Pizza and particle physics at the Parker Pie Co.

From the editor: P5: Pizza and particle physics at the Parker Pie Co.

Photo: Peter Limon

The Northeast Kingdom of Vermont isn’t necessarily the first place you’d go in search of great pizza. Tucked up under Canada’s skirts, in the far northeastern corner of a far northeastern state, the region gets its name from the late Senator George Aiken’s attempt to do justice to its rugged beauty and fierce independence.

You’d expect to find maple syrup in the Northeast Kingdom. Apple pie, maybe—but pizza pie? And yet, there it is, in the heart of West Glover, Vermont, at the intersection of two dirt roads, out in back of the Lake Parker Country Store: The Parker Pie Co.

My husband Peter and I have had good pizza in our time. We’ve had thin crusts in Rome and a pizza Margherita in the Naples pizzeria where pizza Margherita was supposedly invented. We never expected when we moved to northern Vermont a few months ago to find a backwoods pizzeria that gives those Italian pizzerie a run for their money. Parker Pie makes fabulous pizza. I don’t know if it’s worth a trip, but if you find yourself in Glover, it’s definitely worth a detour.

So it was with a sense of happy anticipation that we set out one evening last month, bound for Parker Pie. The temperature was subzero, the snow didn’t so much squeak as scream beneath our feet, and the stars seemed very far away in a deep black sky. It was easy to believe in a universe of cold dark matter.

Inside, it was warm and crowded. The folks at Parker Pie are friendly in the way people are when they come in out of the cold to eat good food and drink microbrews. They—we—all talk to each other, locals and flatlanders alike. At a nearby table, half a dozen Vermonters were engaged in a lively discussion. About—I am not making this up—neutrinos.

“You can’t believe these things,” a man with a gray ponytail and a buffalo-check shirt was saying. “While we are sitting here, billions of neutrinos are going right through us! They might be the reason we’re even here!”

“Excuse me,” I said, “did I hear you talking about neutrinos?”

“Yeah, they’re these amazing little particles…”

“I know,” I said. “I’m from Fermilab. We make neutrinos.”

If I’d said “Hi, I’m Lady GaGa,” they could not have made me feel more of a celebrity. They knew about Fermilab. They couldn’t get enough of neutrinos. Anything they could do for neutrino research, just ask.

There we were at Parker Pie, on a winter night in the Northeast Kingdom, sharing our neighbors’ passion for pizza and particle physics. On second thought, as a long-time publisher of symmetry, now serving as editor-in-chief after the departure of founding editor David Harris—it is worth a trip, not just a detour.
Judy Jackson, Editor-in-chief
 

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