Joy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  At the Lovell home, the children scrambled over each other to unwrap their gifts, many of which were delivered by a family friend wearing a Santa suit. When young Jeffrey ran outside to show the gathered reporters the toys he’d received, Marilyn noticed a photographer from the Associated Press, one of the nicer members of the press corps who’d been covering the family, standing in the cold. She walked outside to talk to him. “Why don’t you go home to your family?” she asked. “It’s Christmas.” “I can’t until I get a picture,” he replied. “Okay, wait a minute,” Marilyn said, then went back into her house. A few minutes later, the Lovell children came outside, each holding a new toy—a pogo stick, race cars, a yellow helicopter. The photographer snapped away. When he finally had his fill, Marilyn wished him a merry Christmas—and gently urged him on his way. Although she was sure the man had gone, the doorbell rang again. This time the man standing before her was finely dressed and wearing a chauffeur’s cap. Parked behind him was a Rolls-Royce. In his arms he held a box from the Neiman Marcus department store, beautifully wrapped in blue foil and decorated by two sequined spheres, one colored like the Earth, the other like the Moon. When Marilyn looked closer, she could see a little toy spaceship hovering over the lunar surface. Opening the box, she moved aside tissue paper decorated with silver stars and found a mink jacket. The best part was the card. It read TO MARILYN, FROM THE MAN IN THE MOON. Marilyn put the jacket on over her pajamas and set about tidying the house, her feet hardly touching the ground as she twirled to dust shelves, glided to straighten pillows. Perhaps inspired by the emotions of the day, her thirteen-year-old son, Jay, kissed his mother for the first time since he’d been in grade school. A few hours later the Lovells were in church. Although temperatures in Houston were heading into the midsixties, Marilyn wore her new mink jacket. Two-year-old Jeffrey, dressed smartly in a tan coat and a hat with a chinstrap, brought along his toy helicopter, which broke while he squirmed during the service. His sister helped calm him by walking him outside. Valerie Anders also took her children to church. All her boys were dressed in suits, and her ten-year-old son, Glen, served as altarboy.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  “Is the Moon really made of green cheese?” “No,” Anders replied. “It’s made of American cheese.” Soon after, the Yorktown called to the capsule asking what the astronauts might like for breakfast. The answer was unanimous: biscuits, steak, and eggs. As daylight broke, three swimmers worked to open the spacecraft’s hatch. When it lifted, one of the swimmers stuck his head inside, only to recoil as if repelled by a force field. He soon found his feet and, along with the others, helped the crew of Apollo 8 out of the capsule. As they stepped onto the inflatable platform around the spacecraft, none of the three astronauts could imagine a smell sweeter than the fresh sea air—a smell they’d known forever and yet was new to them today. A helicopter dropped a life raft into the water, and one by one, the astronauts climbed inside. The helicopter then lowered a basket-shaped net for the crew; one at a time, they were hoisted into the chopper. Anders was the last to go. Looking up at the helicopter, it struck him that almost everything on Apollo 8 had been designed with great redundancy, yet here he was, at the very end of his journey, hanging over the ocean by a single wire. It was 11:14 A.M. Houston time when the helicopter closed its door. Looking back down toward his spacecraft, Borman gave thanks to the scalded machine, an exquisite piece of design and daring. A moment later, the chopper dipped its shoulder into the yellow-pink new sky and headed for the Yorktown. On the carrier, hundreds of crew dressed in Navy whites jammed the decks, eager for a glimpse of the returning pioneers. On board the helicopter, a crewman handed Borman an electric razor. NASA had figured out how to get three men to the Moon and back again but still hadn’t perfected technology that would allow men to shave without polluting the command module with stubble. When Borman had asked to arrive at the aircraft carrier clean-shaven, a portable electric razor on board the chopper was the best NASA could offer. Soon, Borman was whisker free. On television sets at their homes, Susan, Marilyn, and Valerie watched as the helicopter slowed to a hover over the deck of the Yorktown and then set down. Ship’s crew ran out, ducking their heads, to secure the

