Love

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 The Art of Seduction (2001)

  angry with me or bear me This must, however, be done early on, before your targets know too any ill will. So, if what much and their impressions of you are set. It should occur the moment you tell me is true, pronounce sentence on me they lay eyes on you. By sending mixed signals in that first encounter, you yourself: I will do whatever create a little surprise, a little tension: you seem to be one thing (innocent, you command." • "I do brash, intellectual, witty), but you also throw them a glimpse of something not hate you overmuch for what has happened," was else (devilish, shy, spontaneous, sad). Keep things subtle: if the second the sweet girl's answer, quality is too strong, you will seem schizophrenic. But make them wonder "nor do I love you for it. why you might be shy or sad underneath your brash intellectual wit, and But to see what amends you will have their attention. Give them an ambiguity that lets them see you will make for the wrong you have done me, I what they want to see, capture their imagination with little voyeuristic shall test you another glimpses into your dark soul. time." • And so he bowed The Greek philosopher Socrates was one of history's greatest seducers; as if to go, and she, lovely girl, sighed at him most the young men who followed him as students were not just fascinated by secretly and said with his ideas, they fell in love with him. One such youth was Alcibiades, the tender feeling: • "Ah, dear notorious playboy who became a powerful political figure near the end of friend, God bless you!" From this time on the the fifth century B.C. In Plato's Symposium, Alcibiades describes Socrates's thoughts of each ran on the seductive powers by comparing him to the little figures of Silenus that were other. • Rivalin turned made back then. In Greek myth, Silenus was quite ugly, but also a wise away, pondering many things. He pondered from prophet. Accordingly the statues of Silenus were hollow, and when you many sides why took them apart, you would find little figures of gods inside them—the in- Blancheflor should be ner truth and beauty under the unappealing exterior. And so, for Alci- vexed, and what lay biades, it was the same with Socrates, who was so ugly as to be repellent but behind it all. He considered her greeting, her whose face radiated inner beauty and contentment. The effect was confus- 192 • The Art of Seduction words; he examined her ing and attractive. Antiquity's other great seducer, Cleopatra, also sent out sigh minutely, her farewell, mixed signals: by all accounts physically alluring, in voice, face, body, and he whole behavior. . . But manner, she also had a brilliantly active mind, which for many writers of since he was uncertain of

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  146 Lecture 28: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 1 Lecture 28 Goethe, like Shakespeare for the English and like Dante for the Italians, is the German set apart from all the other mighty fi gures in their literary history. He is truly a genius, a universal genius. L ove—both spiritual and carnal—is the theme of Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory. Morte d’Arthur epitomizes the ideals of the Middle Ages. It was published after the death of Malory, in 1471. William Caxton, the fi rst major fi gure in English publishing, was its editor. The theme of love is crucial to any discussion of great books and great themes. Love is a power that rules everyday affairs. Early Greek thinkers believed that the force of love brought the world into being. Dante concludes The Divine Comedy by referring to the love that moves the universe. In Morte d’Arthur, Lancelot allows his love for Guinevere to distract him from his great goal, seeking the Holy Grail. The work asks whether we sometimes pursue what is irrelevant and let slip our great missions in life. Morte d’Arthur also has a theme of redemption: Lancelot made mistakes but was redeemed, although England was destroyed and King Arthur’s Camelot was gone. Love is also a theme in Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe, who lived from 1749 to 1832, is the genius of German literature. He is seen as the embodiment of the Age of Enlightenment, as well as the Romantic Age that followed it. Goethe was well educated and fl uent in Greek and Latin. He showed the love of classics that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. © Photos.com/Thinkstock.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  In 1897 in Berlin, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose reputation would being other, for a magical later circle the world, met Lou Andreas-Salomé, the Russian-born writer creature who is ourself and beauty who was notorious for having broken Nietzsche's heart. She while possessing the was the darling of Berlin intellectuals, and although Rilke was twenty-two advantage, over all our imaginings, of an and she was thirty-six, he fell head over heels in love with her. He flooded autonomous existence. . . . her with love letters, which showed that he had read all her books and We find traces of it in even knew her tastes intimately. The two became friends. Soon she was editing the most banal circumstances of love: in his poetry, and he hung on her every word. the attraction linked to any Salomé was flattered by Rilke's mirroring of her spirit, enchanted by change, any disguise, as in the intense attention he paid her and the spiritual communion they began the importance of unison and the repetition of self in to develop. She became his lover. But she was worried about his future; it the other. . . . The great, was difficult to make a living as a poet, and she encouraged him to learn the implacable amorous her native language, Russian, and become a translator. He followed her ad- passions are all linked to the fact that a being vice so avidly that within months he could speak Russian. They visited imagines he sees his most Russia together, and Rilke was overwhelmed by what he saw—the peas- secret self spying upon him ants, the folk customs, the art, the architecture. Back in Berlin, he turned behind the curtain of his rooms into a kind of shrine to Russia, and started wearing Russian peas- another's eyes. ant blouses and peppering his conversation with Russian phrases. Now the —ROBERT MUSIL, QUOTED IN D E N I S DE ROUGEMONT, LOVE charm of his mirroring soon wore off. At first Salomé had been flattered DECLARED, TRANSLATED BY that he shared her interests so intensely, but now she saw this as something RICHARD HOWARD else: he seemed to have no real identity. He had become dependent on her for his own self-esteem. It was all so slavish. In 1899, much to his horror, she broke off the relationship.

