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06/02/2023 08:56 AMIt sounds like a form of torture. Diana Harbison has worked at the denailing table at the Rotary Club of Essex annual shad bake. But she is not pulling out fingernails. She is using a device designed by the late Peter Poole to remove nails from pieces of cooked shad. For cooking, large filets shad are nailed to red oak planks around the outdoor fire, but those nails must come out before the fish is served, thus the denailing table.
This year, after a hiatus for COVID, Essex Rotary is once again hosting the shad bake on Saturday, June 3, from 1 to 6 p.m. at a new location, the Essex Island Marina off Ferry Street. The event was canceled in 2020 and 2022. In 2021 there was a virtual bake on Facebook.
Tickets are available online at rotaryclubofessex.com. The event goes on, rain or shine.
“It’s so great that it’s back,” Diana says.
The funds the shad bake earns go to scholarships Essex Rotary gives, $3,000 annually for four years of undergraduate study to each of two students entering college and $3,000 for one or two years, depending on the length of the program, for a student entering trade or vocational school.
Diana has been a member of Essex Rotary since 2008 and was president in 2012. She is not sure she will be denailing at the shad bake this year.
“They said to be flexible,” she notes.
She has also basted fish with Rotary’s secret recipe sauce. While she would not give proportions, she says it is made with lemon juice, olive oil, paprika, salt, and pepper.
Diana, who lives in Deep River, is a psychiatrist who has practiced for over 30 years in Essex. But except for the first two years in this area when she rented a house in Essex, she has always lived in Deep River.
“That’s the only house I have ever owned,” she says.
At her office in Essex, patients are greeted with a friendly sniff by her Corgi, Cormac, the second of the breed she has owned. Corgis are a herding breed, and Diana says, that when it is time for an appointment, Cormac gently shepherds her patient into the office. There is something in it for him as well: two biscuits from a small plastic bag Diana keeps. She says Cormac breaks tension, makes patients feel at ease, and sometimes even snuggles at their feet if he senses their nervousness.
Diana’s husband, Mike Augusta, a retired English teacher, comes and takes Cormac out for a midday walk.
The only year Diana did not work at the shad bake, a corgi was the reason. She was too upset on the appointed day: her first corgi, Caeleigh, had just died.
During COVID, professionally, Diana dealt with the added tension and anxiety the pandemic created for her patients. She spent personal time cooking through the recipes she keeps in a special file. She likes doing entrees, everything from beef stroganoff to spinach lasagna, and big batches of things, stews, and soups. In the COVID period, she learned to cook recipes from another tradition: Indian food.
Diana did not start out as a psychiatrist. She did not even start out as a doctor. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she got a Master’s Degree from Bryn Mawr College and began work as a psychiatric social worker, but she wanted more input into the kinds of treatments that her patients were receiving and decided to go back and get a medical degree.
First, however, she had to spend more than two years getting the requirements she needed to apply to medical school. She did this while she continued to work full-time. Then she got her medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania and came to this area as a result of a residency at Yale.
With more than three decades of practice in this area, she has had the opportunity to see generations of families.
“I like the life cycle of patients; it gives you a perspective on life,” she says.
In small communities, she also takes care to protect patients’ privacy. She is careful not to have people who know each other in consecutive appointments unless it is something they have indicated they do not object to. She also points out her parking lot is private, not adjacent to the street, so individual cars are not identifiable to passers-by.
Being a psychiatrist, more than any other kind of doctor, means day-long sitting and listening.
“Sitting is an occupational hazard,” she says.
Diana loves her own chair and footstool, which move and swivel in enough ways to make stretching possible, but admits the most walking she gets in the office is to her file room. She tries to make up for it by walking and swimming and a Pilates session once a week.
Diana not only works at the shad bake, she eats the shad. She points out there are alternatives: chicken and hot dogs, but she is a purist.
“For sure, for sure I eat the shad; it is very good,” she says.
Rotary Club of Essex Shad Bake
Saturday, June 3 from 1 to 6 p.m.
Essex Island Marina, Rain or Shine
Tickets are available online at rotaryclubofessex.com.