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Borman, Lovell, and Anders dined on lobster tails and roast beef that evening with Captain Fifield, then collapsed in comfortable beds made up with crisp, fresh sheets, getting their first good sleep in more than a week. The next morning, they enjoyed steak and eggs with some of the Yorktown’s officers. That day, December 28, the astronauts boarded a carrier plane and flew from the Yorktown to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. From there, they transferred to a C-141 transport plane for a flight of more than eight hours to Houston. For Anders, it would be the longest flight he’d ever endured other than the one aboard Apollo 8. The plane reached Ellington Air Force Base after 2:00 A.M. on Sunday, December 29. Hundreds from NASA, and three thousand well-wishers, many holding banners with congratulatory messages, were there to greet the astronauts, who were clean-shaven, dressed in blue coveralls, and wearing baseball caps. Under a half Moon, Borman, Lovell, and Anders found their wives and children, gave them red and purples leis from Hawaii, and pulled them close. Eight-year-old Gayle Anders gazed at her father, grateful to have him back and not sure she should ever let go. The Borman boys wore ties and beamed at their dad. The Lovell kids orbited their father, pushing close for his attention, never staying on his far side for too long. Borman stepped up to a microphone, his wife’s red lipstick smudged across his face. “Thank you for coming out so early in the morning to welcome us,” he said. Lovell added, “At two in the morning, I expected to get in my old blue bomb and go home.” (Lovell’s “blue bomb” was the family’s no-frills 1962 Chevy Biscayne.) The astronauts thanked the crowd and their families at a microphone, greeted NASA’s managers and controllers, and smiled for photographers. One boy in the crowd told his friend, “I know they didn’t have radiation because I just shook their hands.” Then it was time for the astronauts to go home. But that wasn’t proving so easy. The crowd pushed forward, surrounding the crewmen and their families, thrusting dollar bills to be autographed. In the surge, Bill Anders became separated from Valerie; NASA staff scurried to reunite the couple, but no one seemed to mind such a short separation, least of all the two of them. Each of the families finally climbed into their car and drove off. In

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Injection maneuver used by the crew to leave lunar orbit had been nearly perfect. Twenty-four minutes after the midcourse burn, Apollo 8 went live on the air. It was 3:15 P.M. Houston time, Christmas Day. The first pictures were of the spacecraft’s complex instrument panel, then of Borman in his commander’s seat. In front of him, a pair of legs floated upside down. “Well, good afternoon,” Borman said. “This is the Apollo 8 crew.” “It looks like you’re okay, but somebody else is upside down,” Collins said. “Okay, that’s right. That’s Jim Lovell,” Borman said, as if there was nothing unusual about that. “What we thought we’d do today was just show you a little bit about life inside Apollo 8. We’ve shown you the scenes of the Moon, scenes of the Earth, and we thought we’d invite you into our home.” Anders, working the camera, followed Lovell into the Lower Equipment Bay, where Lovell gave a demonstration of how the crew exercised (and bumped his head on navigation equipment, a detail Borman didn’t fail to point out). Borman showed the command module’s computer and its input keypad, then changed cameras to show Anders, who demonstrated how the crew ate in space, his meal floating before him. “The food that we use is all dehydrated; it comes prepackaged in vacuum-sealed bags,” Borman explained. “You notice that all Bill has to do to keep it in one place is let go of it. Except for the air currents in the spacecraft, it would stay perfectly still. He gets out his handy, dandy scissors and cuts the bag. The food is varied, generally pretty good. If that doesn’t sound like a rousing endorsement, it isn’t, but nevertheless, it’s pretty good food.” Anders’s dinner sounded appealing enough: corn chowder, chicken and gravy, sugar cookies, orange drink, and hot cocoa. He showed how to use scissors to open the freeze-dried orange beverage, inject water, and make it drinkable. The men smiled and made jokes. Lovell showed off his navigation gear. Borman wished everyone back home a merry Christmas. Anders zoomed in for a close-up of Lovell’s mission patch—the one showing a figure eight around the Earth and the Moon. Then the screen went blank.

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  His hips thrust and circled in an endless cycle, over and over, sweeping her higher. His touch was oddly gentle, despite the pistoning haste of his movements. His tenderness swept into her heart, bringing tears to her eyes. Olivia whimpered, lost in his possession. He felt so good, the friction so deep, the stretching exquisite. “Yes, love . . .” His voice, thick and slurred with pleasure, enflamed her. “You feel . . . so damn good . . .” He filled her with quick, hard strokes, no longer able to be gentle, and she didn’t care. She didn’t want gentle. She wanted passion—his passion. Deep inside, her womb began to clench, then spasm. Arching her back on a scream, she shattered, her inner muscles clutching greedily at his invading shaft. Sebastian pinned her hips, holding her in place for his thrusts, drawing out her pleasure until she thought she would die of it. Only when she sagged into the mattress did he follow her, shuddering against her, gasping her name, filling her with scalding heat. When it was over, Olivia lay stunned, clinging to her husband as the only anchor in a whirl of decadent pleasure. It was forever before he spoke, his voice still passion-hoarse. “Hopelessly compromised,” he murmured, and promptly fell into a deep sleep. [image file=image_rsrc3ZH.jpg] Sebastian crossed the moonlit wharf in rapid strides. He was late for his meeting, but his tardiness was of little consequence to him. All that mattered at the moment was his sleeping wife and the panic she would feel if she discovered him missing. Olivia was uncertain of his attachment to her, as he was himself, but she had given her body to him regardless, trusting him to be a gentleman and claim her as his bride. Nothing could force him to do the honorable thing. He was certain he could return her to her father and successfully fight the proxy. She was intelligent, and he’d been honest about his history, but she had taken him to her bed despite the risks. She was the first person in his life willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, the first person who truly wanted him, not just for an hour’s pleasure or two, but for the rest of her life. He refused to lose her regard. Especially over the distasteful errand he was presently attending to. Sebastian entered the seaside tavern and paused on the threshold, allowing his eyes to adjust to the interior. “You’re late, Phoenix.” He turned his head toward the voice. “Pierre,” he greeted coldly. “Dominique.” The French pirates lounged by the door, and Sebastian felt a twinge of satisfaction. Their position was excellent. After what he planned to say, a hasty egress might well be required. In anticipation of trouble, he had set his own ship to sail that morning, lessening the targets that could be used to wound him.

