the presence of a police car in front of the school didn't fuel some of the rumors.

The only real damage done was to a day of school for our students.

No one wants gangs in the schools. Our teachers have gone through training (to recognize signs of gang activity) and our principal stays ahead of the game on that issue.

But if watching the sky is to be his duty, how should he begin? Now and then he has spotted one of the five bright planets or recognized a constellation, but he knows little about the turning of the heavens. When he contemplates the great distances between this and that, and the vast multitude of solitary objects spread over the celestial dome, he cannot fathom how one goes about searching for what is yet unknown.

The basis of English law is as simple as this: If you would know the future’s shape, look to the past.

It is only the sudden and unpredictable appearance of comets that spoils the immutable celestial sphere.

Wisdom tolerates blustered opinions, the better to dismiss them later with discovery.

It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days.

Nothing in heaven or earth is content to be alone, and so there must always be something more. The universe is governed by a principle no more complicated than this: that a solitary body will forever attract another to itself.

The heavens are too immense, too beautiful and varied, to fit into the mind of any one deity; the murmured creeds of fathers and sons are no match for the astronomer’s gasp.