as he had? He was not having genital surgery. There are an estimated 700,000 transgender women and men in the United States; only about a quarter of transgender women have had genital surgery. There is a common misperception that such surgery is somehow “required” to be a transgender woman or man, akin to a certificate from the Transgender Licensing Board. The transgender community for years has been trying to get the public to understand that genitalia are not a determinant of gender: you can be born a woman with male genitalia, just as you can be born a man with female genitalia. In any case, under the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s “Standards of Care,” formed by a consensus of leading psychologists and medical specialists, genital surgery is not advised for at least a year after transition. Jenner had actually gone through various stages of transition once before, in the mid- and late 1980s. He took hormones that resulted in breast growth and had his beard removed through an incredibly painful two-year regimen of electrolysis that he withstood without any medication because “pain is kind of, for me, part of the pain for being me … this is what you get for being who you are. Just take the pain.” The physical changes had been so noticeable that rumors started, including a call from The New York Times about what was going on with Bruce Jenner, in particular Bruce Jenner the winner of the gold medal in the decathlon in the 1976 Olympics, a symbol of masculinity as interwoven into American culture as the Marlboro Man. Jenner had once talked in jest about going to Denmark and coming back to his four young children as Aunt Heather. It was obviously a bizarre thought, indicative of his terrible confusion. It also could be seen as a precursor to the fractured relationship that would occur when he essentially lost contact with the four children from his first two marriages, eventually in favor of yet another new family, with values that had once seemed so alien to his, the Kardashians.

 He was living in a one-bedroom house in the Malibu hills in almost total seclusion after he started to transition in the 80s. Dishes piled up. His career was in limbo after an income of half a million dollars the first year after the Olympics. Everything had seemed perfect then, or as close to perfect as it can be when you are pretending your way through life, conforming to the vision of millions because that’s what they expect, and that’s exactly what you give them because you are good at it, scary good. ABC executive Irwin Weiner had offered him a broadcasting job the very same night as his Olympic victory, in Montreal. He tried out for the lead role in the film Superman, which was too much of a stretch without acting experience, although Jenner was actually one of the great actors of our time. He adorned the front of the Wheaties box. He drank orange juice for Tropicana and took pictures for Minolta. He gave speeches about the 48 hours of his Olympic win all over the country to enthralled audiences. He was red, white, and blue. He was Mom and apple pie with a daub of vanilla ice cream for extra deliciousness in a country desperate for such an image. He had a tireless work ethic. He had beaten the Commie bastards. He was America. “Jenner is twirling the nation like a baton; he and his wife, Chrystie, are so high up on the pedestal of American heroism, it would take a crane to get them down,” wrote Tony Kornheiser in The New York Times in 1977. He also secretly wore panty hose and a bra underneath his suit so he could at least feel some sensation of his true gender identity. He stopped transitioning in the late 80s. He was scared of what the reaction would be. He decided he could not do this to his four children, Burt, Cassandra, Brandon, and Brody. He needed to jump-start his career. He needed credibility to squelch the rumors, and he told me marrying Kris Kardashian, in 1991, helped give him that along with compatibility and love. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz; Styled by Jessica Diehl. In March, he had been living on his own for about a year and a half since his and Kris’s separation, which would ultimately lead to their divorce after 23 years of marriage. It gave him the opportunity to live more freely as a woman. It wasn’t enough. He worried the most about how the two daughters whom he and Kris share, Kendall and Kylie, would react to his transition. But Kendall was a 19-year- old supermodel, and Kylie, at 17, already had endorsement deals for various beauty products, in addition to what they make from Keeping Up with the Kardashians, on the E! network. They were each independent enough to have bought homes, Kendall a condo for $1.4 million in the area of Westwood, Kylie a house in Calabasas for $2.7 million. Now that he felt the two girls could process the change, there was only one step left. Bruce Jenner went to the office in Beverly Hills, thinking the facial-feminization surgery would take about five hours. Caitlyn Jenner left the office in Beverly Hills after the procedure had taken roughly 10 hours. Comfort in Isolation

 During the first full day of recuperation, there was a moment when Caitlyn Jenner lay down on her bed as best she could, hoping to get some sleep. The pain was such that she had no choice but to be on large amounts of medication. She had ice packs over her eyes. She closed them for a little bit, then suddenly shot up, causing the ice packs to slip. She was undergoing something that had never happened before in 65 years of life: a panic attack. She told the 24-hour nurse on duty she had to get out of bed. Caitlyn asked her to turn on the television so the sound would be a distraction. The recently purchased $3.6 million home—built with concrete slabs like the artillery batteries you can still see on the Pacific coast, put there in case of a Japanese attack during World War II—was one floor on top of an aboveground garage. There were three bedrooms off the long hallway and then the kitchen and dining area and sunken living room in an open floor plan. It offered remarkable views of Catalina Island and the Pacific and glimpses of whales through the floor-to-ceiling windows in her bedroom. Because of its literal mountaintop location, you could see everything but not hear anything except the flapping-flag sound of the wind. No nearby neighbors. No cars pulling up. It was encapsulated in silence, and maybe that was the point of living there, comfort in isolation. Caitlyn went into the long hallway and paced back and forth on the dark wood floor, where not even the footsteps made a sound. The panic attack lasted about 15 seconds, but a single thought continued to course through her mind: “What did I just do? What did I just do to myself?” A counselor from the Los Angeles Gender Center came over to the house so Caitlyn could talk to someone with professional expertise. The counselor helped ease her mind. She said such reactions were often induced by the pain medication. She also said such second-guessing was human and temporary. The thought has since passed and has not come back. There is no buyer’s remorse. Not that it matters anyway, because there is no turning back. “If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life,’ ” she told me. “ ‘You never dealt with yourself,’ and I don’t want that to happen.” Bruce Jenner, she said, was “always telling lies.” Caitlyn Jenner, she said, “doesn’t have any lies.” Bruce Jenner caused hurt to four children who loved and idolized him before he gave his love and total attention to another family. Caitlyn Jenner has the possibility to make it right and close the fissure as much as she can. “I have high hopes that Caitlyn is a better person than Bruce,” said his oldest son, Burt, now 36. “I’m very much looking forward to that.” “It Ain’t Bruce”

 This is the most remarkable story I have ever worked on in 38 years as a journalist, the only writer in the world with unlimited access to Jenner for a story of global interest, witness to the final months of one of the most iconic male athletes before he disappears and a woman appears in his place. I spent hundreds of hours with the man over a period of three months. Then I spent countless hours with the woman. It was initially weird, and virtually anyone who says it isn’t weird is giving themselves far too much credit. It was initially surreal, having seen Bruce Jenner set seven personal bests as he won the decathlon in 1976 with that perfectly buff body, and seeing him now in an elegant black dress with fine-looking breasts. With apologies to members of the transgender community, who are rightfully sensitive about the use of language, I constantly used “he” instead of “she,” and at one point called Caitlyn “dude” out of force of habit, and closed conversations with “All right, man, I’ll talk to you soon.” “I don’t really get hung up,” she told me. “A guy came in the other day and I was fully dressed—it’s just habit, I said ‘Hi, Bruce here,’ and I went, Oh fuck, it ain’t Bruce, I was screwing up doing it.” My miscues have nothing to do with intolerance—I have been a cross-dresser with a big-time fetish for women’s leather and an open critic of the often arbitrary delineation between men’s and women’s clothing—but because it is a strange story regardless of all the important inroads that have been made by transgender men and women into the cultural mainstream. Just as it is a tragic one, and a painful one, and a harmful one, for so many years, not just to himself but to others he should have been closest to, and a lonely one, and a brave one, and a funny one, and maybe, just maybe, because it is far too early to tell, a triumphant one. The Show Must Go On

 Or maybe, given Jenner’s past, it’s all just fodder for a “docu-series” (i.e., reality television in a fancy suit) that, in May, Caitlyn started shooting for the E! network, debuting this summer. Can you hear the thunder of a Kardashian spin-off? The same four children whom he lost contact with for years at a time, none of whom have the last name Kardashian, fear exactly that. They also fear that the spectacular way in which she came across on the ABC 20/20 special two-hour interview with Diane Sawyer (Caitlyn had completed her transition by the time the show aired, on April 24) will endanger what she can do for the continued momentum of the transgender movement. Instead they worry that the whole narrative will devolve into spectacle and shenanigans intercut with a little dash of social cause and the use of paid consultants who are experts on transgender issues as a cover for social responsibility. She is also someone who in the past has been easily influenced by the opinions of others. Caitlyn insists that will not be the case since, as an executive producer, she has full creative control. Her insistence is real. The children, collectively known as “the Jenner side” and all in their 30s and as grounded as the Kardashians are not, feel otherwise. Through the portal of their television show, the relationship of the Kardashian children to their dad has unfolded publicly for eight years. The relationship of the Jenner children with their dad has gone untold: unless you were a Keeping Up with the Kardashians fetishist, you might not even know that he had four other children. Given the pressure placed on them to participate in the upcoming E! series, it became clear to me that their story is more germane than ever. They disagree with their father’s decision to use not only the same production company that made Keeping Up with the Kardashians but many of the same people, including several original executive producers. The E! network, with such shows as Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Total Divas, The Royals, and Botched, is not known for its subtlety. In the hope of repairing their relationship with their father, they—Brandon in particular—have supported Caitlyn, and that support has been inspiring to her. The last thing the Jenner kids want to do is reverse the rebuilding of the relationship. But despite numerous entreaties from their father as well as the head of E! programming, the Jenner children refuse to participate, forgoing financial gain and exposure in the process. At first their decision did not seem to register with Caitlyn. She kept hoping they could be persuaded because she knows from eight years on Keeping Up with the Kardashians the necessity of a family dynamic for ratings success. When she realized the decision was final, she became increasingly frustrated and on one occasion hurled profanities. She told me she felt “terribly disappointed and terribly hurt.” Caitlyn neither understands the tragic irony of those words nor recognizes her historical tendency toward self-victimization. Based on hours of interviews with the Jenner children, as well as his two ex-wives, a picture emerges of a father who had been absent for years at a time, insensitive, hurtful, and weak in no longer making an effort to keep up contact after he married Kris Kardashian. Caitlyn openly acknowledged to me mistakes made with them as Bruce Jenner. The regret is genuine. Juggling two ex-wives with a third wife was at times very difficult. But not seeing his children for long periods, beginning around the time of their adolescence, not acknowledging birthdays, not going to graduations, and intentionally not being there for the birth of his daughter were Jenner’s own decisions. The wounding only went deeper, given that Bruce Jenner was an exemplary father to the so-called Kardashian side, including Kendall and Kylie. In the course of their father’s journey, the Jenner children have gone through their own journey as well. “Love has nothing to do with gender,” said his daughter Cassandra. She paused for a moment and added this: “There’s no way to separate what he’s going through, the trap he’s been in for the past 60 years and how that has affected his choices around love and relationships. It’s impossible.” Light and Shadow