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  Julienne rode his erection with heartening enthusiasm, making soft little humming noises as she sucked on him, and her enjoyment increased his a hundredfold. Unfamiliar with the act, she took him with shallow strokes, but the pleasure was still intense, brought on as much by her selfless giving as the burning that spread from his groin and coursed through his veins. Lucien threw his head back and growled deep in his throat, his hands drifting into the golden curls at her nape, directing her rhythm, taking care not to completely disrupt the stylish arrangement of her hair. His hips pumped in an unconscious tempo, gently fucking her mouth, as his body sought the relief it could find only with Julienne. Her tongue dipped into the tiny hole at the tip of his cock, and his sac tightened, his shaft swelled. “Pull away, sweet,” he gasped. “I’m close . . . I can’t . . .” Julienne ignored his direction and sucked him harder, driving him mad, until he came in an orgasm so intense he swayed on his feet, his seed flooding her mouth, pouring out the depth of his lust and longing. Lucien cried out her name, grateful she held his hips so he didn’t fall to his knees and crush her. Blood roared in a raging torrent through his veins, making his ears ring and his eyesight fade to blackness. He had never come so hard in his life, his cock jerking until he was emptied. When Julienne rose to her feet, wiping her mouth with the palm of her glove, her lovely face was alight with satisfaction. Trembling, Lucien leaned against her in a weary embrace, sated to his very soul. Chapter Six Julienne held Lucien tightly to her, bearing his weight as best she could, her heart light and filled with joy that she had given him such pleasure. She licked her lips, tasting him, and felt a surge of female triumph at her accomplishment. The sensation was heady. Unable to contain it, Julienne laughed with delight. “You find this to be funny?” he asked, his husky voice tinged with wry amusement. “You will be the death of me.” She grinned. “I made you happy.” Lucien pulled back. His handsome face was flushed, misty with sweat, his beautiful eyes glazed with bliss. And she had made him look like that. She laughed again. “Julienne.” His voice was gruff but tender. “You’re happy to have made me happy?” She gave him a quick, fierce hug. “Of course.” Pulling away, Julienne began to rearrange her dress, restoring her appearance. She watched as Lucien righted his own clothing. When he tried to reach for her, she sidestepped with a giggle. “Oh, no.” His mouth curved with a heart-stopping smile. “It’s your turn, sweet.” She ran up the wide, grassy steps toward the manse, but he caught her easily and dipped his head for a kiss. Julienne savored the heady taste of him for a moment before pulling away.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Jim grinned. “Would you believe, the Moon?” Looking into Jim’s eyes, Marilyn still saw him as the boy she’d met in high school, who talked about stars and planets, and as the first-year Naval Academy midshipman who’d asked her to type up his term paper that predicted men would someday ride rockets into space. She knew that this was what her husband had been seeking all his life. Lovell called his four children, ages two through fifteen, into the study and told them the news. He did own a lunar map, and he laid it out on his desk to show his kids where America wanted him to go. — Now that Low and other top NASA managers had decided to shoot for the Moon, they needed to pick the best day to go. A primary objective was to replicate a landing mission to the fullest extent possible, in order to provide the agency with relevant experience for when it ran the real thing. That meant, among other things, figuring out the optimal alignment between Earth and Moon so that the flight required no more propellant than necessary, and so that there would be excellent lunar lighting to scout potential landing sites. Only a few days per month lined up like that, so NASA had to choose well. Management had access over the weekend to the agency’s seven giant mainframe computers, which calculated four possible launch windows. Optimal lift-off would be December 20 or 21, with a splashdown six days later in the Pacific Ocean. That gave Apollo 8 its best look at the Moon, and time to make several orbits, each of which would last about two hours. It also allowed for an early morning countdown at Cape Kennedy, which would give NASA plenty of daylight to rescue the crew if something went wrong during launch. That all sounded fine to Kraft until he realized what that meant: Apollo 8 would be in orbit around the Moon on Christmas. He knew NASA would be accused of selecting the date for effect, but all he could do then would be to tell the truth: The agency hadn’t chosen Christmas, nature had. For the next several days, many of NASA’s top managers and

