Nice article about Maine & Lobstahs, but too long to post the entire thing so I attached a PDF
No, I DO NOT have a lobster on my key chain.
The story of how lobster became the symbol of Maine
pressherald.com/2021/08/01/the-story-of-how-lobster-became-the-symbol-of-maine/
By Meredith Goad August 1, 2021
If you live in Maine, you’re probably spending at least part of your summer feeding lobster to house guests, teaching them how to crack open the claws, extract the tail and pick out the hard-to-reach bits of meat with tools that make the entire experience feel like a childhood game of Operation.
You may also start your car with keys hanging from a lobster keychain, set your morning cup of coffee on a lobster trap coffee table, or season your food with a pair of lobster claw salt and pepper shakers. Maybe there are a couple of colorful lobster buoys hanging in your garden.
At last count, 42,668 Mainers were driving around with a lobster license plate, albeit one that pictures a cooked red lobster hanging out on a rock.
The Maine lobster – whether we are eating it, wearing it, or decorating with it – has become so synonymous with our state and who we are that it truly deserves the status of cultural and culinary icon. If Moxie is that awkward cousin we have nothing in common with, but invite to the table anyway, lobster is the favorite uncle we welcome into our homes with open arms. Culturally, lobster is the great equalizer, uniting Mainers of different economic classes and political bents. As a food, it is both rustic and gourmet. It can be eaten outside, on a paper plate at a picnic table, or by candlelight, on the best china in a fine-dining restaurant. Like the big corn palaces of Iowa, or the crawfish T-shirts in The Big Easy that ask you to “Put the South in Your Mouth,” the Maine lobster is “a very visible reminder or symbol of who you are and what group you belong to, whose identity you belong to,” said Beth Forrest, a professor at the Culinary Institute of America and president of the Association for the Study of Food and Society.