• From Action (2014)

  [image file=image_1039.jpg] For those who are shacking up, settling down, or just transfixed by their partners: Having a long-term love in your life is as privileged and special an experience as using the bottom half of your body as a divining rod pointed all over the ol’ singles bar. (What is a “singles bar,” guys? Is it a fantasy invention of 1970s radio?) You get to cram your affection, respect, and attraction into one sweet vessel, and be expanded (and turned on) by theirs. Sex, when you’re in love, is hot as hellfire—and when it’s not, that’s okay, too. To a point—as long as it’s not purgatory. How ominous, I know! Be at peace, my besotted. A happy partnership does not transpire only if you have coruscating sex each time you get in bed. You don’t even need to be physically intimate with a partner to be contented with their company (and this extends even to long-term relationships). Finding someone who is your preternaturally ideal sexual match, and who also makes charming conversation with your most irritating colleagues, listens to you bemoan your parents’ myriad failings, thinks decently, and conscientiously remembers what you get on your hot dogs without having to ask twice (SWOON), is probably not something anyone should expect from a realistic coupledom. (Still, I am never going to settle for less, hee.) This does not mean you have to hunker down for a peaceful life of quilting and clandestine masturbation. If you are part of a loving, but sexually lacking, couple: LUCKY YOU; I’m serious. It means you have the trust in place to potentially experience the heart- (and orgasm-) reactivating phenomenon of having your sexual relationship with your person ascend in quality as you pass more and more time together—instead of the other way around—as long as you make a verbal point of setting it on a new course. Maybe in some long-term relationships, you feel or have felt like, God, the sex was unmatched in the beginning, and now I’m more attracted to the relish all over this footlong? (Ew, not like that! I should have picked a different food. Maybe outside of Eros and Thanatos, Freud wasn’t a hack? Nah, wait… [thinks about his probings of his teenage daughter]… he totally was. Oh, did you wonder why we’re mostly not employing the work of that greasy cokeball in this book?) Whether you start out utterly compatible or not, there are going to be valleys as you make the long journey of traversing your sexual peaks. Then you get to climb out of them together by finding all-new ways to fuck each other stupid.

• From Action (2014)

  • Don’t feel like you need to “identify,” but feel free to check out places where people do. I’ve never identified as a “polyamorous person” or involved myself in communities based on a shared rejection of monogamy—I don’t like to assign names to anything about my love life, period—but if I had to pick a descriptor for my situation, “non-monogamous” probably fits best. I’m just not that into the identity-based language I’ve seen used by other non-monoggos (ooh, I’m kind of into this newfound term after typing it just now—it sounds like something the Flintstones would eat). This is not to disparage “polyamorous” or what have you communities—I understand that the big city where I live, and my friends in it, afford me the comfort of knowing others who happen to also be non-monoggo (sticking with this prehistoric delicacy), and that giving a name to any non-mainstream thing you do can help you find others who are into it wherever you are. Polyamory, which most often refers to having more than one long-term partner at a time, mostly isn’t what I do—but continued blessings to anyone who chooses that. To say I was in an “open relationship” also feels like a misnomer, because, although I’m talking about it publicly here in the service of this book, for the most part, my bond with Wes was private—we were in love, and our particular love was occupied by only the two of us. We kept our extracurricular sex casual—it never impacted the inside jokes he and I made about our stupid-looking cat, or the way we confided in each other about the stuff we were scared of as kids, or how we always seemed to want to do the same things at the same time (narrowing our eyes at crosswords at the diner, playing Boggle, performing impromptu Roy Orbison duets—everything) without talking about it first. In writing this, I also briefly imagined how hilariously inappropriate it would be if I called myself a SWINGER, a word that makes me feel kind of like someone’s aggressively mystical aunt who dresses exclusively in clothing that could be characterized as “flowing,” or like the boastful, hot tub–dwelling LOVERS from Saturday Night Live who force stories of their earthy, open lovemaking onto everyone they meet. You’re just not ever gonna catch me waxing poetic in some mineral spring about the fact that I sleep around because I think I’m a more spiritually—and oh-so-sensually—enlightened being than everyone else! My life is totally quotidian ’n’ normal to me, and I don’t need to make a show of this part of it or ask for permission to have it feel valid/okay that I adore being a total Runaround Sue. For me, it’s all very “I woke up like this (in someone else’s bed).”

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

  She gave more hours, and more love, to this book than most people give to their own careers, all while running her own full-time business and making a beautiful home. During the past three years, as I worked on this project, several people watched Amy and told me I was the luckiest man in the world, and I agree. My family is my everything. They guide me in the dark. They are my stars. [image file=Image00038.jpg] [image file=Image00039.jpg] Author’s NoteIn late 2014, I took some friends to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, my hometown. It had been a few years since I’d seen U-505, the German U-boat that is one of the centerpiece attractions in the museum, and a perfect match for the submarine I wrote about in my first book, Shadow Divers . On the way out, we came across a space capsule, about ten feet tall by thirteen feet wide. It appeared to be scarred from its journey, wherever it had gone, and its open hatch revealed three cramped seats and a universe of controls inside. Kids circled around the spacecraft, which looked at once to have come from the past and the future. A nearby placard announced that this was the command module of Apollo 8, which had carried the first men ever—Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders—to the Moon. I knew almost nothing about that mission. Like many, I was much more familiar with the story of Apollo 11, man’s first lunar landing, and of Apollo 13, when an explosion on board the spacecraft nearly resulted in tragedy. A few weeks later, I got around to reading about Apollo 8. What I found was one of the most incredible stories in American history. It had everything—daring, adventure, risk-taking, a race against time that came down to the final hours, an existential battle against a magnificent adversary. It blended cutting-edge science and technology with the eternal human yearning to explore. It told of the power of three unbreakable women and the love of children and family, of America’s ability to do the impossible when pushed to its limits, of the moment when mankind first reached the place that had called to it for eternity—the Moon. It told of how three men lived extraordinary lives after becoming the first ever to leave the world. It was even a Christmas story. The more I read about the odyssey of Apollo 8, the more startling it seemed that so little had been written about it. This is the best space story of them all, I thought, and I wasn’t the only one. Early in my research, I came across interviews with the late Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon (and a backup crew member for Apollo 8). He remembered how excited all the astronauts and NASA personnel had been for Apollo 8, how it changed the course of the entire American space program.