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  Pentecostalism until the 1940s (see pp. 960–61), may not be a permanent one. There is no special reason why a form of Christianity which emphasizes the renewal brought by the gifts of the Spirit should be allied to Evangelical Fundamentalism, which demands adherence to a particular set of intellectual or doctrinal propositions or a particular way of understanding texts from the past. There has indeed been a considerable ‘Charismatic’ movement within a very different variety of Western Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church. Pentecostalism might grow into an alliance with other forms of Christianity which have seen the Bible in more flexible and arguably more creative ways – as stories whose truth is not that of the Highway Code or a car maintenance guide. It was certainly the experience of the Quakers, from their first extrovert demonstrations in the seventeenth century, that Evangelical Christianity was a very inexact fit for their exploration of the spiritual; so it may prove with Pentecostalism. The Ghanaian historian Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu describes a telling incident which he witnessed in a Ghanaian indigenous Pentecostal Church. The choir, primed to sing a chorus in preparation for the sermon, simply could not stop singing. Some of them began shaking, screaming, jumping, blessing the name of the Lord; the congregation followed suit. It lasted for an hour, and the preacher decided that there was no need for a sermon: it was sufficient blessing. This is an interesting victory of liturgy – albeit not a style of liturgy traditionally familiar in the West – over the preached word. Nor need Pentecostalism’s frequent alliance with American cultural forms be more than a product of its origins: much of it has other sources, and is evolving a new politics just as it takes up new modes of expression.106 It is observable that certain aspects of the Christian past are being jettisoned without fuss even within self-consciously traditional religion. The most notable casualty of the past century has been Hell. It has dropped out of Christian preaching or much popular concern, first among Protestants, then later among Catholics, who have also ceased to pay much attention to that aspect of Western doctrine which seemed all-consuming in the Latin Church on the eve of the Reformation, Purgatory.107 One might see this merely as a result of European secularization: does this continent, arguably so far the world’s most successfully balanced consumer society, need a Christian Heaven and Hell? It has lived through its own self-made hells in two world wars, seen the folly of blindly dogmatic belief, and now it has tried to build something less ambitious than paradise on earth, without the aid of sacred stories or absolutist ideologies. Yet the phenomenon is wider than secular Europe. It penetrates deep into conservative as well as liberal Christianity worldwide. The disappearance of

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  chopper to the deck. After the rotors stopped, a short stair platform was brought to the aircraft door, and a red carpet was unrolled at the foot of the stairs. The door opened and the three astronauts stepped forward, first Borman, then Lovell, then Anders. They smiled and waved, overwhelmed by the roar of the hundreds of sailors on board the ship, each of whom was away from home for Christmas, just as they were. A giant American flag held by the Navy color guard danced in the ocean breeze. In the sound and the moment, Borman’s mind traveled back in time, over all the training and planning that had been done for Apollo 8, over the thousands of people who had worked so hard for this audacious mission, and he thought about how so few of them would ever be recognized like this, and how so many of them deserved to be. Anders lost his balance for a moment when the astronauts finally made their way down the stairs, not an unexpected result after more than six days of weightlessness. Watching at home, Valerie thought that her husband looked skinny. It was the smiles that convinced the women that their husbands really were home safe. By now, Marilyn was so spent from the stress of the past week that she had little voice left and even less energy, but she couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy. “He’s beautiful,” she did manage to tell reporters. “I know that’s no way to describe a man, but he looks just beautiful.” At a nearby microphone, the Yorktown’s commander, Captain John Fifield, welcomed and congratulated the men. Taking the microphone, Borman addressed the ship. Millions of people watched around the world. “We’re just very happy to be here and appreciate all your efforts, and I know you had to stay out here over Christmas and that made it tough... We can’t tell you how much we really appreciate you being here, and how proud it is for us to participate in this event, because thousands of people made this possible, and I guess we’re all just part of the group. Thank you very much.” Surrounded by sailors, the astronauts made their way across the flight deck, then down an elevator to the hangar deck and into the ship’s sick bay for a medical evaluation. For his part, Anders was in no shape for an inspection. As part of his plan to avoid defecating in space, he’d asked

