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Columnists

It Had A Sundial

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 17

Category:

Island Notes

L a st week, when I swore I had hit that Wall of August and could not possibly write anything to fill this space the editor — instead of offering a soothing “you've earned a week off” — asked me about my first summer job. It was not only not the answer I wanted, the topic was, I protested,...
Cottage Farm House

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 10

Category:

Island Notes

Today, looking in the register for the one-time boarding house up the road, The Cottage Farm House, I found an old photo, dated in my mother's even, penciled hand: “August 31, 1954, Hurricane Carol.” It is of a wooden bench, sitting in the brush between the dune and Mansion Pond. It belonged to a...
Work, work, work

By

J.V. Houlihan Jr.

Fri, Aug 3

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

“All you have to sell is your time.” My dad told me this when I was a kid. He also told me, “There isn’t a money tree in the back yard.” It was easy to connect the dots with what he was saying; if I wanted something, I’d need to work for it. I was a caddy — a looper — when I was 14. It was a short-...
Joyful Noise

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 3

Category:

Island Notes

My Rose of Sharon is in full bloom!” I heard someone comment and thought “No, it is too early. It is an August shrub!” then realized it was very late July, almost August. Last night, while I slept, the calendar flipped to a new month and it is, now, August. My own Rose of Sharon, a living testimony...
South County Sound offers personalized service

By

Cassius Shuman

Fri, Jul 27

Category:

Trips Abroad

Seventeen years ago, business took Mark Gagnon to Block Island. After that fateful visit he “made the decision to be on the island weekly, year-round,” servicing his customers’ needs, he said. Gagnon owns and operates South County Sound and Video in Wakefield, an installer of commercial and...
The Galilee Free Library

By

J.V. Houlihan Jr.

Fri, Jul 27

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

Couples need a good base camp to live in as they age; if they are not vigilant their camp can get cluttered up with stuff that they just don’t need anymore. We live in a consumerist society; we need to buy lots of stuff to keep the wheels of the economy turning. However, there comes a time when we...
East Wind

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 27

Category:

Columnists

The summer solstice wind blew from the southeast, coming over thousands of miles of open water. We wish for it to blow from the southwest, giving us a solid hope of months of cooling, beach building breezes. It is the wind that pulls the sand down from the dunes, where it has sought shelter over...
It’s on!

By

Capt. Chris Willi

Fri, Jul 20

Category:

Fishing Report

Coming into the middle of July and we have finally seen some bigger fish caught — and in good numbers — around the island. Fishing from the shore has been good all along the south side of the island using big swimmers and needlefish. There is a large presence of mackerel on all sides of the island...
Hope Roosa, motivated

By

J.V. Houlihan Jr.

Fri, Jul 13

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

Motivation comes from within. It cannot be taught. There are no short cuts. What’s compelling about motivation is where it begins — there must be a spark — and where it can take you. When I meet motivated people, I look for the spark and invariably it is clearly explained by the...
Order this... Tasty baked goods at Aldo’s Bakery

By

Amy Lockwood MacDougall

Fri, Jul 13

Category:

Columnists, Order This

When I first started coming to Block Island in 1989, my husband told me we had to get Portuguese sweet bread from Aldo’s, toast it, and slather it with freshly made blackberry jam. We’d eat it while we were here on vacation and always grabbed a loaf right before we got on the ferry. What I never...
July Sun, September Air

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 13

Category:

Island Notes

Th e Fourth of July was a wonderful holiday week, and while I think of most parades days as being hot they do not usually fall in a week of dreadfully heated humidity as still as August doldrums. It will “break on Friday” we were told, that perennial promise that comes with any spell of truly...
July 4, 2018

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 6

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Th e parade has come and gone, the Community Service Officers, the young men (so far I have seen only guys this year) in the bright vests, are removing the temporary parking ban signs, and replacing the pedestrian crosswalk markers removed for the parade. The front street has gone, in thirty...
East Side Sunset

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 29

Category:

News, Columnists

Y e sterday, or perhaps it was the day before, these long, green days meld together, especially when I turn off Mansion Road and head up across my front field, I had an epiphany. It was a summer cow pasture in my earliest memory, the garden protected from marauding beasts by a single strand of...
Wakefield Liquors

By

Michael Schroeder

Fri, Jun 29

Category:

Trips Abroad

Wakefield Liquors takes great pride in the process of selecting wines by sampling dozens each week to create a unique selection of name-brand items as well as lesser-known boutique wines. The friendly staff is happy to assist customers in making a selection just right for every occasion, whether it...
Fishing Report: The bite begins...