 About two weeks after the surgery, I sat on a stool at the kitchen counter opposite Caitlyn. She had listened to Monica Lewinsky’s powerful TED talk on what it is like to be the ceaseless target of cyber-ridicule. The talk had struck a chord with Caitlyn because of the similarities with how she had been dealt with on the Internet. She had in front of her five pages of notes. It dawned on me that she was going to give her version of a TED talk to an audience of one: me. It went on for nearly 40 minutes. My heart bled for Caitlyn. She was so earnest, trying so hard: you could feel the essential goodness in Caitlyn, and Bruce Jenner before her. Mistakes had been made, ones that caused terrible scars, but as many others had said about him, they emanated from following a path of least resistance as well as from a hatred of confrontation. Bruce was instantly likable, a singsong lilt in a voice of amusement and bemusement, shades of sweet goofiness. It was how he liked to interact, bouncing along the surface. But it seemed like he often used the method of communication as a guard against emotional connection. “If he had emotional legs he’d get up and walk to you,” Jenner’s second wife, Linda Thompson, remembers telling her son Brandon after his father had not attended his high-school graduation. “But he doesn’t. He just doesn’t have that capability.” It was late afternoon by the time the simulated TED talk ended. Light streamed in through the kitchen bay windows, slanting through the bottle of handwash onto the porcelain sink and the Wolf stove and the Sub-Zero refrigerator. The clarity was piercing, only adding to the stillness, relics of an archaeological expedition, a remodeled kitchen untouched by human hands discovered in the hills of Malibu. The light then suddenly shifted. It angled on her face in a perfect dissection of brightness and shadow down the centerline. Caitlyn looked gorgeous in the light. Her features were accentuated and popped. Just as her features were obscured in the shadow. I did not know which way it would go. Only where it had already gone. “Nature Made a Mistake”

 When Jenner’s sister Pam was a young girl she noticed something puzzling one day on the bookshelf of the family’s house, in Cornwall, New York. It was the mid-1950s, and like millions of other American families in the 50s the Jenners had a set of encyclopedias. What was odd to Pam was the way in which her brother Bruce, 16 months younger, had arranged them: from A to Z, right to left. She noticed how her younger brother spelled “saw” as “was” and “was” as “saw.” Pam concluded, as would just about any older sibling caught up in her own world, that Bruce was just “a stupid younger brother.” Their mother, Esther, was puzzled. When she worked on spelling with her son she noticed that he spelled every word right one day and then completely forgot the next. “Bruce, you’re not concentrating. You’re daydreaming,” she said to him. In second grade, since he still could not read, he was held back. Teachers thought that the child, whose father, William, was a tree surgeon, was just lazy. It was only later that Jenner was diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disability marked by difficulty in processing language. He wasn’t lazy or stupid. He could spell every word right the first time because he had memorized them. His self-esteem as a child was understandably poor. Dealing with his dyslexia was enough of a challenge for Bruce Jenner. It was enough for any young boy trying to navigate the rock-rimmed shore of peer acceptance. Jenner is fond of invoking God in setting out the challenges of his life. If that is the case, then God had a daily double in store. When Bruce was around 10, he would sneak into his mother’s closet, sometimes his sister’s. He would put on a dress and maybe wrap a scarf around his head and walk around outside. Without knowing the clinical term for what he was feeling—gender dysphoria—he found himself “fascinated by it all,” just as he felt “scared to death somebody was going to find out.” Because there was nobody he could talk to about it. He didn’t tell anyone until the early 1970s, when he told his first wife, Chrystie. In the context of the late 1950s the very concept of a transgender woman in the United States was foreign, the only publicized experience that of Christine Jorgensen, a former World War II G.I. from the Bronx whose name at the time was George Jorgensen Jr. She underwent gender-reassignment surgery in Denmark because it wasn’t done in the United States. The story became public on December 1, 1952, after the New York Daily News got ahold of a letter Jorgensen had written to her parents in which she said, “Nature made a mistake, which I have had corrected, and I am now your daughter.” The resulting publicity was astonishing but the interest largely prurient and centered on someone with a penis going to a foreign country and coming back with a vagina. In fifth grade Jenner ran in a race, perhaps the most important sporting event in which he ever participated. He turned out to be the fastest kid in school. His athletic ability led him to football and basketball at Sleepy Hollow High School, and then Newtown High School, in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, after he moved there in the middle of 11th grade. It also exhibited itself out of school when he won the Eastern States water-skiing championship. “Sports saved my life,” Jenner said. He became popular because jocks are always popular. He became determined in sports because he was gifted, but also because it helped to prove his masculinity, since, as he told me, “that’s what everybody wants to believe.” He went to tiny Graceland College, in Lamoni, Iowa, on a football scholarship. He hurt his knee, ending his football career. But a coach there, L. D. Weldon, who happened to be an expert in the decathlon, saw something in Jenner, and Jenner responded to it. He came out of nowhere in April of 1971 to win the decathlon at the Kansas Relays. He made the United States Olympic team in 1972 and finished 10th in the decathlon in Munich. After the end of the competition, 10 different events in two days, Jenner went on a long-distance run through the streets of Munich. It was the beginning of a training regimen in which he would practice eight hours a day, every day, for the next four years, leading up to the 1976 Olympics. Going for Gold

 The decathlon was perfect for him, not just as a sporting event and the ultimate in he-man-ism but also as a years-long diversion from the awareness that he identified as a woman. He hoped for much of his life that the gender dysphoria would somehow go away, be stamped out with enough diversions, or at least not occupy his thoughts: decathlon training, other sports after the Olympics such as professional car racing and tennis, becoming a pilot, marrying and having a family. “You always think in the back of your mind, I can live with this. I can fix this…. If I just do this it’s going to be O.K.,” he told me. On July 30, 1976, in Montreal, Jenner won the decathlon, the most grueling event of the Olympics, at the age of 26, with a world record 8,618 points. Because of the times, a country struggling with the aftershock of Vietnam and the oil embargo and Watergate, he became a supercharged hero. The United States’ performance at the 1976 Olympics—where it won only one individual gold medal in men’s track and none in women’s track and was embarrassed by the Soviet Union and East Germany at the peak of the Cold War—only heightened the need. Tens of millions watched Jenner on television, buff and with that mane of hair flowing like a lion’s, running through the Olympic stadium holding a small American flag which had been handed to him by an overjoyed spectator. He was six two and 194 pounds of mostly muscle, perfectly proportioned. “Bruce Jenner of San Jose, Calif., wants to be a movie or television star. After his record-breaking victory in the Olympic decathlon today, he probably can be anything he wants,” wrote Frank Litsky in The New York Times. Although Litsky did not know it at the time—no one did, except for Jenner’s first wife, and she did not know the full extent—falser words could never be written. Becoming a woman wasn’t going to happen, because he had won not simply a gold medal but a gold medal in the decathlon, which carries with it the title of “the world’s greatest athlete.” Litsky went on to list the usual descriptive suspects—“a handsome, cheerful, outgoing man with long, straight blond hair.” “People say, Oh my God, what a body—you look great. That wasn’t what I was looking for,” Jenner told me. “I could not really cross-dress. I tried to grow my hair out as much as I could without getting yelled at.” The night of his Olympic win Jenner and his wife, Chrystie, stayed in a penthouse hotel suite in Montreal. It was arranged by his lawyer at the time, Alan Rothenberg, after he realized that the Jenners, typically, with their innocence and lack of lavishness, had made no plan for a place to stay. After Jenner woke up the next morning, he walked past the grand piano into the bathroom. He was naked. The gold medal was around his neck. He looked at himself in the mirror. The grand diversion of winning the decathlon was finished. Everything would change. Nothing had changed. He didn’t see a hunk. He didn’t see success. Instead of reveling in the accomplishment, he diminished it in his mind because he had done it, the stupid little boy with dyslexia. The little boy who knew he had been born a girl and was now just trying to put one over on the rest of the world. “Now what do I do?” he said to himself. He was too irresistible for the starved nation, too perfect. He almost immediately signed a contract with ABC. He got taken in the seventh round of the National Basketball Association draft in 1977 by the Kansas City Kings. He did the endorsements and the speeches. He knew he was bullshitting. “Underneath my suit I have a bra and panty hose and this and that and thinking to myself, They know nothing about me. “I walk off the stage and I’d feel like a liar. And I would say, ‘Fuck, I can’t tell my story. There’s so much more to me than those 48 hours in the stadium, and I can’t talk about it.’ It was frustrating. You get mad at yourself…. Little did they know I was totally empty inside. Totally empty inside.” Chrystie