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  emotional outpouring in any previous mission, including Alan Shepard’s...I’ve seen rallies in locker rooms after championship games, happy politicians after elections, but never, none of them do justice to the spirit pervading this room.” Some of the controllers and personnel had also brought along triangular flags with a white numeral 1 sewn in, to indicate victory over the Soviets. Someone at NASA, however, suggested that that might not be the most magnanimous of displays, and the men agreed. Instead, they waved American flags, which to many of them said it all. In Rome, Pope Paul VI, who’d watched the splashdown on television, knelt in a prayer of gratitude. In Communist Cuba, state news covered the return of the spacecraft. World leaders began writing notes of congratulations to America. In the capsule, Borman, Lovell, and Anders were still covered in vomit and garbage. The spacecraft had come through unimaginable heat with almost no effect on cabin temperatures, but now, bobbing on the waves, it began to grow hot inside, likely from retained heat sizzling upon impact with the water. Temperatures soon subsided, however, and Anders began to appreciate how beautifully the heat shield had worked. The huge chunks he’d seen flying off during reentry had really been just granular in size; surrounded by an ionized haze, and streaking by at thousands of miles per hour, they had appeared through his window like fiery baseballs. The crew worked to remove their straps while helicopters circled above. Recovery forces itched to get to work, but NASA protocol required them to wait for the break of dawn and the onset of natural light, in about forty-five minutes, so all they could do was hover, close in, and shine lights around the bobbing capsule. Men armed with rifles scanned the waters to make sure no sharks were in the area during recovery time. Just before first light, several swimmers dropped from their chopper into the water. When they reached Apollo 8, they affixed an inflatable collar to the spacecraft, stabilizing it and providing a platform on which to step and work. Through a window, one of the swimmers flashed a thumbs-up to Anders, who returned the gesture. While the Yorktown moved toward the recovery scene, one of the helicopter pilots radioed the astronauts with a question.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  broadcasts scheduled for the return journey. Before showtime, CapCom Mike Collins settled some business. He started by delivering a Christmas message to Anders, who’d finally awoken. “Valerie said to tell you that she and the kids are leaving for church about eleven thirty and eagerly awaiting your return. She said presents are magically starting to appear under the Christmas tree again, so it looks like a double-barreled Christmas.” “You can’t beat a deal like that,” Anders replied. “How was Christmas at your house today?” “Early and busy as usual,” Collins said. “I told Michael you guys are up there, and he said, ‘Who’s driving?’ ” Michael was Collins’s five-year-old son. “That’s a good question,” Anders replied. “I think Isaac Newton is doing most of the driving right now.” Collins informed the crew that Borman’s family was at Mission Control. Susan did not want to distract her husband; instead, she and her boys, and Frank’s parents, just beamed their grins to Collins. “You’ve got a whole row of smiling faces in the back room, Frank,” he said. A few minutes later, the Borman family left to return home. Only then did the public affairs officer announce to the media that a message had been forwarded by NASA that morning to Mrs. Lloyd Bucher, wife of the captain of the USS Pueblo, whose crew had been held captive by North Korea. The message read, “You have been in our thoughts and prayers. Your reunion has brought great joy to our hearts this Christmas. Our best to you personally, and to all the families under your command. Signed, the families of the crew of Apollo 8.” The note, the public affairs officer said, had been Susan Borman’s idea, and she’d written it herself. — Shortly before going live on TV, Borman got ready to institute the planned midcourse correction. At an altitude of about 193,000 miles above Earth, he positioned the ship and fired its thrusters for fourteen seconds. In a short time, planners in Houston would know how much the burn had helped, but already they could see that the Trans Earth

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Marilyn’s daughter, Susan, wore the mink jacket that Jim had sent to Marilyn on Christmas Day 1968, while he was orbiting the Moon. But late in 2015, Marilyn asked for it back, if only for a Chicago winter shaping up to be colder than most. Even now, Marilyn and Jim go for nightly walks near Lake Michigan. The shoreline makes for a perfect place to gaze up at the Moon, especially when it’s full and just rising over the trees. In summer 2017, the International Astronomical Union formally recognized the name “Mount Marilyn” for the lunar mountain Lovell picked out for his wife during Apollo 8. Every once in a while during their walks, Jim shows Marilyn where it is on the Moon. Every once in a while, he thinks, I’ve been there. — By the time the last Apollo mission flew in late 1972, Bill Anders had been at the National Aeronautics and Space Council for almost four years. In that time, he’d worked on projects like Skylab (America’s first space station), Viking (to put an unmanned spacecraft on Mars), and the Space Shuttle. He’d also lobbied successfully to include astronaut-geologist Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17. To Anders, it made little sense for the agency to send only test pilots to land on the Moon; NASA needed someone who could expertly interact with and appreciate its geological wonders. Before going to Washington, Anders had made a deal with NASA that permitted him to keep using the agency’s T-38 airplanes for as long as he worked in government. The move allowed him to stay connected with high-performance jets and kept him sharp, just in case NASA extended Apollo into the future and changed its mind about keeping Anders in the command module pilot’s seat. Anders was still at the Space Council when he and Valerie welcomed their sixth child, daughter Diana. Soon after, he was appointed by President Nixon to the five-person Atomic Energy Commission (a move that made sense, given that Anders was a nuclear engineer), and two years later, in 1975, he was named the first chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In six years of service in Washington, Anders had proved himself serious and nonpartisan. In 1976, a White House staffer reached out to Anders to see if he’d be interested in becoming an