By

Capt. Chris Willi

Fri, Jun 22

Category:

Fishing Report

Unseasonable weather and cooler water has made the start of the 2018 season a little slower than normal. However, we can report the island fishing has turned the corner the week leading up to Father’s Day. This is the week fishermen can have nights of catching a dozen fish or more. That’s the case...
Edge of the Solstice

By

Martha Ball

Thu, Jun 21

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

L ast night, I walked into my living room in the near darkness to be surprised by the lingering pink in the sky, not where it should be on the edge of the summer solstice, in the northwest, rather glowing brightly in a south-facing window. It disappeared, quickly, as I moved toward it and I...
The Canopy

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 15

Category:

Island Notes

The lilacs down the lane behind my house, the ones which produced the best blooms this year, are holding their gone-by flowers, clumps of lifeless brown among the green. They do not seem to be in the best spot to flourish, on the north side of a wall, seemingly exposed to both the northeast wind...
‘Melville in love’

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Jun 8

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

Sometimes a great book will find us when we least expect it. A book can appear to us in bookstores, flea markets, lost and found bins, yard sales, and libraries. Or, a friend may flip us a book that they may think we might like when we least expect it. A friend of ours named Cindy — another Cindy...
The Price of Privilege

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 8

Category:

Island Notes

Traveling the Neck Road can be an adventure in high summer, but it is early June. Yesterday, just south of Mansion Road, a truck was stopped, collecting cardboard which had fallen from a bed loaded with what appeared to be trash. At first I thought the driver had turned around to gather what had...
Make it fit: Redefine your comfort zone

By

Eileen Birk

Sat, Jun 2

Category:

Columnists

When I started on my weight loss journey, I thought the hardest part was the workouts. I would wake up the day after “leg day” and feel like my legs were made of Jello. The day after would leave me wincing just to lift my water bottle. I often questioned my sanity for returning day after day for...
Heading for the Light

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 1

Category:

Island Notes

It was light when I walked outside after a meeting last night. It was light but while I had been inside fog had settled over the land, a complete surprise in this time of year when I pay little mind to forecasts other than those for heavy rain. The sky was pale and it was oddly disorienting. There...
Beyond the Lilacs

By

Martha Ball

Fri, May 25

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

This is morning there were a few crashes of lightning and some rolls of thunder. I stumbled out of bed and went downstairs to close the back door through which rain falls no matter the direction of the wind, and went back to sleep. It was sunny not too long later, a lovely May morning, before the...
Down to the second

By

J.V. Houlihan Jr.

Fri, May 18

Category:

News, Columnists, The Ferry Dock Scribbler

As the Oldport launch was heading over to Fort Adams at 0800, we passed very close to the Volvo Open 65, Dongfeng Racing. In very poor visibility and light air she was the fourth boat in the fleet to finish in the Newport leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. The word around the Newport docks was...
Storm Skies

By

Martha Ball

Fri, May 18

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

It was dark when I came home Friday the 11th of May. All the day's light was gone from the sky but night had not deepened and there was visible only one brightest star, or planet, or plane, I thought at first, then, as my eyes adjusted, I realized there were pinpoints across the whole heaven. Had I...
Heart of Springtime

By

Martha Ball

Fri, May 11

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Everyone lauds the fall, and the fall on Block Island is beautiful, with its sharply blue ocean and grass restored to green after even the driest and hottest Augusts; September can be stunning, between hurricane scares, but by its end already I am feeling the closing of the vise of approaching...
Senior projects presented at school

By

Cassius Shuman

Mon, May 7

Category:

News, School Scoop

The Block Island School’s senior class exhibited their senior projects to the public on May 2 at the school, demonstrating innovation, individualism, and intelligence. Music as a way of expressing emotion; art therapy as an alternative to medication; the importance of exercise; the filmmaking...
The Block Island Factor

By

J. V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, May 4

Category:

Columnists, The Ferry Dock Scribbler

“The Block Island Factor is a degree-of-difficulty figure by which one multiplies mainland estimates to achieve Block Island realities. The Factor is always greater than one and may go as high as five depending on one’s ability to adapt to weather, cost, transportation, and...
May Day

By

Martha Ball

Fri, May 4

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

The spring is filled with times of contrast. The old adage “April showers bring May flowers” usually holds true in this part of the world, where it may be the “cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” That oft quoted...
The Chief

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Apr 27

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

“Hey, Joe, check out my new guitar,” said Chief Vin Carlone as he came into the car shack one February day a few years back. It was freezing outside and it was quiet at the docks. He cracked open his case and pulled out a pristine out-of-the-box Taylor guitar. Then he ran some scales up and down...
As close to happy as he can get