 Jenner had married Chrystie Crownover in 1972. They had met in college. She was the daughter of a minister from southeastern Washington State. She suggested the marriage, in part because her job as a flight attendant for United Airlines gave her access to free tickets for herself and her spouse, so they could fly to decathlon events all over the world. In stark contrast to the Kardashian period, they drove under the redwoods of California with Beethoven blasting and grabbed a rope swing to drop into the Russian River. Chrystie was the breadwinner, a devoted partner in his journey to a gold medal. In 1973, early in the marriage, Chrystie noticed a rubber band attached to the hook of one of her bras. She asked Bruce about it. She remembered him telling her, “Gee, I don’t know.” Subsequently he gathered the nerve and brought up the mystery of the bra again. “That’s why the rubber band. Because I’ve been wearing your clothes.” Photograph by Annie Leibovitz; Styled by Jessica Diehl. “He told me he always wanted to be a woman,” Chrystie said. “He told me as a little kid how that felt. He told me [of] different fantasies that he had, related to loving women.” Chrystie felt immense gratitude that he was sharing something so intimate with her. “If he had been wanting to dress up when he was with me or any of those things it would have been different. But he was still masculine. He was still my hero. He was still pursuing this goal of being the greatest athlete in the world. It wasn’t like it was a hard thing to handle. It was like a piece of information he shared with me and then he went back to being a real guy…. He had a strong, healthy sex drive and seemed like pure man.” Bruce Jenner as Bruce Jenner had a sexual appetite exclusively for women. Caitlyn has no idea what the future will hold as Caitlyn Jenner. But, she adds, it is not important to her right now. “If you have a list of 10 reasons to transition, sex would be number 10.” It should also be emphasized that sexual preference and gender identity have nothing to do with each other. In September 1978, Chrystie and Bruce had Burton, or Burt for short. He was named after Jenner’s younger brother, who had died in a car accident shortly after the Olympics, on the day he was supposed to fly to California to live with Bruce and establish residency in hopes of attending a state university. The marriage began to fissure. They separated for a period of time, then got back together. Chrystie became pregnant; in an interview in Playboy in 1980, Jenner said, “My first reaction was that I didn’t want it,” and he asked her to consider an abortion. They separated permanently when Chrystie was still pregnant with their second child, Cassandra, who is now 34. She has two young children with her husband, Michael Marino, who is in private equity. “I never knew he wasn’t at my birth until I was about 13 years old and we were arguing on the phone about money,” Cassandra, a 2001 graduate of Boston College and stay-at-home mother, told me. “He kept saying, ‘You don’t know the whole story.’ “I hung up the phone and was asking my mom what he was talking about until she confessed the history behind my birth.” Jenner told me he was in the middle of divorcing Chrystie when he found out she was pregnant. He said he brought up the idea of an abortion but rejected it after 30 seconds. He was in a hotel room in Kansas City when Cassandra was born. He cried, but “under the circumstances I could not even see myself being there.” Linda

 Jenner started seeing Linda Thompson, a performer on the syndicated country-music and variety show Hee Haw who would go on to have an accomplished career as a songwriter. (She and her second husband, David Foster, co-wrote the song “I Have Nothing,” made famous by Whitney Houston.) Bruce and Linda had met at the Playboy Mansion during a tennis tournament. Jenner divorced Chrystie in 1980 and married Thompson several months later, in January of the following year. She was pregnant at the time with their first son, Brandon. He appeared on the cover of Playgirl with Linda Thompson in May of 1982. He was shirtless (but not hairless). Linda, in what looks to be a low-cut leotard, has her lips and nose pressed sensually against his cheek. In a question-and-answer interview he talks about his “masculine qualities” and their healthy sex life and the fabulousness of their marriage after a year. It appears obvious in hindsight that he was desperately trying to maintain his cover in a society that still largely condemned transgender women and men. They had been married for more than four years and had two children, Brandon and Brody, when he told Linda of his gender dysphoria. She said she was shocked and devastated. Brandon was about three and a half at the time and Brody 18 months. They went into counseling, but, Thompson told me, the therapist said the condition would never go away. “ ‘You can live with him as he transitions and you can have what you might consider a lesbian relationship because, you know, you can stay married to him. You will both be women, but he’s attracted to you. He would like to stay married to you. Or if that doesn’t appeal to you, you can move on.’ “And I opted for the latter because I married a man…. As much as I felt my life and my dream were destroyed and I was going to have to get a divorce, and then my kids, I was going one day to have to explain to them—I thought my pain doesn’t compare to the pain that he’s in. At least I’m comfortable living in my own body.” Jenner describes the period of the mid- to late 80s as “the dark years.” He had no social life. Professional opportunities dwindled, in part because he had no motivation to work and didn’t seem to care. He had moved from ABC to NBC, and around 1983 his contract was not renewed. He was tired of giving speeches. His acting career had resulted in one feature film, back in 1980: Allan Carr’s frantic Can’t Stop the Music, a thoroughly bizarre film with Steve Guttenberg and Valerie Perrine and the Village People trying to capitalize on the disco era. Its campiness is so bad that it’s sociologically fascinating to watch today. But it received the 1980 Razzie for worst picture and screenplay; Jenner was nominated for worst actor but lost out to Neil Diamond, for The Jazz Singer. A made-for-television film, Grambling’s White Tiger—starring Jenner as a white quarterback on the otherwise all-black Grambling State University football team, with Harry Belafonte as legendary coach Eddie Robinson—was well received. But it did not propel him anywhere. He was running out of the diversions that had guided his life. But the gender issues were not going away; if anything, they were intensifying. “The gender issues were big at that time,” Jenner told me. “I had ignored them for so long, but I was aging.” “I Don’t Want to Be This Way”

 It was during that first attempt at transition, in the mid-and late 1980s, that he went on hormones, had his beard removed, and had plastic surgery on his nose. The changes were noticeable. Brody Jenner, now 31 years old and a reality-TV staple with a new show called Sex with Brody, debuting on E! this summer, was somewhere around 4 when he said to his mother, “Mommy, we saw Daddy get out of the shower and he’s got boobs.” Rumors began in the media and were squelched. “I was terrified of being discovered,” Jenner said. “I was not at a point in my life where I was comfortable with myself. “ ‘I don’t want to be this way’ was the bottom line. Who would want to be dealing with all these issues…. I look at men and say, Oh my God, would it not be so wonderful to be comfortable in your own skin, male or female, so when you wake up in the morning you get dressed and go to work and this identity issue is not even present? “You’re happy being who you are. You have a beautiful wife and this and that…. I look at women and think the exact same thing: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to wake up in the morning and be able to get dressed and go out and live your life?” But the context of the times made Jenner scared. There were only a handful of well-publicized transgender cases. The atmosphere for transgender men and women was still extremely difficult. Johns Hopkins Hospital had come to public attention for championing sexual-reassignment surgeries in 1966 but stopped doing the procedure 13 years later, after a controversial study by a psychiatrist there reported that recipients, in making psychosexual adjustment, were no better off than those who didn’t have the surgery. Paul McHugh, psychiatrist in chief for the medical school, whose stance against gender-reassignment surgery borders on religious zealotry in the eyes of activists, was instrumental in the decision, concluding that the only surgery as radical and misguided was the lobotomy. The same year, 1979, Professor Janice G. Raymond published The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. She wrote in the book, “I contend that the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence.” Enormous strides are being made today in the acceptance of transgender women and men, thanks, in part, to the Golden Globe Award-winning Amazon series Transparent and such transgender spokeswomen as the writer Janet Mock and Orange Is the New Black star Laverne Cox. (Last year Cox appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the headline THE TRANSGENDER TIPPING POINT.) Yet only 19 states have laws to protect transgender workers. Kris