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

  A decade-and-a-half into the twenty-first century, it’s near impossible to find a piece of technology from the past that can impress a thirteen-year-old who owns an iPhone, an Xbox, and a quad-core computer. My son stood beside the five F-1 engines at the base of the rocket. He didn’t look at his phone or check his texts. He didn’t take a picture. He just kept staring at the nozzles of these engines, each more than twelve feet tall, and after staying still for several minutes, he asked if we could stay some more. I made one more trip to Montana after that, to see Borman. After several days, we wrapped up by going to dinner at one of his favorite barbeque restaurants. We’d been seated only a few minutes when a bartender rushed up to him holding a newspaper. “Frank, the paper says you’re one of Montana’s most famous residents!” she said. The woman couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. It wasn’t clear she had any idea who Borman was or why he was famous, but he smiled and said “Thank you very much” all the same. After the meal, Borman dropped me off at my hotel, then went to visit his wife at the nursing home where she lives. As he drove away, it seemed to me strange—I felt I’d come to know Susan as well as I had Frank, despite having met her for just a few minutes, despite the fact that she had been too ill to speak. When I returned home and transcribed the tapes of my interviews, I understood why. Borman spoke of Susan constantly; there didn’t seem an aspect of his life he could explain without discussing how much she meant to him or how much he loved her. I’d heard the same from Lovell and Anders about their wives. When I discovered that Apollo 8 was the only crew in which all the marriages survived (astronaut careers were notoriously hard on marriages) it didn’t surprise me. In a singularly beautiful story, it seemed only fitting that the first men to leave Earth considered home to be the most important place in the universe. A Note on SourcesThe heart and soul of this book come from extensive interviews I conducted with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, the three astronauts who flew on Apollo 8. I met with each man over the course of several days at his home, and followed up repeatedly by phone and email, compiling dozens of hours of recorded conversation. Despite their ages (Borman and Lovell were born in 1928, Anders in 1933), all three of them seemed to have as much energy, and were just as sharp, as when they became the first men ever to fly to the Moon fifty years ago. It was I who often struggled to keep up with them. Equally important to the book are the interviews I conducted with two of the astronauts’ wives, Marilyn Lovell and Valerie Anders.

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

  That kind of directness earned Borman almost universal respect, but not everyone liked him for it. Lovell seemed Borman’s opposite. He had ridden a dream—of exploring the cosmos and flying rockets to new worlds—from childhood all the way to NASA. And while it would please Lovell to beat the Russians, he mostly thrilled to the idea of going places forever thought unreachable and reporting back to the world about what he’d seen. Few could deny Lovell’s abilities as a thinker or a pilot, but it was his warmth and friendliness that people remembered most. And yet, from the day they began working together, Borman and Lovell seemed a natural match. Each respected the other’s abilities, work ethic, intellect, and piloting skills. And they made each other laugh. To many, it seemed the men had been friends since boyhood. In early June 1965, Lovell packed Marilyn and their three kids into the car and drove from Houston to the Cape to watch one of the Gemini launches in person. Asleep in bed one night at the Cocoa Beach Holiday Inn, Lovell was awakened by the sound of his wife munching saltines. “What’s going on?” he asked. “I hate to tell you this,” Marilyn said, “but I think, I mean I know…I’m pregnant.” It was great news but could not have been more awkwardly timed. Marilyn was due around the time Lovell was scheduled to fly on Gemini 7 in early December 1965. Many at NASA believed the agency would remove an astronaut from a flight if his wife was pregnant, so Lovell and Marilyn had to figure out what to do. To him, the answer was simple—silence. He would keep training and say nothing; she would angle to be photographed from the neck up. By the time it became obvious that Marilyn was carrying, NASA would—hopefully—think it too late to change crews. Training consumed all the astronauts’ lives. By now, some of them were struggling in their marriages; the demands of the job, and the easy availability of women on the road, put a strain on their relationships. For Lovell and Borman it was different. Neither man caroused or stayed out late—not just because it wasn’t the right thing to do, but because neither had the impulse to do it. They were in love with their wives—their best friends—women who’d loved them since the days when they were nothing but dreams, their lives just a blur of military base transfers. At home in Houston, a very round Marilyn watched on television, eight months pregnant, as the Gemini 7 countdown neared zero. She didn’t worry—she trusted in NASA and her Episcopal faith, and she trusted in Jim. When he’d left for the Cape, he hadn’t given her any if-I-don’t-come-home speeches or recited any I’ve loved you forever goodbyes. Instead, he swept the garage, balanced the checkbook, and painted the cradle in case the baby came while he was in space.

