Remembering "a frog's place"
Reading your May 2009 commentary, "Bosons and Grocery Bags," it struck me that I had to write.
We remember the Fermilab site as "A Frog's Place," wooded with an old barn and lots of kids, where we dropped our son Ken off for a camping experience in a summer of the '60s. It was the end of an idyll, replaced the following year with a long, unbelievably deep trench through which Fermilab's accelerator soon would burrow. It was a dream then, one that perhaps our son could begin to imagine. He was, and still is, a sci-fi nut, now with maturing offspring of his own.
I'll never forget that ditch (nay, more a canyon), partly because my wife and I have been drawn to Fermilab at least once a year since the '60s. I can follow only parts of symmetry. I scan each issue, then return to a few of the articles that make the most sense. In fact, I'm postponing reading the 60-second article, "Charm Quark," on the back cover. Dessert, you know.
Miracle? I don't know. Awe? Definitely.
Dick Jacoby, Willowbrook, Illinois