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  seconds later and cut the lines, all three men were hanging upside-down in their straps. Garbage that had collected in the cabin streamed down on them, and water poured over their bodies and faces. Right away, the crew believed the spacecraft had split open from the impact and was flooding with seawater. Anders got ready to pounce on the hatch and open it, then get his crewmates and himself out before the ship sank—they’d trained for that kind of emergency—but a moment later he could see that no more water was running in, and he realized that the crew had been doused not by seawater but by condensation around the various cold parts of the spacecraft’s interior. Anders could only smile at the picture: three conquering heroes returned from the Moon, hanging upside down and dripping in garbage. Borman reached for a button and inflated three large balloons, which flipped the spacecraft back over, blunt side down. The men were now right side up in their seats, but it was too late. Sickened by the impact, the high seas, and the sudden inversion, Borman vomited all over his crewmates. It had been bad enough on the outbound journey when Borman threw up, but now his crewmates let him have it. “Typical Army guy!” the two Navy men yelled at their commander. “Can’t handle the water!” Television cameras showed live images from the recovery ship and one of the rescue helicopters. Cronkite removed his glasses, as if he couldn’t quite believe the journey had ended. “The spacecraft, Apollo 8, is back, and what a remarkable trip and remarkable conclusion,” he told the nation. “The spacecraft has landed within two and three quarters miles of the carrier...Apollo 8 has ended up to this point as perfectly as it began.” At home, the astronauts’ wives were overcome by joy, relief, and wonder. Their children hugged their crying mothers. At Mission Control, applause broke out, and a fifteen-foot-long American flag was unfurled, one that eclipsed the giant wall map that had been used for the mission. All three flight shifts were present to experience the moment. “The Star- Spangled Banner” played in everyone’s headsets. “It is a veritable roar in here,” the public affairs officer announced. “The room is awash with cigar smoke. A number of congratulatory messages are coming across this console...I’ve never seen a degree of this

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Volkswagen Beetle, the longer Borman and Lovell flew, the more they liked each other. Every day, over and over, they sang “He’ll Have to Go,” a 1959 country ballad by Jim Reeves. “Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone,” they crooned; “Let’s pretend that we’re together all alone.” After eleven days in space, Borman and Lovell received visitors. Approaching like a white star, Gemini 6, which had just launched from Cape Kennedy, closed to within one foot of Gemini 7, proving that two ships could rendezvous in space (a necessary maneuver for flying a lunar landing mission, in which astronauts would use a lunar module to shuttle between an orbiting spacecraft and the Moon). Lovell burst out laughing when the Gemini 6 crew, Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford, flashed a sign to Borman: BEAT ARMY. Schirra, Stafford, and Lovell were Navy, and as a West Point man Borman had no choice but to take it. By the time Borman and Lovell splashed down in the western Atlantic, they had set records for duration of flight (more than 330 hours, or 13.75 days), distance traveled (more than 5 million miles), and number of orbits (206). More important, they’d helped America take a major step toward the Moon by proving man could endure long stretches in space. The two weeks they’d spent was the maximum duration it was believed a lunar mission would require. Borman was immediately made a full colonel, the youngest in the Air Force at age thirty-seven. A few weeks after splashdown, Susan wrote an article that was published in newspapers around the country. People had noticed how frightened she’d been during launch and the flight, and not everyone appreciated it—including some at NASA. “These past weeks I had worn my feelings on my sleeve,” she wrote. “Some said they were pleased to see an astronaut’s wife willing to admit she was scared. Others, including some people in the space program, were critical because I failed to maintain the traditional stiff upper lip. ‘For heaven’s sake, wipe your tears. You’re ruining my morning coffee,’ one woman wrote. At one time, such criticism would have cut me deeply. But...I have come to realize you can’t be all things to all people. So I decided not to pretend and not to try to hide my feelings—I decided to be myself.” Soon after Gemini 7’s return, Borman received a telegram from West Point offering him a permanent professorship of mechanics. Susan loved

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  Federal Environmental Protection Agency as a ‘Gestapo’.58 Nevertheless, religious movements at the moment of success tend to fragment and diversify, especially when they are already as diverse as American conservative Evangelicalism, and there have been signs that a new generation within the movement is less inclined to sign up to the agenda which won the Republicans electoral success in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Environmental concerns are one of the chief issues on which fragmentation is perceptible. What seems unlikely to shift is the vigorous presence of Evangelicalism in American public life, in a form unimaginable before 1977. If Jimmy Carter’s election marked a new phase in American politics and public religion, so did the unexpected election of Pope John Paul II the following year. His election was in a hasty conclave, subdued by the sudden death of John Paul I only a month after enthronement (a tragedy so ineptly handled by the Vatican as to give rise to a great deal of silly conspiracy theory). The choice of a Polish pope broke with more than four centuries of choices from among the Italian episcopate, and it could be taken as a fitting symbol of the rapid changes now occurring within the Catholic Church. The youngest pope at election since Pius IX in 1846, and destined to have the second-longest pontificate in the papacy’s history so far, Karol Wojtyla was a heroic figure, survivor of struggles against two tyrannical regimes which were conscious enemies of the Church. He was also extrovert, articulate and a born actor. His qualities were never better demonstrated than in an assassination attempt on him in 1981, which he not only survived but turned into a notable example of forgiveness.59 John Paul’s election was a catalyst for a renewed joyful self-confidence in the Polish Catholic Church, already the most vigorous in the Soviet bloc in its confrontation with Communism. His insistence on returning to his native country in 1979, made possible by a fatal irresolution in the Polish government, remains a moment to savour in the history of resistance to oppression as ecstatic crowds, up to a third of the population, met him in an outpouring of self- expression. Without that visit, the formation of the Solidarity movement and the process which within a decade led to a peaceful establishment of real democracy in Poland, and indeed throughout Eastern Europe, could not have happened. It is an achievement to celebrate and admire. Moreover, it was coupled with John Paul’s personal ability to rise above chauvinist Polish nationalism. As the Greek Catholic Church emerged from the shadows after the fall of Communism (see pp. 1001–2), the Pope was a good deal more generous towards its efforts to rebuild its institutions and regain its church buildings than some of his fellow Polish Catholic clergy and laity. In one Galician Polish city called Przemyśl, they not only ignored his order for the restitution of a church to the Greek

