Author: Harry Bartlett

Hutch Fest

Each summer we go to an island in Maine (Islesboro) and dig for clams and cook them up on the beach. It’s a little tricky to time the tide so it doesn’t wash the fire away while still leaving plenty of time to dig for the soft shell clams. The other tricky part is washing the clams so they’re not filled with muck. A mesh bag is handy for swishing the clams in a rising tide to clean them off.

We call it Hutch Fest – picking mussels, digging clams, and cooking corn for several years now. There are no longer intertidal mussels anymore and the clams are sparse due to the explosion of the green crab. Still a good time and tasty treat these clams are with melted butter, lemon and salt.

Sunrise

This was taken mid-summer at sunrise from the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse in Bristol Maine. It being mid-summer that meant getting up real early like 5:00 or so to get there to see the sunrise.

This photo is a bit corny but no photoshopping the seagull in, just a pretty snapshot moment in time.

Pow Wow

This was taken at an “Honoring the Elders” Inter-Tribal Native American Pow Wow in Tamworth New Hampshire around 2015. The photo is of a flag with an infinity symbol. You’re not supposed to take pictures but this was out in the parking lot, hope they don’t mind.

I hadn’t been to a pow-wow before. It was a moving experience. A mix of different tribes from the New England area. Several were Vietnam and Gulf War vets wearing a mixture of US military clothing and traditional native American clothing. The circle dance was peaceful and hypnotic after a while. Am looking forward to going back again. It’s always the 3rd weekend in May, Armistice Day.

Van Gogh

This is kind of a weird photo of a woman looking at a guy looking at a Van Gogh painting. It’s in a museum in Paris I think and the Van Gogh painting is right near this guy. I just took two photos side by side so to speak and then combined them.

The really weird part of the photo is the guy looking at Van Gogh has red hair like Van Gogh and a sullen somewhat angry expression similar to the artist though much more slacker in body language than Van Gogh would have ever been.

Pere Lachaise

Pere Lachaise, an intriguing sometimes mysterious, and crumbling cemetery in Paris. I first stumbled into it back in 1986 not knowing the luminaries that rest there including Oscar Wilde, Eugene Delacroix, and Jim Morrison whose grave had many devotees leaving candles and wine. This pic was taken on a more recent visit, accompanied by a femme fatale when this statuette appeared.

Barcelona

Hopefully, this doesn’t look too spooky, it was during an upbeat, adventurous time, back in Barcelona again. I’d been taking a lot of photos of a friend so had the urge to take one, this in the bathroom of a beautiful vegetarian restaurant right after New Years.

Here’s another pic from that time.

Body Surfing

These photos are from a concert in a no-name warehouse in Williamsburg Brooklyn a few years back. I hadn’t been to a punk rock show in 25 years or so and it was odd to see a whole new generation of kids and musicians playing this type of music. It was a good show – high energy and positive – can’t remember the band’s name but I think they were a Japanese-based band.

These two photos are of band members body surfing – great to see everyone holding them up. The over-exposed top half is when a flash from another camera fires during the exposure. It’s an interesting effect – powerful contrast and rare to have an aberration like this with digital cameras. With analog, there were aberrations regular from under/overexposure, chemistry issues, printing issues, fog filmed – all sorts of exposure and development issues. With digital, there is much less room for failures since there is no chemistry, limited exposure settings – basically a fail-safe to capture an image.

With that in mind, I like this effect all the more especially since it was generated by a large number of enthusiastic people all fire flash camera phones at once. It goes with the subject matter, none the less it’s still an error with cameras that are hard to produce errors with.

Anyways a great show – glad to see punk rock living on in such a positive way.

Beet Burger

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Come fall and time to do something with the beets harvested this summer. Beets keep well in the fridge with high humidity but won’t last all winter. They’re easy to grow in this area and have become a sweet staple in my garden each year. Here’s a simple beet burger recipe.

Clean and chop the beets and bake in the oven for about an hour at 300. This basically dries them out.
Put the beets in a food processor and chop them up.
Add about 1 egg per 2 cups of beets plus cilantro and spices like curry, salt, pepper, oregano, and whatever spices you like. The egg binds the beets, without it you won’t get a good firm beet burger patty. Also, Cook 1 cup of quinoa making 3 cups of cooked quinoa.

Mix all together, make beets into patties, and store in the fridge for about 30 minutes or longer.
Now it’s time to fry them up.

Add cheese if you like

Serve on a bun or toasted bread and add burger fixings such as onions, tomato, lettuce, pickles, and ketchup.

And voila – you have a delicious beet burger.

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