 Around 1990, Jenner stopped his transition. He decided he needed to “get back in the game.” He was in Ketchikan, Alaska, finishing a celebrity fishing show with former Los Angeles Dodgers first-baseman Steve Garvey, when Garvey’s wife, Candace, raised the idea of fixing him up with Kris Kardashian. She was divorced from Robert Kardashian, who went on to fame—or perhaps infamy—as a friend and attorney of O. J. Simpson’s and died of cancer in 2003, at the age of 59. Candace mentioned that Kris lived in Beverly Hills with a marvelous sense of style and great shopping skill. Jenner at first was not interested. “I’m thinking the last thing I need is a Beverly Hills shopper,” Jenner said. “I don’t need that. No offense to shoppers. It’s the perception of this woman who sits around Beverly Hills and goes shopping all day.” On second thought, Candace said, it would never work since Kris, like Jenner, had four children. Then Jenner was interested: “She comes with as much baggage as I do.” They hit it off immediately and seven months later, in 1991, were married. The issue of how much Bruce Jenner told Kris of his gender-identity issues is a matter of dispute: neither side wants to appear rancorous, but the two sides agree on virtually nothing. Breast growth as the result of hormones is irreversible. Jenner insists that he was a “good solid B cup” when he met Kris. She said it was comparable to a “little bit of a man boob situation” but that there was “no B cup going on.” The issue goes to the core of how much moral obligation Jenner, or anyone with established gender dysphoria, has to tell a prospective spouse of his or her condition. “When I met Bruce,” Kris said, “he told me that he had done hormones back in the early 80s. This was a conversation that took place in the early 90s. So, what he was telling me happened a decade earlier, and he never really explained it.” As far as Kris Jenner was concerned, “there wasn’t a gender issue. Nobody mentioned a gender issue. Somebody mentioned that [he] at one point in his life liked to dress up.” Jenner is emphatic that he told Kris he had taken hormones in the late 1980s up until the year they met, and was equally emphatic in saying there were other side effects besides breast growth. He finds it implausible for her to suggest she was not aware of his gender struggle. But he does concede that “probably a mistake I made was maybe not having her understand—not the severity of it but that this is a condition you cannot get away from. From that standpoint maybe I blew it away a little bit, sort of ‘This is what I do.’ ” He said he did cross-dress in front of her. But ultimately, he said, she set down rules: he could cross-dress when he was traveling on his own but not at home. Kris said he never cross-dressed in front of her, the only evidence “a few times I would see a suitcase or things lying around the house.” She also said she never set down any rules. At first, based on interviews, the merging of Jenner’s children from the first two marriages with the four children from Kris’s first marriage—Kourtney, Kimberly, Khloé, and Robert junior—was a happy one. The eight of them performed together at the Jenners’ wedding as “the “Jennashians.” The Jenner children continued to live with their mothers, but they said that they frequently went over to their father’s house and that Kris embraced them. Then it all stopped. The children maintain that Kris essentially turned on them. Kris said she and her husband stopped seeing the children “because you just got to a point where it became exhausting to be embattled all the time. We weren’t getting anywhere with constantly asking to see the kids and not getting a yes. And I think the kids really didn’t hear that side of it.” Relations became further strained when Linda Thompson, after waiving child support at the time of divorce, took her ex-husband to court to get it. Jenner told me that the suit had a very negative impact on Kris’s willingness to integrate the families. Jenner acknowledged that his focus was on Kendall and Kylie and his four stepchildren and that he thought, “I can hopefully build a relationship with the Jenner side once they’re old enough and mature enough and they’re out from under the apron of their mothers.” Burt Jenner, who owns West LA Dogs, a day-care center for dogs, said he does not remember seeing his father more than twice a year for a period of roughly 10 years. Brandon Jenner, who is 33 and in an accomplished indie-pop duo with his wife, Leah, still maintained a sporadic relationship with his father. But even he went through stretches of two to three years without ever hearing from him. The other two children also went through long periods of never seeing their father at all. Jenner said he was not invited to such milestone events as high-school graduations and would have gone had he known; the children and their mothers say he was invited and in some instances did not even respond. When the Northridge earthquake hit the Los Angeles region, in 1994, Brandon, then 12, told his mother that his father had called to see if the family was O.K. His mother was delighted that Bruce had called. “Mom, I’m just kidding,” Brandon told her. “I think the nail in the coffin for the relationship was the beginning of the TV show,” in 2007, said Burt. “There was a you-aren’t-part-of- this kind of thing. Kris made the choice to make a good TV show that was in their image and brand.” As she put it in a book she wrote called Kris Jenner … and All Things Kardashian, the title “Keeping Up with the Kardashians and the Jenners just didn’t have the same ring to it.” Family Matters

 Burt wonders now if it would have been better for him if his dad had not been an Olympic champion. “It’s very hard to have a father to idolize,” he told me. “It would have been much easier if he hadn’t won the Olympics.” Burt is a formidable racecar driver, as his father was, winning the Octane Academy competition on NBC in 2013, which netted him $50,000 in prize money and a car. “My father taught me on the athletic field,” Burt said. “The confidence in yourself to go out and win.” But Burt, notable in the family for being bluntly candid, also said, “I was very fortunate to have an awesome stepfather to fill the void…. At the end of the day there’s no way I can get around it. I am ungodly thankful and I feel very fortunate to not have had my father in my life…. I learned how to open doors and shake hands and look people in the eye. Things that my dad never would have taught me.” Photograph by Annie Leibovitz; Styled by Jessica Diehl. Jenner does have regrets. “I have made a lot of mistakes raising the four Jenner kids. I had times not only dealing with my own issues but exes. [It was] very traumatic and there was a lot of turmoil in my life, and I wasn’t as close to my kids as I should have been.” It was actually during one of the most difficult periods of his life, the attempted transition in the late 1980s, that they found a caring and loving father. As Cassandra put it, he was a better parent when he “was moving towards his authentic self.” As she said of her dad, “I would happily have traded a distant father for a loving, involved mom.” Keeping Up with Bruce and Kris

 Kris Jenner took over her husband’s foundering career after they were married. She got rid of Jenner’s handlers. She renewed his speaking engagements. He appeared in infomercials for Eagle Eyes Sunglasses and for a piece of workout equipment called the SuperStep and other products. They did an infomercial series called “Super Fit with Bruce and Kris Jenner.” The efforts were financially successful. But after Keeping Up with the Kardashians started and became a runaway hit, the dynamics of the relationship changed, Jenner told me. “The first 15 years I felt she needed me more because I was the breadwinner…. Then really around the show, when that hit and she was running this whole show and getting credit for it and she had her own money, she didn’t need me as much from that standpoint. The relationship was different. “I think in a lot of ways she became less tolerant of me. Then I’d get upset and the whole relationship kind of fizzled.” One has to watch only a sampling of the show to see the interaction. “A lot of times she wasn’t very nice,” Jenner said. “People would see how I got mistreated. She controlled the money … all that kind of stuff.” Kris Jenner acknowledged that her workload quadrupled as the result of the ever-expanding Keeping Up with the Kardashians empire and she “didn’t have the kind of time she had in the past.” She also said Bruce was often angry and upset during the last years of the marriage. “He was married to me and he wasn’t who he wanted to be so he was miserable…. All I was doing was working very hard for my family so that we could all have a wonderful future, and he was pissed off. “At the end of my relationship with Bruce he definitely had a lot of social anxiety,” Kris said. “That was one of the reasons we were in a struggle at the end. We fought a lot because we would go out together and before we got to the end of the block we were in a fight because he started saying, ‘When can we go home?’ ” What strikes her now is how her husband, after fully embracing life for much of their marriage, “just decided I’m done now” without explaining his gender dysphoria until after they were divorced. “It was like the most passive-aggressive thing I think I’ve ever experienced.” As she asked rhetorically of her former husband, “Why would you want to be married and have kids if this is what you wanted since you were a little boy? Why would you not explain this all to me?” Jenner said that from his perspective the disintegration of the marriage had far less to do with gender issues and far more to do with the way Kris dealt with him: “Twenty percent was gender and 80 percent was the way I was treated.” They separated in June 2013. He rented a house in Malibu. They were amicably divorced last September. The agreement was completed with no lawyers, an indication, Jenner said, “of 23 great years together.” He said that he retained the contracts that were his and she retained the ones considered hers. The agreement, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, states that they aimed to divide their assets evenly, but Kris almost certainly emerged much wealthier than Bruce, since she kept sole possession of all the business interests and intellectual property in her name—including Keeping Up with the Kardashians and its spin- offs. Jenner knew that at some point he would have to tell his children of his gender identity. But any right to privacy he should have had was irrevocably lost in December of 2013 when he got a call from TMZ asking him if he had just had a medical consultation for the tracheal shave. Jenner remembers pulling his car to the side of the road. He pleaded that nothing be published because it would “destroy lives.” The pleas were unsuccessful. The item appeared online. Pacing the hallway of his rented home in Malibu that night after publication, he contemplated suicide with a gun he kept in the house. He decided not to go through with it. But he also realized that, with the story now out there, he was going to have to tell his children. He also knew he would now need a strategy for eventually going public with his transition. The TMZ disclosure had robbed him of any right to his own timeline. He told each of his children individually, starting with Brandon, whose reaction was unequivocal: “I’ve never been more proud of you than I am at this moment.” The rest of the Jenner children reacted much the same way. They were already aware of their father’s identity as a woman. Their mother had told Burt and Cassandra roughly 20 years earlier, when they were 13 and 11. Brandon had assumed it because of the obvious physical changes. Brody was not told by his mother until he was 29. “As soon as I heard it, it was almost a relief. Because it just made a lot of sense growing up,” Brody told me. “Reasons and things like why he wasn’t there. Not around. I finally realized he had his own issues he was dealing with at that time.” About a year ago, Brandon and Brody got a sobering glimpse of their father’s life when they went over to the Malibu rental house to surf. As they put on their wetsuits early in the morning, they saw that lights were on inside. Brandon went over to say hello, then quickly came back and told his brother they needed to leave immediately because he had just seen their father at the computer in a gown and earrings. Because they knew their father identified as a woman, they were not shocked. But they also knew he did not want them to see him dressed like this. “He wakes up at 4:30 in the morning probably because he’s not tired but [also] because that’s the [only] part of the day he actually gets to be” what he wants, said Brody. “That’s so sad, when you can’t be like that always.” The Jenner children feel both happiness for their father and inspiration at his bravery. They also feel that their relationship with their dad will now have an opportunity to grow. “I feel like he’s been the closest to us and the best parent when he’s been moving toward his true identity,” said Cassandra. As part of the transition, Jenner started hosting intermittent and small gatherings called “girls’ nights,” casual occasions with wine and food in which Jenner could dress as desired and feel natural and comfortable in the presence of women. It was at a girls’ night that Cassandra met Caitlyn for the first time. “I was just nervous that I wouldn’t make her feel comfortable,” Cassandra said. “I was worried I wouldn’t say the right things or act the right way or seem relaxed.” But almost all of it melted away when she got there. “We talked more than we ever have. We could just be girls together.” It’s Her World Now

