To the editor:
Perhaps lobsters in recent news could fit under “The Year Everything Changed,” in your June Editorial. If not, at least lobsters made quite a splash in two months.
Four stories in your June issue, including one beginning on the front page, and a mention in a column plus a story in the Mount Desert Islander might not be all that unusual, but wait:
On June 25 and July 2 the mighty Maine lobster leapt off the page in three different sections of the New York Times. First was the entire front page of the Week in Review section, Where the crustacean lay cooked, in a coffin with red carnations and red roses, for an article about the ethics of killing kindly what we eat.
The following week Big Red made the Travel Section in a cartoon strip under “Amenity Instructions in Utopiair,” depicting a passenger taking something from under his seat, putting on a big lobster bib and, in the last frame, ready to eat a big lobster placed on his tray table. The Magazine Section, in “The Way We Eat,” featured a photo that could be a collectible for any lobster lover.
All that coverage in three leading newspapers must have increased the number of people with lobster on the tip of their tongues, as well as pleasing their palates.
Byrna Weir
Rochester, New York