She Accepts a Last-Second Offer

--Lisa Malone achieves a first today, with the expected launching of the space shuttle Discovery. No, she won’t be aboard the craft as an astronaut. That wouldn’t be a first. Instead, Malone, a 27-year-old public affairs specialist with NASA at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, becomes the first woman to count down the final seconds to liftoff. In her role as the voice of Shuttle Launch Control, Malone, who replaces Hugh Harris, will describe the anxious minutes before the ignition of the main engines. After the shuttle clears the launch tower, communications are then switched to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. While she has learned the space-age jargon and has a prepared script, Malone doesn’t know how she will react in the event of an emergency. “You’re going to be scrambling to try and figure out what it is because you want to have the right story before you tell the world what’s going on,” Malone said.

--Space travel holds a special allure for Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), who in April, 1985, rode on a shuttle Discovery mission as a congressional observer. He’s now written a novel, entitled “Night Launch,” about the joy and beauty of spaceflight. But, according to an article in the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Garn, who co-wrote the book with Stephen Paul Cohen, tells of his battle to keep steamy sex scenes out of it. “I told them that if that’s the way the book will be, then the project ends right now. I told them all that had to come out,” he said. “Astronauts . . . are good people and professionals, not guttersnipes.” The book is scheduled to be released April 28. “It still has one affair in it, but nothing explicit,” Garn said. “The most explicit thing is two French kisses, but that’s nothing compared to what’s on soap operas every day.”

--A few weeks ago, Alfredo Raimondo started it all when he said that the Virgin Mary told him to go to Tickfaw, La., to honor St. Joseph. Not only did the Chalmette, La., resident go, but an estimated 3,000 people turned up Sunday as well. Gathered in a vegetable field, the devout Roman Catholics and the curious hoped for a heavenly encounter. And some will say they had one. “I believe that I saw her (Virgin Mary), Jesus, Joseph and the angels and the saints,” said Shelly Ann Theresa, 28, of Covington, La. Others took pictures of the sun and pointed out what looked like Rorschach test images to show that holy apparitions had appeared. Theresa Thibodeaux of Hammond, La., showed photos of what she said were the gates of heaven. The archdiocese of New Orleans has no comment on the matter.