 For the Jenner children the issue of the transition has become a non-issue. They all still see their dad as their dad regardless of any gender label. Brandon said he was a little taken aback when he saw Caitlyn for the first time after surgery and she pulled her top up to reveal her new breasts. “Whoa, I’m still your son,” he gently reminded her. But the moment easily passed. After so many years of non-contact and hurt, one of the most stirring parts of the transition has been the renewal of the relationship of the Jenner children with their father. Except that disagreement over the upcoming E! docu-series has posed yet another hurdle. The children believe that with the right producers the show could be wonderful on multiple levels, including elevating public consciousness of the issues surrounding the transgender community, much the way the Sawyer interview did. The docu-series will be produced by Bunim/Murray, the company responsible for such shows as The Real World, The Simple Life, Bad Girls Club, and, of course, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Bunim/Murray is credited with inventing reality television: nobody does it better. But this is not your typical reality show. Their father’s adamant decision to use some of the same producers and much of the same crew who have produced the Kardashian episodes for 10 seasons only enhanced their concern that the show would devolve into maximum mayhem and minimum social awareness. The children said they were interested not in their own financial gain but in ensuring the legacy of their father as perhaps the most socially influential athlete since Muhammad Ali. At a meeting at the Jenner house with another prospective producer, who was not chosen, Brandon laid out his concerns succinctly: “You go on E!’s Web site, the Bunim/Murray Web site, and you look at all the shows, every one of them is a circus.” “With Bunim/Murray and E! it’s been the opposite of inspiration,” he said during the meeting. “Oh my God, we’re diving into the lion’s den—they’re gonna make a show about the Jenners versus the Kardashians.” Brandon Jenner wants his father to know this is simply the kind of disagreement that happens in families. He wants his dad to know he loves and admires her, as do all the Jenner children, just as he hopes that his father’s love will not become conditional, as it has been in the past. “This is the fourth quarter of [her] life. But within our relationship this is the first quarter, the relationship that [she] has with the kids. Regardless of the show and all that stuff, there will be a fourth quarter of the relationship. And I envision the fourth quarter as having a 15- or 16-year-old daughter who knows her grandparent as ‘Mapa’ or whatever Dad wants to be, and loves that grandparent for who she is.” E!’s head of programming, Jeff Olde, hopes the children will decide to participate once they see the quality and tone of the show. He respects their decision and knows it is “coming from a place of pure love.” He also said this will be a quality show with a totally different feel from other E! offerings. “It’s not at all a Kardashian spin-off…. We will not resort to spectacle. That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with it.” “We all love ratings,” Olde said, “but we understand the power and responsibility to be able to share this story.” Olde, who is gay and married, said he and his husband have been in the trenches for almost 20 years fighting for equal rights. “This is so far beyond television, on a personal level. If I get one thing right in my professional career, it will be this.” Jeff Jenkins, the executive vice president of development and programming for Bunim/Murray, echoed Olde’s sentiment and said that “ratings are not the goal” of the series. “It is to tell Bruce’s story the way he wants it to be told.” Bunim/Murray has produced several well-received shows on members of the L.G.B.T. community, including Pedro Zamora, whose groundbreaking participation in 1994’s The Real World: San Francisco made him one of the first openly gay H.I.V.-positive people to be depicted on prime-time television. There are many out there who think the E! series, while slightly more elegant perhaps, is just a stunt to make money. Caitlyn Jenner is prepared for the criticism just as she is also prepared with an answer. “ ‘Oh, she’s doing a stupid reality show. She’s doing it for the money. She’s doing this, she’s doing that.’ I’m not doing it for money. I’m doing it to help my soul and help other people. If I can make a dollar, I certainly am not stupid. [I have] house payments and all that kind of stuff. I will never make an excuse for something like that. Yeah, this is a business. “You don’t go out and change your gender for a television show. O.K., it ain’t happening. I don’t care who you are. It ain’t happening, O.K.? You don’t do it.” Caitlyn’s 89-year-old mother, Esther, while enormously proud of her son’s courage, is among those who have wondered about motive. “I woke up one night and all I was thinking about is: Why is it necessary [for Caitlyn] to go through all these surgeries?” Esther said. “Is this all about making money? And that was bothering me. He’s lived a life the last 25 years—and I don’t know if it was both he and Kris or mainly Kris—it seemed like their lifestyle was about money; that’s why it came to my mind.” The lifestyle was the materialistic equivalent of morbid obesity, but Jenner never was a part of it. I can say unequivocally that he actually hates to spend money. The recently purchased house did cost $3.6 million, but that is low by celebrity standards, and it has a mortgage on it. The big-ticket items, a 2011 Porsche 911 GT3 RS that cost somewhere around $180,000 and the country-club membership, were birthday gifts from Kris. I watched with fascination as he fetched golf balls out of the water hazard on the sixth hole at Sherwood with a pole so he would never have to buy any himself, honorably returning the ones stamped with “99” to fellow club member Wayne Gretzky. The Legend Becomes Her

 It was early May, and Caitlyn had just gotten three letters from transgender women thanking her for the interview and the dignified way in which ABC and Sawyer had handled it. One of them was addressed “Bruce Jenner, Malibu, California,” as if she had become her own country. An incredible 16.9 million had watched on a Friday night. “Honestly, since the Diane Sawyer piece every day it’s exciting to go to the mailbox, because I get letters every day from all of these people from all over the world,” she told me. “I’ve gotten a lot from trans women, telling their story, and how excited they were to see the Diane piece.” She first watched the Sawyer interview on ABC’s East Coast feed with the Kardashian klan, sitting between Kendall and Kylie. The two youngest children worried that the reaction would be negative, only to be put at ease by the Twitter messages rolling in from famous people—Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus and Oprah Winfrey and Jimmy Fallon and a dozen others. Caitlyn then watched a second time at nine P.M. with the four Jenner children and their mothers. Brandon called the experience “one of the best nights of my life.” “Was it tough to watch? Of course it was,” Caitlyn told me. “I never thought in a million years I would ever have to divulge such private, intimate feelings I’ve had all my life…. I was also excited to get it off my chest. Scared but excited.” The reaction from the celebrity community was overwhelmingly positive, perhaps because Caitlyn Jenner is a fellow club member. The estimated 700,000 transgender women and men in the country are virtually all anonymous, too many of them suffering from job discrimination and violence. A 2013 report co-authored by a variety of equality and human-rights groups, including the Human Rights Campaign, said that transgender workers have a 14 percent rate of unemployment, double that of the general population; 44 percent are under-employed; and 15 percent have a household income under $10,000, as opposed to 4 percent in the general population. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey Report in 2010, based on roughly 6,500 responses to an extensive questionnaire, determined that the attempted-suicide rate for transgender women and men was a staggering 41 percent, compared to 1.6 percent in the general population. I can report that Caitlyn seems immensely happy, relaxed, with a shiny sense of purpose and confidence. She can’t wait when she goes out now to tell the paparazzi to “make sure it’s a good shot,” instead of asking patrons to help shield her from them in the parking lot of the local Starbucks. She looks forward to re-creating the atmosphere of “girls’ night” on a more regular basis, “where everybody is treating you the same way. You can talk about anything you want to talk about. You can talk about outfits. You can talk about hair and makeup, anything you want. It becomes not a big deal.” She is aware of the appalling conditions in which many transgender women and men live, and said that in her E! show she will focus on ways of lowering the rates of suicide and attempted suicide, among other issues. Caitlyn also plans a segment in which she sees if she can still hit a golf ball 300 yards off the tee, even with those very ample breasts. There is a road trip planned, in which Caitlyn and several transgender women will take an R.V. from the Los Angeles area to San Francisco to visit a center for transgender youth, and then on to Napa Valley. She said she now accepts the children’s decision regarding the E! series. “I think it’s better for the show right now. It keeps me on point and doesn’t distract with all the family issues.” As a possible peace offering, Caitlyn went over to Brandon and Leah’s house recently, not to make one last charge to persuade but to help plant a garden. “I think the relationship will take a new shape,” said Brandon. “My hopes that the relationship would blossom, that we would turn over a new leaf, has kind of turned into, I just want a relationship that is sustainable. I just want to have the best parts as possible.” On July 15, Caitlyn’s first major public appearance, she will be awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at ESPN’s ESPYs in Los Angeles. Its past winners include Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, and Billie Jean King. All 10 of her children and stepchildren are expected to be onstage when she accepts it. A Different Kind of Gold ||||| Tweet with a location

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– Bruce Jenner is no more, and the 65-year-old former Olympian debuts as a woman on Vanity Fair's July cover in an Annie Leibovitz photo with the headline "Call me Caitlyn." VF sent Leibovitz and Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger to Jenner's place in Malibu, where they got "unfettered access." "If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it," Jenner tells Bissinger, "I would be lying there saying, 'You just blew your entire life.'" Jenner also debuted @Caitlyn_Jenner, tweeting, "I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can't wait for you to get to know her/me." She had 153,000 followers in her first 40 minutes. The issue of Vanity Fair is out June 9.