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  was well. Even a psychiatrist got his turn, looking for signs that such profound separation from home and family and Earth might have disturbed the men’s psyches. Other than some stiff legs—and Lovell’s lingering tendency to let go of things in midair and expect them to float— everyone checked out fine. Following their medical examinations, the crew were allowed to phone their wives; even from a distance of several thousand miles and through the thick static, these women never sounded so close. The astronauts made their way back to the flight deck to thank the crew of the Yorktown and to meet with the swimmers who’d made the recovery. While shaking hands, Anders recognized the man who’d first opened the hatch of the spacecraft. “That was really great, Corporal,” Anders said. “I noticed, though, that when you poked your head in you fell backward. Was it the way we looked?” “No, sir,” the man replied. “It was the way you smelled.” The astronauts had a good laugh about that one. By now, it had been several hours since splashdown. In Houston, Susan, Marilyn, and Valerie tried to adjust to the idea that they needn’t worry anymore, that today was now just a regular Friday. At Mission Control, it was finally time to celebrate. Consoles were unplugged and data secured, and many of the controllers and managers returned to the haunts that had been bridges for the endless nights and years they’d spent working to get to the Moon. Some went to the Singing Wheel, some to the Flintlock, others to the Holiday Inn across from NASA in Houston. Most everyone drank and smoked cigars and raised toasts. At the Flintlock, John Aaron and Rod Loe, who’d worked with Anders to write mission rules and procedures, stood at the bottom of the stairs, not yet ready to go up and join the party. “What are you guys doing?” a friend asked. “Why aren’t you upstairs?” Loe thought it over for a moment. “We’re just standing here thinking how proud we are to be Americans,” he said. —

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Takumi had brought a camp stove in his backpack, and the Colonel was huddled over it, heating instant coffee. The sun shone bright but could not combat the cold, and I sat with the Colonel and sipped the coffee (“The thing about instant coffee is that it smells pretty good but tastes like stomach bile,” the Colonel said), and then one by one, Takumi and Lara and Alaska woke up, and we spent the day hiding out, but loudly. Hiding out loud. — At the barn that afternoon, Takumi decided we needed to have a freestyle contest. “You start, Pudge,” Takumi said. “Colonel Catastrophe, you’re our beat box.” “Dude, I can’t rap,” I pled. “That’s okay. The Colonel can’t drop beats, either. Just try and rhyme a little and then send it over to me.” With his hand cupped over his mouth, the Colonel started to make absurd noises that sounded more like farting than bass beats, and I, uh, rapped. “Um, we’re sittin’ in the barn and the sun’s goin’ down / when I was a kid at Burger King I wore a crown / dude, I can’t rhyme for shit / so I’ll let my boy Takumi rip it.” Takumi took over without pausing. “Damn, Pudge, I’m not sure I’m quite ready / but like Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy / I’ve always got the goods to rip shit up / last night I drank wine it was like hiccup hiccup / the Colonel’s beats are sick like malaria / when I rock the mike the ladies suffer hysteria / I represent Japan as well as Birmingham / when I was a kid they called me yellow man / but I ain’t ashamed a’ my skin color / and neither are the countless bitches that call me lover.” Alaska jumped in. “Oh shit did you just diss the feminine gender / I’ll pummel your ass then stick you in a blender / you think I like Tori and Ani so I can’t rhyme / but I got flow like Ghostbusters got slime / objectify women and it’s fuckin’ on / you’ll be dead and gone like ancient Babylon.”

