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ArtistTRADITION A small, gray-haired woman, carrying a net and bucket, marched up the dock gazing into the pea-green water. Spying a sand crab poised in the dock’s shadow, she eased the net into the water and scooped it up. Once the woman had a dozen crabs in her bucket, she returned home and dumped them into the oven. She turned the heat up to 450 degrees and listened to the frantic tapping of legs and claws against the oven’s sheet metal floor. The air grew thick with a swampy, seaweedy odor. When the tapping ceased, she turned off the heat, opened the oven door and removed the dead crabs one at a time with tongs and an oven mitt. The old woman dropped them back into her bucket and carried it down the basement stairs. She threw the crabs onto the pile with the hundreds of others, where they would remain until late October.