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– The investigation into the mysterious deaths of a billionaire and his wife is now being led by homicide detectives, police say—suggesting the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman were either murder-suicide or a double murder. Police, who have described the deaths as "suspicious," revealed Sunday that the cause of death for both Shermans was "ligature neck compression," a form of strangulation, the CBC reports. Sources have told the media that the couple were found hanging near an indoor pool in the basement of their Toronto mansion. Police say they haven't found any sign of forced entry, or a note that could explain what happened to 75-year-old pharmaceutical tycoon Barry Sherman and his 70-year-old wife, both renowned philanthropists. The couple's four children have rejected what they say are "rumors" that the deaths are being investigated as a murder-suicide, and many of the influential couple's friends agree. "There is absolutely zero debate in my mind, this was a double homicide," says Canadian Sen. Linda Frum, a longtime friend of the couple, per the New York Times. The Globe and Mail reports that just days before the bodies were found, Honey Sherman was enthusiastically making plans for their annual trip to Florida, emailing friends that she would be traveling to the state on Dec. 18 and Barry Sherman would join her a week later. The couple also sent out invitations last week to a dinner party at their winter home in Palm Beach.

Less than a week before the billionaire businessman Barry Sherman and his wife, Honey, were found dead in their Toronto mansion, Ms. Sherman was cheerfully making plans for the couple's annual trip south.

 "Looking forward to getting together in Florida. I am coming south Monday, December 18 [to]Friday, January 12," she wrote in an e-mail to friends last Monday.

 What happened to Barry and Honey Sherman? What we know so far about the Apotex founder's death

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 "Barry is coming south for Monday December 25 & going home with me Jan. 12. Please let me know your dates south asap so i can place in my calendar … Looking forward to hearing back asap. Xoxo Honey."

 Instead of looking forward to socializing with Ms. Sherman on what was to be the first day of her vacation, friends of the couple are reeling – stunned that the pair were found hanging from a railing partly surrounding their basement lap pool on Friday.

 Late Sunday, Toronto police said the couple both died from "ligature neck compression."

 The homicide squad is now in charge of the investigation, although police were still classifying the deaths as "suspicious," not a homicide, in their Sunday night statement.

 Over the weekend, multiple media reports and a Toronto police source said the early theory of investigators was that Mr. Sherman may have killed his wife and then took his own life.

 However, the couple's grown children dismissed outright the suggestion that a murder-suicide was behind the deaths.

 "Our parents shared an enthusiasm for life and commitment to their family and community totally inconsistent with the rumours regrettably circulated in the media as to the circumstances surrounding their deaths," the family said in a statement released Saturday evening.

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 "We are shocked and think it's irresponsible that police sources have reportedly advised the media of a theory which neither their family, their friends nor their colleagues believe to be true."

 The couple had four children and had recently welcomed a new grandchild.

 Toronto police did not officially confirm until late Sunday that the bodies discovered at 50 Old Colony Rd. in the city's north end on Friday were those of Mr. Sherman, 75, the founder of generic pharmaceuticals giant Apotex Inc., and his 70-year-old wife, Honey, a gregarious philanthropist whose causes ranged from higher education to health care to the Jewish community.

 A Toronto police source told The Globe and Mail that a real estate agent who had been helping to sell the Shermans' North York home – it was recently listed for $6.9-million – discovered the bodies on Friday morning.

 There was no sign of forced entry to the home and no note left behind to explain what had happened, the police source said.

 As tributes and condolences poured in over the weekend – including from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Toronto Mayor John Tory – friends of the Shermans in Toronto's tight-knit Jewish community struggled to find an explanation for their deaths.

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 "It was like being hit with a bolt of lightning on Friday," said Paul Godfrey, the chief executive officer of Postmedia Network Inc., who has known the Shermans socially for more than 25 years. "Everybody is asking, 'How could this happen?'"

 Honey and Barry Sherman were proof that opposites attract, according to people who knew the couple.

 Ms. Sherman was warm, genuine and loved to socialize. Mr. Sherman was a renowned workaholic, not comfortable with small talk and occasionally let on that he would rather go to the dentist than attend another fundraiser. But he always showed up because it was important to his wife.

 Mr. Sherman talked business with a handful of friends at a reception in Toronto a few weeks ago for federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, a party hosted by Senator Linda Frum.

 At that party, Mr. Sherman made it clear that he still loved what he was doing and had no plans to leave Apotex, according to a Bay Street executive who knew the couple well.

 Mr. Sherman gave no hint there were any financial problems at Apotex, the executive said.

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 The couple were planning a dinner party with a number of Toronto friends at their winter home in Palm Beach later this month; informal invitations went out last week, asking when a number of couples were free.

 Mr. Sherman's net worth was recently estimated to be $4.77-billion by Canadian Business, an online magazine, making him the 15th-richest person in Canada.

 The Shermans have handed out millions of dollars to hospitals, universities and the United Jewish Appeal. Ms. Sherman was on the board of governors at York University, the Baycrest Foundation and Mount Sinai Hospital. She was also the past chair of the Jewish Foundation of Greater Toronto and former chair of the Holocaust Education Centre.

 Rhonda Lenton, the president of York University, last saw the Shermans on Oct. 28 after a concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall.

 The couple were in a buoyant mood that night, Dr. Lenton recalled, especially the more outgoing Ms. Sherman.

 "[Ms. Sherman was] warm and effusive and bubbly," she said. "Because she is involved in so many different boards and quite involved in the Jewish community, she's known by everybody. She loves chatting."

 Friends and colleagues have long said that Mr. Sherman was consumed with work and that he devoted almost all of his time and energy to Apotex, frequently sleeping for only a few hours a night. He had almost no outside interests and no taste for luxury, once driving an old car into such disrepair that Ms. Sherman went out and bought him a new Mercedes.

 "Barry liked to do one thing: work. He worked seven days a week and he loved it," said Murray Rubin, 87, a retired pharmaceutical-industry colleague.

 Mr. Rubin described the couple as kind and generous, and says he was shocked by the news of their deaths, and expressed disbelief that it could have been a murder-suicide.

 "That is impossible," he said on Saturday.

 With reports from Tu Thanh Ha, Joe Friesen, Molly Hayes, Tavia Grant, Jeff Gray and Susan Krashinsky Robertson ||||| Homicide detectives have now taken over the investigation into the deaths of two pharmaceutical billionaires that police have deemed "suspicious."

 Apotex founder Barry Sherman, 75, and his wife, Honey Sherman, 70, both died from "ligature neck compression," meaning strangulation, police said in a statement issued Sunday.

 The influential couple were found dead in their North York home on Friday.

 A police source previously told CBC News that someone outside the Sherman family discovered the bodies, but police remain tight-lipped about the investigation.

 As questions mount about the cause of the deaths, some news outlets are quoting police sources, saying the case is being investigated as a murder-suicide.

 In a statement released Saturday, the family said "our parents shared an enthusiasm for life and commitment to their family and community totally inconsistent with the rumours regrettably circulated in the media as to the circumstances surrounding their deaths."

 'We are shocked'

 "We are shocked and think it's irresponsible that police sources have reportedly advised the media of a theory which neither their family, their friends nor their colleagues believe to be true," the statement continued.

 One of two bodies removed from the home of billionaire founder of Canadian pharmaceutical firm Apotex Inc., Barry Sherman and his wife Honey, who were found dead under circumstances that police described as "suspicious" Friday. (Chris Helgren/Reuters)

 Toronto homicide Det. Brandon Price told reporters outside the couple's home on Friday that police "cannot say 100 per cent with certainty" whether or not foul play was involved.

 Price said there were no signs of forced entry into the home, and that police were not searching for any outstanding suspects.

 The couple had listed their home at 50 Old Colony Rd. in Willowdale near Bayview Avenue and Highway 401, shortly before they died, for $7 million.

 Friends, employees react

 Barry and Honey Sherman were found dead at 50 Old Colony Rd. in the Bayview Avenue and Highway 401 area. (Katherine Brulotte/CBC) Over the weekend, a makeshift memorial was set up in front of the home. A steady stream of neighbours, Apotex workers, and well-wishers dropped off flowers in honour of the Shermans.

 "I was shocked. I couldn't sleep the last few days because of the memories," he said on his way to visit the memorial. Flowers and police tape could be seen outside the billionaire and noted philanthropist couple's North York mansion on Old Colony road in the Bayview Avenue and Highway 401 area, from which their bodies were removed on stretchers the evening before. (Lorenda Reddekopp/CBC) "Amazing person, just amazing. I've never seen a person like him in my life," said Vinay Chopra, a former Apotex employee. He worked with the company for 23 years and said he is struggling to come to grips with the tragedy."I was shocked. I couldn't sleep the last few days because of the memories," he said on his way to visit the memorial.

 Barry Sherman founded Apotex in 1974 and has amassed a vast fortune since. His net worth was recently estimated by Canadian Business magazine at $4.77 billion, making him the 15th richest person in the country. He counted many people among his friends, including Toronto Mayor John Tory who commented on his contributions to the city on Saturday.

 "Barry Sherman was a reserved man, but a man who, over his business career, created hundreds and hundreds of jobs for people in the city of Toronto," he said.

 "He loyally invested in the city of Toronto and kept many of the manufacturing and other operations of Apotex here," Tory added.

