OUR IFFY VACATION PLAN

I want to head for Geneva, Switzerland, and visit the small town on its outskirts, and see the Hadron Collider.

It sounds like an odd thing for the Cullums to be doing, but I've researched and written about it ever since 2012 when the Hadron Collider detected the "Higgs boson." Creating headlines all over the world, scientist Peter Higgs proved that there's one elementary particle, a "God Particle," that gives everything in the universe its mass. And also, everything about this topic fascinates my husband, actor John Cullum, who reads and re reads books by Stephen Hawking about black holes and the big bang.

Here's a photo of the Collider.

Note the tiny figure at the bottom in a dark jacket and brown pants, and you'll get a sense of the size of the world's most powerful accelerator. It's mammoth, overwhelmingly huge. Is it dangerous? A visitor receives less radiation than he'd get from dental Xrays.

Near the collider are live video feeds and a plaque summarizing its lofty mission: “To advance human knowledge, to continue an endless quest to learn where we come from and why the Universe is as we see it today.” Just beyond the plaque is the accelerator's tunnel.

Though this 17-mile tunnel, the accelerator sends "subatomic protons" racing in an opposite direction, getting them to move faster until they're moving nearly at the speed of light. When the particles collide, they create tiny fireballs of pure energy. Doing this, scientists re-created the Big Bang and proved that the one particle Higgs measured and photographed forty years ago which showed it occurred at the same place, same time -- the "God Particle" -- does in fact, occur at the same place with each test.

Here's a photo of the "God Particle."

If I go to Geneva, will I continue to wonder, "Does the Higgs boson prove God created the world?"

We can't go there this year -- we're still dealing with Con Edison and renovating to get approval for using gas appliances, but maybe next year, or the year after. Someday, I've got to see the Hadron Collider, and find out ... feel out for myself what it means.

WHEN JOHN CULLUM SINGS...

I love this photo of  my husband, John Cullum, in costume, on the set for the  movie "1776."

The candle on the table, the shoulders seen on each side of John indicates that other people are with him -- the photo tells me it's John as "Rutledge," the senator from South Carolina thinking about how he'll vote while other senators are voting.

Golly, the look on John's face is so real -- so typical -- just the way my husband looks when he's thinking about one of our domestic problems.

John told me that this scene in the movie had been done as a long shot -- cameras and lights re-positioned for the medium shot and filmed again -- the set up was again changed for the closeups -- he'd already sung "Molasses to Rum" twice. He told the director, Peter Hunt, "Better get it this time, I've just got one more "G" in me."

(JC told me just now that if I listened to the film again, I'd hear how he "slipped into the high note, that "G." He's a Baritone -- a G can be tricky.)    
   
Wife, fan, lover of John Cullum delights in studying that photo of the man she fell in love with at first sight, the guy who had evolved from a very good looking, handsome, leading man on a stage, a leading man who could rivet an audience -- into a man who could truly star in a show and draw thousands of theatergoers.

Why am I jabbering about all this? I'm doing it to remind you that people with whom you are intimately involved change, grow up as you change, and viewing them freshly grows you up too.

Here's John yesterday at 10 a.m., mike in hand, my book in his hand, recording a video for one of our projects -- on our A.I.R audio-video channel, he reads aloud a chapter a week from one of my novels and publishes it on Facebook.

Yep! Wife Em WAS, IS, on Independence Day, enthralled by John in that marvelous film, stunned by the power in him, artist, musician, singer, actor, performer that he is. I am gifted by Mother Nature, God, and happenstance, to have been able to grow up with him.