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

  to exercise, not for his own benefit, but to make sure he stays alive long enough to take care of Susan until the end of her days. Every day, he visits her at the facility, where her room is decorated with photos of her family, and of the days when she and Frank had their adventures. In one, she is on the cover of a national magazine, looking more radiant than a Hollywood actress. “She was really beautiful,” a nurse tells Frank. “Still is,” Frank says. It doesn’t matter to Frank that Susan sometimes doesn’t respond, or that she might not even know who he is. He still climbs into bed with her every day and lies next to her, still takes her to get her nails done at the beauty shop, still talks to her and tells her he loves her. He turns down invitations to travel or receive awards. He always eats nearby. Susan needs him. He struggles to say it without tears but he must say it. “Susan is the best wife and best mother a person could ever hope to have. I was selfish. I was lucky.” And now he must return to her; it’s visiting hours at the facility. As he walks from his truck toward the front door, it is clear he is on a mission, a new mission, the only mission more important than the Moon. [image file=Image00008.jpg] Frank Borman, age 27, already an instructor at the fighter weapons school, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, 1955. It was here that Borman taught elite young Air Force pilots to fly for America and defend her greatness. Courtesy of Frank Borman [image file=Image00009.jpg] Susan Borman, age 19, just before her marriage to Frank in 1950. This girl, Frank thought, can handle anything. Courtesy of Frank Borman [image file=Image00010.jpg] Marilyn and Jim Lovell, aboard the U.S. Naval Academy schooner Freedom, just after their wedding in 1952. “I don’t know how to dance,” Marilyn told Jim when he first asked her out. “I don’t either,” he replied. “We’ll learn together.” Courtesy of Jim and Marilyn Lovell [image file=Image00011.jpg] Bill and Valerie Anders on a ranch in Colorado, around the time of Apollo 8. Bill’s mother had wanted him to date an admiral’s daughter, but Bill just wanted to be with Valerie. Courtesy of Bill and Valerie Anders [image file=Image00012.jpg] Three of NASA’s titans. Left to right: Robert Gilruth, George Low, and Chris Kraft. It was Low who masterminded the daring change in mission for Apollo 8; Kraft and Gilruth risked everything to support his idea. “It took more courage to make the decision to do Apollo 8 than anything we ever did in the space program,” Kraft would say decades later. NASA [image file=Image00013.jpg] “OUR TRIUMPH IN SPACE IS THE HYMN TO THE SOVIET COUNTRY! ” The race to the Moon was an existential battle years in the making.

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

  Those who knew him best, however, might have guessed that there was an additional reason for his decision to hang it up after Apollo 8. By now, consciously or otherwise, Borman had come to see the stress his career placed on Susan, and he couldn’t have any more of that. —After the press conference, the astronauts prepared to fly from Houston to Florida, where they would live for the remaining two weeks before their launch. This would be their last chance to say goodbye in person to their wives and children. Borman and Lovell said farewell to their families at home, wished them a merry Christmas in advance, and told them they’d celebrate the holiday after they returned to Earth. Anders did the same, but then he gave Valerie a small package. It contained an audiotape. He asked that she play it in the event he didn’t make it back. Anders was a private person and didn’t tell anyone what he’d said on the tape. It began, “You children and your mother are the most important…” Much of the rest of it came down to this: expressions of love for Valerie and the kids; a reminder that he missed them already; a hope that Valerie would marry again in the future; and an assurance that he’d died doing what he wanted to be doing. At the Cape, the men checked in to their new quarters, each getting a tiny room with little more than a steel bed and a steel desk, but with a large adjoining living room to share. Framed copies of classic paintings competed with lunar maps for space on the walls. It was a comfortable, if cramped, existence, and one deemed necessary by NASA to prevent the crew from catching bugs or viruses from the outside world that might short-circuit their ability to fly. The sole luxury came in the form of a personal chef. No sooner had the astronauts arrived at the Cape than they had to pack their bags again. Lyndon Johnson had invited them and their wives to the White House for a formal dinner and send-off, just twelve days before the flight. System checklists and countdown procedures swimming in their heads, the astronauts boarded a charter flight to Washington. Doctors didn’t like the idea. The Hong Kong flu pandemic—which would kill more than thirty-three thousand in the United States alone in a six-month span—was reaching its peak, and the astronauts were supposed to be in quarantine. When a NASA doctor tried to object, LBJ issued a Texas-sized Who the hell does he think he is? For the crew of Apollo 8, there was a silver lining—a last, unexpected chance to kiss their wives goodbye. —As the astronauts flew to the White House, the family of one of the thirty thousand Americans killed so far during the fighting in Vietnam prepared for their own visit to the nation’s capital.