 'A big loss'

 Vinay Chopra, a former Apotex worker. (CBC) Paul Godfrey, CEO of Postmedia, also considered himself a friend of the couple. He says Barry was dedicated to his work.

 "If you looked up in the dictionary the word 'workaholic', you'd see a picture of Barry Sherman," he told CBC News. "He built a business up from absolutely nothing to serving generic drugs to 115 countries in the world."

 Honey Sherman, on the other hand, was described as a dedicated philanthropist. She was a member of the board of the Baycrest Foundation and the York University Foundation. She also served on the boards of Mount Sinai's Women's Auxiliary, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the International American Joint Distribution Committee.

 Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press) "Honey always got her way. She pushed and pushed, especially in charity causes. Honey didn't need anything from anybody, so what she did; she tried to be the link between the haves and the have nots," said Godfrey.

 Former Ontario premier Bob Rae remembered Barry Sherman fondly, telling CBC that he "didn't hesitate to let you know when he was happy and wasn't happy."

 "It's going to be big loss. The Canadian business community has lost a truly remarkable individual." ||||| TORONTO — Barry Sherman, a Canadian billionaire, generic-drug mogul and philanthropist, once promised that the autobiography he was writing would be a page-turner, packed with stories of intrigue, duplicity and outright corruption by his competition.

 The last chapter was without doubt the most sensational — and he did not get to write it. It occurred last Friday, when his body was rolled out of his Toronto mansion by the police, together with that of his wife, Honey.

 On Sunday night, Toronto police announced that its homicide team was leading the investigation, and that “the cause of death for both deceased was ligature neck compression.”

 The couple’s real estate agent found their bodies hanging by their indoor pool, according to a person close to the family and local news reports. The police said there were no signs of forced entry and no suspects-at-large the public should be concerned about. |||||


– Look at a Van Gogh painting today, and you're not quite getting the full effect. Reports in 2013, as cited in the Guardian, revealed that the paintings were fading; studies have found yellows are turning brown. The color red is also posing a problem in works like Wheat Stack Under a Cloudy Sky, and researchers are now moving closer to finding out why, Chemistry World reports. Van Gogh often used a pigment known as red lead. The stuff, also called minium, turns whiter when it's exposed to light. Seeking to understand the process, researchers analyzed a tiny dot of paint from the work. The process, which involved shooting X-rays at the paint, showed that the red lead is now covered with what Chemistry World calls "degradation products" in the form of other chemicals. The researchers found a substance they call the "missing link" in the degradation process: It's a mineral lead known as plumbonacrite, Hyperallergic reports. Light shining on the plumbonacrite has apparently caused the buildup of other chemicals. Interestingly, as Hyperallergic notes, the researchers say plumbonacrite has never before been reported "in a painting dating from before the mid 20th century." Of course, the color issues actually make Van Gogh's work even more impressive, Jonathan Jones wrote in the Guardian: "In the end, the fact that some of Van Gogh's colors have changed over the years is simply a homage to his genius. No one, after all, has any complaint about his colors." Last year, Van Gogh—or rather, his "regrown" ear—made some unusual headlines.

Expand this summary.

Vincent van Gogh has a good claim to be the greatest colourist ever. His yellows, his blues, his cherry trees and sunflowers and skies all created through thickly impastoed smears of chromatic splendour have made the very name Van Gogh synonymous with intense expressive colour.

 Yet some of the colours we see in Van Gogh's paintings are just pale echoes of the hues he originally set down in the 1880s. This startling discovery has just been revealed by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. A research project undertaken by the museum reveals that a number of Van Gogh's favourite paints have faded badly and changed the appearance of his works, making them milder, more empty, less exquisite in their use of complementary colours than they were when he painted them.

 The evidence is presented in Van Gogh at Work, a new exhibition at this popular and intellectually rigorous museum examining his practice as a painter, and looking at everything from the kinds of canvas he used – Van Gogh painted on everything from raw jute to, when he was short of cash, a dishcloth – to his intimate exchanges of ideas with friends such as Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec.

 The friendship with Toulouse-Lautrec is a touching example of how a physical examination of art can lead us closer to the artist. Van Gogh knew the great painter of Montmartre nightlife when they both lived in Paris, but evidence presented here, including the fact that they bought their canvases at the same shop, shows them working closely as colleagues.

 Another intimate revelation about Van Gogh's working habits is that he regularly reused his canvases, painting over early works. A flower painting in the show has a painting of wrestlers by Van Gogh concealed under it. When he wanted to keep a painting, he sometimes painted on the back: two brown studies for his early work The Potato Eaters have later, vibrant self-portraits on their reverse.

 Amid all this insight, the fact that Van Gogh's colours are not always in their pristine glory is hard to assimilate. The evidence is relentless. This exhibition is in effect a public report on a massive research project using the latest, non-invasive techniques to study the microscopic structure of art. You can even look through an electronic microscope for yourself in an interactive that lets you see the grains of dirt in Van Gogh's rich strokes of oily colour.

 In the end, the fact that some of Van Gogh's colours have changed over the years is simply a homage to his genius. No one, after all, has any complaint about his colours. In this exhibition, I stood enraptured by the deep blue sky and golden street in his 1888 painting The Yellow House.

 It doesn't matter, for most of us, if there are changes in his colours. His visionary art is such that it can evolve and still be true to itself. The fresh insights in this brilliant exhibition, which includes a loan of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, no less, from London's National Gallery, do not undermine the artist's greatness. They just bring us closer to him, as we stand at his shoulder, watching him work – until we are really close, in a fresh, invigorating way, to his material life as an artist. It even includes his palette, smeared with colours, and three tubes of paint that belonged to him. They are exhibited next to his self-portrait.

 His eyes in the portrait are formidable – they will never fade. ||||| The reds in Van Gogh's Wheat stack under a cloudy are slowly turning white © Peter Horree/Alamy

 The vibrant red leaves on the pond in Vincent van Gogh ’s Wheat stack under a cloudy sky are slowly transforming into the colour of the clouds above. Now, scientists in Belgium may have found the missing chemical link to explain why these reds are turning white

 During his most prolific period, Van Gogh produced 2000 paintings over a decade and was known for his use of intense colours, which, some say, reflected his complex personality. However, many of the painter’s most celebrated works have been degrading due to exposure to light.

 ‘Normally, the idea is these paintings are there for a hundred years, or five hundred years, and they’re static – nothing really changes,’ says Koen Janssens from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. ‘But the opposite is actually true when you look in detail.’

 Red lead or minium (Pb 3 O 4 ), thought to be one of the earliest synthetically produced pigments in antiquity, was used extensively by Van Gogh in his paintings. Scientists have known that minium ‘whitens’ under light but have not been able to determine why.

 The white degradation product that forms around the red paint is an exotic lead mineral © Wiley-VCH

 To understand this process, Janssens and his colleagues examined a minute white globule taken from the surface of the pond in Van Gogh’s 1889 piece a Wheat stack under a cloudy sky using x-ray powder diffraction tomography. By firing a focused beam of x-rays at the sample from different positions, they were able to gather information on the chemical species present.

 ‘[It is] an enclosed little world,’ explains Janssens. ‘The minium is changing and the products [are] captured below the surface of the paint.’ He goes on to add that the red lead is at the grain’s centre and, over the years, it has become coated with degradation products.

 ‘Starting from minium, we found plumbonacrite (3PbCO 3 .Pb(OH) 2 .PbO), which is a very exotic mineral of lead,’ says Janssens. ‘More towards the outer parts of this sample we found the more commonly known carbonates, hydrocerussites (2PbCO 3 .Pb(OH) 2 ) and cerussites (PbCO 3 ).’

 The cerussites are a family of compounds that form the white outer shell around the minium but plumbonacrite has never been detected before in a pre mid-20th century painting. Janssens calls this rare mineral the ‘missing link’ and the team are now able to propose a chemical pathway for the photochemical degradation of minium. The researchers think that when red lead is exposed to light it is converted into plumbonacrite, which reacts with carbon dioxide to form hydrocerussite and cerussite.

 ‘It’s a very important [piece of research],’ says Philippe Walter, director of the Laboratory of Molecular and Structural Archaeology in France. ‘For the conservation of works of art, it is important to look at this phenomenon to be sure to take care about the quantity of light [in museums].’ |||||


Article:

ELK GROVE (CBS13) — A man who helped a family trapped a crash got a bill in the mail for his unselfish act.

 Paramedics sent him the first-responder fee of nearly $150 after he says they only checked his pulse and gave him a bottle of water.

 A photo shows the aftermath of the scary rollover crash that trapped a man and his three children trapped inside.

 Derrick Deanda jumped into action and recounted the heart-pounding moment.

 “I pulled up right as it happened,” he said. “There was a guy standing inside the van, because it was on its side, holding a 2 year-old infant.”

 Deanda broke the glass to free the family before paramedics arrived. Everyone was OK.

 But weeks later Deanda got a bill in the mail from the Cosumnes Community Services District with a $143 first-responder fee.

 Deputy Chief Mike McLaughlin says his district billed the good Samaritan.

 “We’re obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing the same everything, for every patient we encounter,” he said.

 Deanda became a patient, he says, when a paramedic at the scene checked him out after breaking the van window to help save the family inside. Deanda had a small cut.

 “This is truly a unique situation,” he said. “In my 28 years, this is my first time I’ve run into a situation similar to this.”

 The district began implementing the fee two years ago in a move it says prevents fire station brownouts.

 But in this case, McLaughlin says he’d like to see the fee waived.

