It took over a decade for the Rosetta space probe to travel approximately four billion miles. While not exactly a meander through the inner solar system—for several years it has been traveling at 34,000 miles per hour—its looping journey to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko actually led it be misidentified once, seven years ago this week, when astronomers noticed a previously unidentified asteroid heading our way. It was even given an asteroid name, 2007 VN84, before it was correctly identified and everyone laughed uproariously.

In August, Rosetta arrived at Comet 67P/C-G, its destination for the entire trip. Three times, the probe’s path brought it close to its home planet, which provided a gravitational swing each time to throw it farther away from the inner solar system. In one complicated months-long maneuver, it swung out by Mars, took a boost from that encounter to return to Earth at a faster speed, and then passed…

In March I wrote a column about a fundraising campaign to help restore one of my favorite places, Opus 40, in Saugerties, NY. There has been plenty of good news since March.

Built in an abandoned bluestone quarry in upstate New York by one man, Harvey Fite, Opus 40 is a contemporary American version of Stonehenge or the collection of Easter Island moai.

An aerial view. Photo by Tom Bookhout

Fite was a sculptor and fine arts professor at nearby Bard College when he purchased the bluestone quarry in the 1930s. If you have ever walked on a sidewalk in Manhattan, you have walked on bluestone from this or a nearby location. Using the rubble that had not become NYC sidewalks, Fite filled one six-and-one-half-acre section with hand-laid circles of bluestone paths and ramps, leading nowhere and everywhere, from fifteen feet below the ground level up to the magnificent…