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

  Having survived his first year at the Academy, Anders returned to San Diego for the summer. There he found himself on a double date at the beach, but when he saw his friend’s date, he forgot about his own. Sixteen-year-old Valerie Hoard was about the prettiest young lady Anders had ever seen, and she had a quiet confidence beyond her age. Anders spent the day swimming alongside Valerie as she lounged on an inflatable raft, asking about her life, hearing her descriptions of how her father gave her rides on the back of his California Highway Patrol motorcycle (sirens blaring and red lights flashing). Anders never stopped to catch his breath as they toured all over Mission Bay. This guy has a lot of endurance, Valerie thought. When Anders finally dropped her off at home, he shook her hand and said goodbye. Summer was drawing to a close, so Anders had to make the time count if he hoped to keep seeing Valerie. On their first official date, he took her to the Navy officers’ club, and then to the Starlight Bowl to see the San Diego Civic Light Opera. The next night, he took her to the Old Globe Theater for Shakespeare. It was heady stuff for Valerie, and she was impressed with this serious young man. At home, she asked her mother why Bill shook her hand after dates but didn’t kiss her. The truth was that Anders didn’t have much experience with girls and didn’t want to push his luck. That was fine with Valerie—she had other suitors to keep her company. A few days later, Anders was back at the Naval Academy, and Valerie was back in high school. By his second year at Annapolis, Anders was rising up the class rank. He always found time to write letters to Valerie, long ones, every day, about his outlook on life, the challenges of the Academy, how he saw the world. At Christmas, when he was home, they spent every day together. Not once since the day he met her had Bill doubted that Valerie was the one for him. She was poised and gracious, self-assured even in unfamiliar situations, and seemed curious about everything. She was a popular and busy senior who hardly had time for serious romance, yet she was slowly falling in love with Anders, and he was in love with her. The relationship did not please Muriel. She’d long thought her son should marry an admiral’s daughter—a higher grade of folk—and took the formal tea dance invitations he’d received and lined them up on her kitchen window. Valerie saw the display when she was at Anders’s house, but she also noticed something else—that he hadn’t attended a single one of these debutante parties. He just wanted to be with her.

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

  Despite worries that she would turn him down, he bought an engagement ring and invited her to the Naval Academy’s formal Ring Dance, at which couples would dance through a replica of the cadets’ class ring. Valerie and Bill held each other close as they moved around the dance floor to the sounds of a big band. Valerie wore Bill’s class ring on a chain around her neck and the engagement ring on her hand. Valerie still wasn’t quite eighteen. Marriage meant giving up a college education, which was important to her. It also meant making a life with a man who’d chosen a dangerous line of work. But her father chased bad guys on his motorcycle for a living, and twice he had almost been killed on the job in accidents, so she was used to living with risk. There was also the matter of religion. Anders’s father was a strict Catholic, and his church would insist that Valerie be Catholic, too. In the end, that also seemed fine to a girl in love, and even though she was still in high school, Valerie said yes, knowing that Navy rules didn’t allow midshipmen to be married until graduation, so a yes for the future—not tomorrow, but a yes nonetheless. As a high-ranking member of his class, Anders had options with his career. He knew he wanted to fly, and he could decide between a commission in the Navy or the newly formed Air Force (established just eight years earlier). Choosing the Navy meant operating from short carrier decks. Choosing the Air Force meant flying from ten-thousand-foot concrete runways. Anders chose the Air Force. Shortly after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1955, Anders married Valerie in a Catholic ceremony at the naval chapel in San Diego. He then reported to Air Force flight training near the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where he began flying the T-34 Mentor. By the next stage in training, in the much bigger T-28, he realized that he had a natural ability. Sometimes he’d invite Valerie out to a dusty crossroads and put on a private airshow for her, flying too low, testing to see how much vertical pull-up he could endure before blacking out from loss of oxygen to the brain caused by high g-forces, seeing if he could wake up before the plane went down. Valerie loved her husband’s performances. She also liked that he didn’t play things exactly by the book, that he took risks. To Valerie, the most interesting lives often seemed to go that way. After earning his wings at age twenty-three, Anders was assigned to an Air Defense Command all-weather interceptor squadron at Hamilton Air Force Base near San Francisco, where he would fly the twin afterburner F-89 Scorpion. Interceptors flew to prevent enemy aircraft from penetrating restricted airspace, either by chasing them off or by engaging them in combat.