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Even a few days ago, that design had seemed the fancy of a science fiction writer. Today, it had almost all come true. — After the broadcast, the crew broke out their own Christmas dinner. Each man expected more of what Anders had shown the world—dehydrated kibble—but that is not what they found. Wrapped in colorful holiday ribbons (fireproof, of course) and labeled with Merry Christmas messages, they uncovered a bounty: roast turkey with gravy so thick it didn’t even levitate from the tray, stuffing, cranberry sauce. The topper was a gift smuggled in by Slayton himself—a two-ounce bottle of Coronet VSQ California brandy (100 proof) for each man. “Put it back,” Borman ordered when he saw the liquor. If anything went wrong during the remainder of the flight, no matter how minor, the media would blame it on drinking, and there was no way Borman would risk that. Lovell just smiled. He and Anders had no intention of consuming the brandy; still, he thought Slayton’s gesture was just about the greatest thing in the world. The men had just been to the Moon—the Moon—and a little romance was called for. No matter; it was enough just to look at the bottle’s red and brown label, admire its fancy script (“Connoisseurs will delight,” it promised), and dream of California, where the brandy had been awarded first prize at the state fair. Each man’s wife had sent along a Christmas package for her husband (NASA requirements: small, fireproof, under eight ounces), and now it was time for those to be opened. Lovell received cuff links and a tie tack with a moonstone; Anders a tie tack emblazoned with a gold numeral 8; and Borman a set of cuff links fashioned from a Saint Christopher medal worn by a family friend during battle in World War I. The men often dressed formally for official engagements, so the gifts would come in handy. There was another set of cuff links on board. Twenty years earlier, as a plebe at the Naval Academy, Lovell had attended the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia. There he met another plebe, just for a moment in passing, this one an Army man from West Point. The two strangers exchanged one of their two cuff links. It was only years later that Lovell

• From Story of the Eye (1928)

  She only came back at nightfall, but driving a magnificent automobile, with suitcases full of linen and rich clothing. Simone said that Sir Edmund would join us in Madrid and that all day long he had been plying her with the most detailed questions about Marcelle’s death, making her draw diagrams and sketches. Finally he had told a servant to buy a wax mannequin with a blonde wig; he had then laid the figure out on the floor and asked Simone to urinate on its face, on the open eyes, in the same position as she had urinated on the eyes of the corpse: during all that time, Sir Edmund had not even touched her. However, there had been a great change in Simone after Marcelle’s suicide—she kept staring into space all the time, looking as if she belonged to something other than the terrestrial world, where almost everything bored her; or if she was still attached to this world, then purely by way of orgasms, which were rare but incomparably more violent than before. These orgasms were as different from normal climaxes as, say, the mirth of savage Africans from that of Occidentals. In fact, though the savages may sometimes laugh as moderately as whites, they also have long-lasting spasms, with all parts of the body in violent release, and they go whirling willy-nilly, flailing their arms about wildly, shaking their bellies, necks, and chests, and chortling and gulping horribly. As for Simone, she would first open uncertain eyes, at some lewd and dismal sight…. For example, Sir Edmund had a cramped, windowless pigsty, where one day he locked up a petite and luscious streetwalker from Madrid; wearing only cami-knickers, she collapsed in a pool of liquid manure under the bellies of the grunting swine. Once the door was shut, Simone had me fuck her again and again in front of that door, with her arse in the mud, under a fine drizzle of rain, while Sir Edmund tossed off. Gasping and slipping away from me, Simone grabbed her behind in both hands and threw back her head, which banged violently against the ground; she tensed breathlessly for a few seconds, pulling with all her might on the fingernails buried in her buttocks, then tore herself away at one swoop and thrashed about on the ground like a headless chicken, hurting herself with a terrible bang on the door fittings. Sir Edmund gave her his wrist to bite on and allay the spasm that kept shaking her, and I saw that her face was smeared with saliva and blood. After these huge fits, she always came to nestle in my arms; she settled her little bottom comfortably in my large hands and remained there for a long time without moving or speaking, huddled like a little girl, but always sombre.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  screens went dark. Even with the cameras off, the astronauts couldn’t stop describing the Moon. “The view at this altitude, Houston, is tremendous,” Lovell told CapCom Jerry Carr. “There is no trouble picking out features that we learned on the map.” Moments later, Lovell arrived at a place he’d long been waiting to reach. “I can see the old second initial point here very well—Mount Marilyn.” “Roger,” Carr confirmed. On Earth, Lovell had promised his wife he would name a mountain for her. Now, from the Moon, he’d delivered. — An hour after passing Mount Marilyn, Apollo 8 disappeared again behind the western limb of the Moon to complete its second revolution. The astronauts now had to prepare to fire their SPS engine again, this time for just a few seconds, to circularize their orbit. Until now, they’d been flying an ellipse, one ranging from about 69 miles to about 195 miles above the lunar surface. A successful burn would put them at a constant altitude of 69 miles. As before, a display flashed 99, the crew pushed a button to proceed, and the engine lit. Eleven seconds later, it stopped. By the calculations of the onboard computer, Apollo 8 was now in a circular orbit about 69 miles above the Moon. And it would stay there, long after the astronauts were dead, unless the SPS engine fired again, an event scheduled in sixteen hours, and about which Borman was growing increasingly apprehensive. As Apollo 8 orbited the Moon, Borman was in charge of piloting the craft. In an airplane on Earth, that meant steering, turning, changing altitudes, and a host of other operations. At the Moon, where Apollo 8’s path was locked in by orbital mechanics, it meant keeping the spacecraft oriented so that his crewmates could carry out their duties. Until now, the ship had been flying backward, necessary in order for the SPS engine to slow the craft enough to put it into lunar orbit and then to circularize that orbit. But now, following the flight plan, Borman began to pitch the