 “There is a mechanism for appealing this. a mechanism for making this right. Our desire it to make it right,” he said.

 But for now, this heroic act deserving of a medal has Deanda facing a bill.

 “I mean why would I want to stop to help somebody if I’m going to get a bill for $150?” he said.

 Deanda plans to appeal and hopes the matter is resolved before it goes to collections. ||||| A Good Samaritan who rescued a family from their crashed van has been billed by paramedics.

 Derrick Deanda is being charged $143 after first responders checked his pulse and gave him a bottle of water after he saved a father and his three children from the rolled-over vehicle.

 He was driving past the scene in Elk Grove, California, in September 2015 when he pulled over and saw the man standing in the vehicle holding a two-year-old child.

 Scroll down for video

 Derrick Deanda (left) is being charged $143 after first responders checked his pulse and gave him a bottle of water after he saved a father and his three children from the rolled-over vehicle

 He was driving past the scene in Elk Grove, California, in September 2015 when he pulled over and saw the man standing in the vehicle holding a two-year-old child. He then smashed the window to see if the passengers were OK

 Deanda then smashed a window to check if everyone was OK, but suffered a small cut in the process.

 When paramedics arrived, they checked him over after attending to those inside the car.

 But months later Cosumnes Community Services sent him the bill for the 'first responders fee'.

 He told CBS Sacramento: 'I mean why would I want to stop to help somebody if I'm going to get a bill for $150?'

 On Facebook, he posted a picture of the bill and a scary image of the crashed van.

 'So I guess this is how Good Samaritans are treated when they stop at an accident scene to help somebody,' he wrote.

 'I asked the paramedics for a bottle of water to clean my hand off because I had a small scrape on my hand they ask me questions and they consider that an assessment on me.

 'They asked me for my name and information so I give it to him. Then a couple months later I get a bill for $143 for a bottle of water?'

 When paramedics arrived, they checked him over after attending to those inside the car. But months later Cosumnes Community Services sent him the bill for the 'first responders fee'

 'Makes you wonder why people don't want to stop to help at an accident scene. All I can say is the look on the man's face when I was able to break that windshield and get him and his kids out of that vehicle was all the thanks I needed.

 'I'm glad I was able to help. But now I have a bill to pay and they won't let it go.'

 Deputy Chief Mike McLaughlin confirmed his district billed Deanda.

 ''We're obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing the same everything, for every patient we encounter,' he told the station.

 He said Deanda technically became a patient when he suffered the cut.

 'This is truly a unique situation,' he said. 'In my 28 years, this is my first time I've run into a situation similar to this.'

 The district began implementing the fee two years ago in a move it says prevents fire station brownouts.

 But in this case, McLaughlin says he'd like to see the fee waived. |||||
What is a summary?

– Derrick Deanda saw a van on its side after a rollover crash in Elk Grove, California, broke windows to free the father and three kids trapped inside, and then ... got billed $143. "I pulled up right as it happened," Deanda recalls to CBS Sacramento of the September 2015 incident. "There was a guy standing inside the van, because it was on its side, holding a 2 year-old infant." After paramedics arrived, they briefly checked over Deanda, who had a small cut from breaking the glass, checking his pulse and giving him a bottle of water. That's why, weeks after the crash, he got a bill in the mail for a "first-responder fee." "We’re obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing, the same everything, for every patient we encounter," explains deputy fire chief Mike McLaughlin. "I asked the paramedics for a bottle of water to clean my hand off because I had a small scrape on my hand they ask me questions and they consider that an assessment on me," Deanda wrote on Facebook, per the Daily Mail. McLaughlin says the fire department wants to "make it right" and waive the fee, but that hasn't happened yet, and Deanda plans to formally appeal. He also says the fee sends the wrong message: "Why would I want to stop to help somebody if I’m going to get a bill for $150?" The family members he helped are all OK.


Article:

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement World Cup organisers say they will not ban vuvuzelas from stadiums in South Africa, despite numerous complaints. The sound of the plastic horn has been likened to the drone of a thousand bees or a herd of stampeding elephants. Portugal winger Cristiano Ronaldo says the noise affects player concentration, while some fans watching on television claim they cannot hear the commentary. But a World Cup spokesman insisted vuvuzelas are "ingrained in the history of South Africa" and will remain. Rich Mkhondo also said vuvuzelas had worldwide appeal. "Let us not make this a South Africa instrument alone," he said. "A vuvuzela is now an international instrument. People buy them and stuff them in their suitcase to go home. "Only a minority are against vuvuzelas. You either love them or hate. We in South Africa love them." England defender Jamie Carragher said the noise did not bother him when he came on as a half-time substitute during the 1-1 draw with the United States and he said he had already bought two to take home to his children in Liverpool. I have always said that Africa has a different rhythm, a different sound

 Fifa president Sepp Blatter "When I came on I didn't notice it too much. I think you notice it more when you are watching on TV," he said. "But my kids have been on the phone and asked for two so I'll have to take two home for them. I've got two in my bag already. "Anyone who watches me play at Anfield will know that I am louder than the vuvuzelas!" Fifa president Sepp Blatter also weighed into the debate and believes vuvuzelas are part and parcel of football in South Africa. "I have always said that Africa has a different rhythm, a different sound," he commented on social networking site Twitter. "I don't see banning the music traditions of fans in their own country. Would you want to see a ban on the fan traditions in your country?" A recent survey found that the sound emitted by a vuvuzela was the equivalent to 127 decibels - louder than a drum's 122 decibels or a referee's whistle at 121.8 decibels. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Portugal star Ronaldo is the latest World Cup star to voice unease about the instrument. "It is difficult for anyone on the pitch to concentrate," said the Real Madrid forward. "A lot of players don't like them but they are going to have to get used to them." France captain Patrice Evra blamed the noise generated by the vuvuzelas for his side's poor showing in their opening group game against Uruguay, which finished goalless. He added: "We can't sleep at night because of the vuvuzelas. People start playing them from 6am. "We can't hear one another out on the pitch because of them." Backing for the under-fire vuvuzela has come from the England Supporters' Band, which has not missed an England game - home or away - since 1996. Trumpeter John Hemmingham, who is leading an eight-man team in South Africa, said the plastic instruments were part of the local culture and should not be banned from stadiums. 606: DEBATE I'm all for them - let South Africa host the tournament in their own inimitable style

 BBC Sport's Peter Scrivener "It's the way the South Africans express their joy and pleasure at the tournament being here," said Hemmingham. "It's certainly a challenge for us but there's no point whinging about it." Some people have complained the noise from the vuvuzelas has stopped fans from generating chants around the ground. But Hemmingham, who was at Saturday's game between England and the United States in Rustenburg, revealed: "We didn't have any problem. "The fans around us were all singing along and a lot of our fans were joining in with us using their vuvuzelas. It all added to the atmosphere. "There was definitely a different vibe about the place - the South Africans are loving it - and when in Rome, you just have to go along with it. "I bet there is not a single South African player complaining about the vuvuzela. They see it as more than just a noise, it's about the whole spirit of the thing."

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 StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version ||||| Their cacophonous din has so far been a soundtrack for the World Cup, to the delight of some and the profound annoyance of others. But organisers said that the vuvuzela, one of the most visible and certainly most audible motifs of the tournament's opening weekend, could yet be banned from inside stadiums.

 Organising committee chief executive Danny Jordaan said he would continue to monitor their use and that a ban could be enforced if there were "grounds to do so".

 Fifa and organisers have already said that they will ban the instrument if any are thrown onto the pitch or used as a weapon and urged fans not to blow them during national anthems.

 "We did say that if any land on the pitch in anger we will take action. We've tried to get some order. We have asked for no vuvuzelas during national anthems or stadium announcements. It's difficult but we're trying to manage the best we can," he told the BBC.

 "We've had some broadcasters and individuals [complaining] and it's something we are evaluating on an on-going basis." The BBC and ITV have received complaints from viewers about the background noise and, while both have said they will monitor the situation, they have also made the point that it is important to reflect the atmosphere of the tournament.

 Fifa has previously shrugged off complaints from broadcasters, players and coaches about the noise from the plastic horns that are being sold on every street corner in South African host cities.

 Following last year's Confederations Cup, there were complaints from coaches, players and broadcasters about the noise. But Fifa said that the horns formed part of the unique African atmosphere of the tournament and refused to ban them.

 But Jordaan himself, who battled for 16 years to bring the World Cup to South Africa, said he would prefer the 10 stadiums hosting the World Cup to ring to the sound of singing and dancing than the drone of the vuvuzela.

 "I would prefer singing. It's always been a great generator of a wonderful atmosphere in stadiums and I would try to encourage them to sing," he said.

 "In the days of the struggle (against apartheid) we were singing, all through our history it's our ability to sing that inspired and drove the emotions." |||||
What is a summary?

– The nonstop drone of plastic horns has been the soundtrack of the World Cup so far, on and off the field, and they're so annoying that FIFA is considering a ban. It can't come soon enough for some. "We can't sleep at night because of the vuvuzelas." the French captain tells the BBC. "We can't hear one another out on the pitch because of them." The cacophony isn't exactly music to the ears of the head of the organizing committee, which has already threatened to keep the omnipresent vuvuzelas out if any are thrown onto the pitch or used violently, reports the Guardian. "I would prefer singing," Danny Jordaan acknowledges. "It's always been a great generator of a wonderful atmosphere in stadiums and I would try to encourage them to sing."