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Photo: David Harris |
O Christmas Tree!
Like many particle physicists, JoAnne Hewett can trace the course of her career through her scientific publications. But for a more colorful retrospective of her work, the SLAC theorist simply decorates her Christmas tree.
About 20 years ago, Hewett, a graduate student at the time, bought a totem-pole keychain while visiting a collaborator in Vancouver. Shortly after, a sort of eureka moment struck: "I thought, hey, I could use this as a Christmas ornament," she says.
Since then, Hewett has made a habit of collecting tree trinkets whenever she travels to conferences, workshops, committee meetings, and the like. "I look for something that says to me, ahh, this is that place," she says.
Indeed, Hewett can tell you with enviable recall the place—as well as the year and event—each ornament represents. The hand-painted egg? Budapest, 1991, Beyond the Standard Model workshop. The cactus? Tucson, 2003, supersymmetry conference. The glass Santa in a gondola? Trieste, 2006, presentation of LHC lectures.
And then there's the poorly crafted half-sphere diorama that's stuffed with figures vaguely resembling people and cacti. "This is what you end up with when you've had too many margaritas," Hewett laughs. San Diego, 1989, 4th generation physics meeting.
Most every ornament comes with a story, too, but clearly, the story that takes the holiday fruitcake belongs to the ornament shaped like the Stanley Hotel, where Hewett attended a linear collider meeting in 1995. Located in Estes Park, Colorado, the hotel is famous as the set for the thriller movie, The Shining. But what Hewett remembers most about the hotel is its run-down condition at the time. "We had no hot water or curtains, and the meeting was in a shack in the back yard with only two bathrooms for all of us. It was absolutely awful," she says. "When I saw the hotel ornament, I knew I had to have it."
And of course, there's one other ornament Hewett always knew she had to have in her collection, too: a miniature cowbell. "Every physicist who's ever been to CERN has seen one," she says with a smile.
Jennifer Yauck
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