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

  Frank hardly noticed her gender, she hardly noticed his age, and at once they were together in the cockpit. Miss Bobbie was an ideal teacher. She would not yell or panic, and she remained calm when Frank banked too hard or struggled to come out of a stall. After just eight hours of dual instruction, she turned Frank loose to solo. For the next three years, Frank continued taking flying lessons, making good grades, and playing quarterback on his high school football team. But his best night of high school came during senior year at a local dance in Tucson, when he spent the evening moonstruck by a golden-haired sophomore named Susan Bugbee. She’d been voted the most beautiful girl in her class, and Frank, a longtime believer in democracy, thought the voters had gotten it right. He was aching to ask her out, but this young man who stared down thunderstorms in small airplanes couldn’t stomach the idea of rejection. Instead, he came up with a plan. A friend of Frank’s would call Susan on the phone. Pretending to be Frank, he would ask her for a date. That way, if she said no, Frank wouldn’t hear it. Susan said yes. Frank wished he’d heard it. The two began dating, and right away Frank sensed he’d met his soul mate. Susan was bright and quick-witted, warm and fun, and loyal to her friends. Sometimes she wrote “Susan Bugaboo” instead of “Bugbee” in her notebooks. She had a mischievous gleam in her eye, the same as when she’d been in elementary school and pulled the fire alarm during a rainstorm as a prank (the nuns were not happy; Susan’s father loved it and smoothed things over with the sisters). Susan’s parents were both college graduates, rare in those days. Her mother was Tucson’s first female dental hygienist, her father a surgeon who’d moved to Arizona after losing a lung to tuberculosis. Susan had been very close to her father, who took her on house calls and had her join him on his volunteer work to help the underprivileged. They often went on adventures together: on his days off, he would drive her outside the Tucson city limits to the ends of dusty roads, where they would capture tortoises together (she’d keep them as pets for a while, then release them), and Dr. Bugbee would buy his daughter turquoise jewelry from Native Americans who sold their wares from the backs of old pickup trucks. Susan was never as close to her mother, who seemed to resent her for all the attention people paid to her. One day, when Susan was thirteen, her father had an asthma attack. His oxygen bottle was empty, so Susan’s mother told her to run to Johnson’s Drugstore and get a new one. Susan got the pharmacist to drive her home, to save time and in case he could help. But by the time she returned, her father lay dead on the floor.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  Here Aunt Anni lived among the other women who saw their men off on the sailing vessels, then tended the goats and groundnuts, planted grain and poured rum upon the earth to strengthen the corn’s growing, built their women’s houses and the rainwater catchments, harvested the limes, wove their lives and the lives of their children together. Women who survived the absence of their sea-faring men easily, because they came to love each other, past the men’s returning. Madivine. Friending. Zami. How Carriacou women love each other is legend in Grenada, and so is their strength and their beauty . In the hills of Carriacou between L’Esterre and Harvey Vale my mother was born, a Belmar woman. Summered in Aunt Anni’s house, picked limes with the women. And she grew up dreaming of Carriacou as someday I was to dream of Grenada. Carriacou , a magic name like cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, the delectable little squares of guava jelly each lovingly wrapped in tiny bits of crazy-quilt wax-paper cut precisely from bread wrappers, the long sticks of dried vanilla and the sweet-smelling tonka bean, chalky brown nuggets of pressed chocolate for cocoa-tea, all set on a bed of wild bay laurel leaves, arriving every Christmas time in a well-wrapped tea-tin. Carriacou which was not listed in the index of the Goode’s School Atlas nor in the Junior Americana World Gazette nor appeared on any map that I could find, and so when I hunted for the magic place during geography lessons or in free library time, I never found it, and came to believe my mother’s geography was a fantasy or crazy or at least too old-fashioned, and in reality maybe she was talking about the place other people called Curaçao, a Dutch possession on the other side of the Antilles. But underneath it all as I was growing up, home was still a sweet place somewhere else which they had not managed to capture yet on paper, nor to throttle and bind up between the pages of a Schoolbook. It was our own, my truly private paradise of blugoe and breadfruit hanging from the trees, of nutmeg and lime and sapadilla, of tonka beans and red and yellow Paradise Plums. * * Years later, as partial requirement for a degree in library science, I did a detailed comparison of atlases, their merits and particular strengths. I used, as one of the foci of my project, the isle of Carriacou. It appeared only once, in the Atlas of the Encyclopedia Brittannica , which has always prided itself upon the accurate cartology of its colonies. I was twenty-six years old before I found Carriacou upon a map.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  his oath. And albeit his Italy had little experience in war, and its military was somewhat torment seemed to him no chaotic. The generals somehow lost track of D'Annunzio—who, in any less than that of Purgatory, 328 • The Art of Seduction yet was his love so great case, had decided to leave his cavalry division and form units of his own. and his hope so strong, (He was an artist, after all, and could not be subjected to army discipline.) sure as he felt of the Calling himself Commandante, he overcame his habitual seasickness and di-ceaseless continuance of the love he had thus painfully rected a series of daring raids, leading groups of motorboats in the middle won, that he preserved his of the night into Austrian harbors and firing torpedoes at anchored ships. patience and rose from He also learned how to fly, and began to lead dangerous sorties. In August beside her without having of 1915, he flew over the city of Trieste, then in enemy hands, and dropped done anything contrary to her expressed wish. • The Italian flags and thousands of pamphlets containing a message of hope, writ-lady was, I think, more ten in his inimitable style: "The end of your martyrdom is at hand! The astonished than pleased by dawn of your joy is imminent. From the heights of heaven, on the wings of such virtue; and giving no heed to the honor, patience, Italy, I throw you this pledge, this message from my heart." He flew at alti-and faithfulness her lover tudes unheard of at the time, and through thick enemy fire. The Austrians had shown in the keeping put a price on his head. of his oath, she forthwith suspected that his love was On a mission in 1916, D'Annunzio fell against his machine gun, per-not so great as she had manently injuring one eye and seriously damaging the other. Told his fly-thought, or else that he had ing days were over, he convalesced in his home in Venice. At the time, the found her less pleasing than he had expected. • most beautiful and fashionable woman in Italy was generally considered to She therefore resolved, be the Countess Morosini, former mistress of the German Kaiser. Her before keeping her promise, palace was on the Grand Canal, opposite the home of D'Annunzio. Now to make a further trial of she found herself besieged by letters and poems from the writer-soldier, the love he bore her; and to this end she begged him to mixing details of his flying exploits with declarations of his love. In the talk to a girl in her service, middle of air raids on Venice, he would cross the canal, barely able to see who was younger than out of one eye, to deliver his latest poem. D'Annunzio was much beneath herself and very beautiful, bidding him make love Morosini's station, a mere writer, but his willingness to brave anything on speeches to her, so that

