VIGILANT VIOLIST

Whoa! How did that “Our Favorite Quote” get published, taken from the article about Zubin Mehta (“The Pit and the Podium,” by Judy Pasternak, April 28)? Mehta mentioned that when the Israel Philharmonic played in dangerous neighborhoods, his first-chair violist would sit onstage “with a pistol in his pocket. To shoot back.”

The story didn’t go on to characterize the gentle musician with the gun as a racist redneck or a militia member, and it didn’t even use one of your seemingly obligatory phrases, “gun-toting.” Can it really be that the musician’s realistic concerns about self-defense were allowed to be printed in The Times sans smarty-pants editorializing about firearms as phallic substitutes? Or are you going to do a follow-up about how passionately attached he is to his viola bow?

JEROME SABEL

Mesa, Ariz.