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

  assist in the rescue, and in a split second he made his decision to stay aboard the ship. Rescuers couldn’t reach the scene, however, before the pilot and his airplane disappeared under the waves. Anders hardly knew what to make of the disasters he’d seen. Navy pilots were trained to be the best in the world in combat, yet they risked their lives every day, even during takeoff and landing. Still, an airplane had the power to take the fight to an enemy with an immediacy unavailable to giant ships. It was more personal, too, just pilot and machine as one. When it came time to decide what to do with his military career, Anders wanted nothing to do with aircraft carriers, but knew he had to fly. — Anders continued to write to Valerie every day. Despite worries that she would turn him down, he bought an engagement ring and invited her to the Naval Academy’s formal Ring Dance, at which couples would dance through a replica of the cadets’ class ring. Valerie and Bill held each other close as they moved around the dance floor to the sounds of a big band. Valerie wore Bill’s class ring on a chain around her neck and the engagement ring on her hand. Valerie still wasn’t quite eighteen. Marriage meant giving up a college education, which was important to her. It also meant making a life with a man who’d chosen a dangerous line of work. But her father chased bad guys on his motorcycle for a living, and twice he had almost been killed on the job in accidents, so she was used to living with risk. There was also the matter of religion. Anders’s father was a strict Catholic, and his church would insist that Valerie be Catholic, too. In the end, that also seemed fine to a girl in love, and even though she was still in high school, Valerie said yes, knowing that Navy rules didn’t allow midshipmen to be married until graduation, so a yes for the future—not tomorrow, but a yes nonetheless. As a high-ranking member of his class, Anders had options with his career. He knew he wanted to fly, and he could decide between a commission in the Navy or the newly formed Air Force (established just eight years earlier). Choosing the Navy meant operating from short

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

  their mission. (Photos and video of the event can be seen at robertkurson.com/rocketmen.) As of this printing all three of Apollo 8’s astronauts were still married to their wives. They are the only crew that flew in either the Gemini or Apollo programs whose marriages all survived. A few years ago, doctors diagnosed Susan Borman with Alzheimer’s disease, for which there is presently no cure. (It was symptoms of this illness that Lovell had noticed in recent get-togethers with the Bormans.) Gradually, she lost her cognitive abilities; by 2015, she sometimes didn’t recognize Frank or her sons, and needed a full-time care facility. From the moment she showed symptoms, Frank refused to leave her side, and has remained committed to her care ever since. Even at age ninety, he awakens at 5:30 A.M. to exercise, not for his own benefit, but to make sure he stays alive long enough to take care of Susan until the end of her days. Every day, he visits her at the facility, where her room is decorated with photos of her family, and of the days when she and Frank had their adventures. In one, she is on the cover of a national magazine, looking more radiant than a Hollywood actress. “She was really beautiful,” a nurse tells Frank. “Still is,” Frank says. It doesn’t matter to Frank that Susan sometimes doesn’t respond, or that she might not even know who he is. He still climbs into bed with her every day and lies next to her, still takes her to get her nails done at the beauty shop, still talks to her and tells her he loves her. He turns down invitations to travel or receive awards. He always eats nearby. Susan needs him. He struggles to say it without tears but he must say it. “Susan is the best wife and best mother a person could ever hope to have. I was selfish. I was lucky.” And now he must return to her; it’s visiting hours at the facility. As he walks from his truck toward the front door, it is clear he is on a mission, a new mission, the only mission more important than the Moon. Frank Borman, age 27, already an instructor at the fighter weapons school, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, 1955. It was here that Borman taught elite young Air Force pilots to fly for America and defend her greatness. Courtesy of Frank Borman Susan Borman, age 19, just before her marriage to Frank in 1950. This girl, Frank thought, can handle anything. Courtesy of Frank Borman Marilyn and Jim Lovell, aboard the U.S. Naval Academy schooner Freedom, just after their wedding in 1952. “I don’t know how to dance,” Marilyn told Jim when he first asked her out. “I don’t either,” he replied. “We’ll learn together.” Courtesy of Jim and Marilyn Lovell

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

  voted for Democrat Lyndon Johnson for president in 1964 because Borman believed strongly in racial justice and civil rights (it was a vote he’d later regret due to Johnson’s policies in Vietnam). He was affected by Johnson’s famous “Daisy” television commercial, aired during the campaign against Barry Goldwater, that juxtaposed a little girl against the mushroom cloud made by a nuclear bomb. The image disturbed Borman, yet he was ready, at a moment’s notice, to drop the same kind of bomb on the Soviet Union if that’s what America deemed necessary. In 1964, Deke Slayton, the man in charge of crew assignments, teamed Borman with Jim Lovell to be primary crew for Gemini 7. The mission was planned as a fourteen-day Earth-orbital flight, the longest space mission ever attempted, intended primarily to test human endurance in space and to conduct a cascade of medical experiments. During training, Borman and Lovell averaged more than twenty days a month away from home. When Borman got time off, he spent it with his family at home in Houston, taking Susan and his sons hunting and fishing. (Susan doubted she could bring herself to shoot a deer, but after Frank and the boys bought her a rifle, she had no trouble taking the shot. Frank never figured out whether she missed on purpose; to him, it meant everything that she tried.) To learn to water-ski, he and Susan checked out a book from the library, then took turns driving the boat, pages flapping in the wind. He loved how fast Susan took to it, even as he struggled. His boys delighted in how their father, a master of the skies, could barely swim. To make it to his sons’ junior high football games, Borman pushed NASA’s T-38 jets to their operational limits on Fridays after work, then ran to the hamburger stand Susan operated at the games, ready with his order in hand. On Saturday, December 4, 1965, Susan and her two sons arrived at the VIP area at Cape Kennedy for the launch of Gemini 7. At 2:30 P.M., the Titan II rocket fired. As it rose in a column of white smoke and orange flame, Susan held on to her boys but looked away. Photographers captured the image—a good mother, a woman overwhelmed. Six minutes later, Gemini 7 was in orbit around Earth. Susan and her sons boarded a bus to the airport to go home. Out the window, Frederick and Edwin searched the sky for a glimpse of their dad’s rocket ship. Despite being confined to a cabin no larger than the front half of a

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

  Bill Anders arrived at the United States Naval Academy in 1951 with the ambitious goal of becoming an officer aboard a destroyer and making four-stripe captain. By Christmas, he was about to wash out. He’d skated through high school on brains alone, but that level of effort wasn’t cutting it at the Academy, even as the son of a Navy Cross recipient. An adviser warned him he wasn’t long for the place unless things changed. Anders straightened up. Having survived his first year at the Academy, Anders returned to San Diego for the summer. There he found himself on a double date at the beach, but when he saw his friend’s date, he forgot about his own. Sixteen-year-old Valerie Hoard was about the prettiest young lady Anders had ever seen, and she had a quiet confidence beyond her age. Anders spent the day swimming alongside Valerie as she lounged on an inflatable raft, asking about her life, hearing her descriptions of how her father gave her rides on the back of his California Highway Patrol motorcycle (sirens blaring and red lights flashing). Anders never stopped to catch his breath as they toured all over Mission Bay. This guy has a lot of endurance, Valerie thought. When Anders finally dropped her off at home, he shook her hand and said goodbye. Summer was drawing to a close, so Anders had to make the time count if he hoped to keep seeing Valerie. On their first official date, he took her to the Navy officers’ club, and then to the Starlight Bowl to see the San Diego Civic Light Opera. The next night, he took her to the Old Globe Theater for Shakespeare. It was heady stuff for Valerie, and she was impressed with this serious young man. At home, she asked her mother why Bill shook her hand after dates but didn’t kiss her. The truth was that Anders didn’t have much experience with girls and didn’t want to push his luck. That was fine with Valerie—she had other suitors to keep her company. A few days later, Anders was back at the Naval Academy, and Valerie was back in high school. By his second year at Annapolis, Anders was rising up the class rank. He always found time to write letters to Valerie, long ones, every day, about his outlook on life, the challenges of the Academy, how he saw the world. At Christmas, when he was home, they spent every day together. Not once since the day he met her had Bill doubted that Valerie was the one for him. She was poised and gracious, self-assured even in unfamiliar situations, and seemed curious about everything. She was a popular and

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “I should think so,” Magnus grumbled. “Fontaine is an excellent catch.” Julienne blinked. “Lucien is a wonderful catch as well. Any woman would be lucky to have him.” “Then why won’t you?” the duke challenged. “Yes, Julienne,” purred Lucien behind her. She spun to face him and found him leaning against the door jamb, with his arms crossed. “Why won’t you?” “You know very well why!” “I don’t,” Amanda said. “Tell me.” Julienne lifted her chin. “He wants me for all the wrong reasons, and when he tires of me, he intends to dally as he pleases.” “Hell and damnation, son.” His Grace roared with laughter. “Never tell a woman that before the vows are spoken.” “Glass!” Amanda cried, placing her hands on her hips. “I’m ashamed of both of you.” “She’d allow Fontaine to chase skirts,” Lucien said defensively, “but not me. It’s not fair.” “That’s different,” returned Amanda and Julienne in unison. “Indeed?” Lucien said with a quirk of his brow. “Indeed?” joined the duke as he walked over to his son. “Explain yourselves.” The two almost identical men faced their women with identical arched brows. Amanda rolled her eyes. “Men are so dense.” She pierced Magnus with a steely stare. “Would I allow you to dally, Glass?” His face colored. “Hell, Amanda. You’d probably unman me.” “And why is that?” she asked. Julienne saw where the conversation was headed and rounded the settee. “This is entirely unnecessary. We were discussing a picnic and—” “Hush, Julienne,” Lucien ordered. “I intend to hear this.” “Because you love me, of course,” the Duke of Glasser said, with a proud tilt to his chin. “And you’re damned possessive.” “There you have it!” Amanda gave a triumphant nod. “And you wouldn’t take another woman regardless, because you love me in return.” Lucien stood immobile by the parlor doors. “Are you saying, Mother, that Julienne won’t marry me because she loves me?” Amanda shook her head. “What I’m saying is, Lady Julienne won’t marry you because you don’t love her. Or if you do, you won’t admit it.” “And you believe Fontaine loves her?” he choked out. “Lucien, it’s not Fontaine’s feelings that matter.” His mother rolled her eyes. “You may be a genius with money, but when it comes to women, you’re positively dense.” Julienne had quite enough of this conversation. “Thank you very much for your hospitality, Madam Remington, but I’m afraid I must depart now.” “Like hell.” Lucien blocked the doorway. “You promised me a picnic, and we’re damn well having one.” “I’m not dressed to go out,” Amanda complained. “Then we’ll have it here.” He craned his neck into the hallway and yelled for the butler. When the servant appeared, Lucien sent the man to retrieve the basket. Then he looked at Julienne again. “I’m not feeling well,” she said hoarsely. Lucien approached her with a soft smile. “Lovesick?” Her stricken gaze met his. “To hell with you, you conceited man.”