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 27

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

It was raining, again, on Wednesday, on Dump Day, the anchor of the winter week for the Pesky Pond Troll of Clay Head Swamp ( aka PPT). It was the day there was lots of traffic on Corn Neck Road, and it was especially easy to scamper out to the bank beside the pavement, hop on a truck and...
‘Passion for satisfaction’ at Ocean State Hearing

By

Michael Schroeder

Thu, Apr 26

Category:

Trips Abroad

Rapid changes in technology are making it easier, more economical and more effective to counter the effects of hearing loss — and a firm right off the boat is committed to delivering those results to their clients. “Over the next two decades the hearing aid industry will bring about dramatic...
Saving Block Island one blade of grass at a time

By

Kim Gaffett

Sat, Apr 21

Category:

Ocean Views

“A steady sea wind sweeping across the beach carries grains of sand inland. When its motion is interrupted by a log or grass clump, the wind drops its burden of sand. Slowly, a mound builds up. Growing higher, broader, merging with other mounds, it becomes a hillock, a ridge — a dune. Rolling up...
Snake On The Grass

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 20

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Saturday the sun came out, the wind died in the middle of the day, and I went out for a few minutes to rake a few weeds from a long-ignored flower bed. Years ago, when I paid more attention to such things, a bonus pack of some odd iris arrived with an order of baby plants. They all thrived as long...
Waiting For Spring

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 13

Category:

Island Notes

The geese are moving from noisy flight to noisy landing to noisy swimming. They are the big Canadas, singularly beautiful when they were few, with their softly brown bodies and black velvet necks and spots of perfect white. That was a long, long time ago, before their numbers grew exponentially and...
The stages of Geezer-hood

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Apr 6

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

I just finished my 68th trip around the sun, and I’m barreling on the quick step toward the next one. There is no denying that life goes by very fast as we get on in years—it’s non-negotiable. Moreover, we pay more attention as to how we want to spend our time — we can’t flinch — so we need to go...
Crack of Dawn

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 6

Category:

Island Notes

It is one of those damp, dreary days that has no beginning and no end, it merely rises like a long ocean swell between the darks troughs of morning and night. Only Wednesday it is and it feels we've been through whole seasons since last week. The forecast for Easter Sunday held little promise but I...
At April’s Doorstep

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 30

Category:

Island Notes

It does not matter the temperature or the wind direction, the sun continues its annual march from one side of the horizon to the other, along the even seam of the sea and sky to the east or the jagged tree line to the west. Turning onto Mansion Road from my house, heading west, just before seven...
Remembering a mentor and friend

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Mar 23

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

“Get on that house, Houlihan, you missed a spot under the gutter.” “That grass isn’t raked enough. Keep at it.” “Tune your guitar, that E string is flat.” “Did you do your geometry? Did you study your French verbs?” The above and many more assertive suggestions were said to me by my childhood next-...
Site of the Old Mill

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 23

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

We are having yet another lousy Wednesday/Dump Day. My plans to discard a container of papers tossed aside in a scratching-the-surface bit of cleaning have been thwarted. However, in the course of sorting, I found a copy of a 1948 document in which the Historical Society monument on the east side...
Winter

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Mar 16

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

We’ve had some cold and inclement — ice, snow, wind, slush — weather this winter. However, other than the “Bomb Cyclone,” it’s been an uneventful season. On the day I write this, it’s a balmy 48 degrees aboard my sailboat in Newport Harbor. There is no snow to be seen of any consequence, and the...
Odd Storm

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 16

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Autumn fussed and fussed until I let her out into the snowy Tuesday afternoon. She took a few steps into the windy damp then seemed to hesitate. Having no desire to stand in the doorway, waiting, I asked, “Do you want to come back in?” In reply, she turned from me and dove, nose first, into the...
Ocean Views: A picture is worth a thousand words

By

Kim Gaffett

Sat, Mar 10

Category:

Ocean Views

The recent storm had a fierce erosive effect on the island’s outer shorelines. The same storm surges, coupled with full moon high tides, produced unusually high water in the largely protected Great Salt Pond, and associated inner harbors. The level of water that we witnessed on March 3 is...
Sometimes, life is a beach

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Mar 9

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

I first heard of Jimmy Buffett in the winter of 1975 while living on Daytona Beach, Florida, in my shanty Irish camper, and raising standard issue hell on said beach and in the local saloons. Buffett’s name would pop up with some of the — ahem, characters — I played my guitar with at...
Faux Lamb

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 9

Category:

Island Notes

Mar ch came in gently, only to shed its soft lamb's wool coat and reveal itself to be a mangy, angry lion. There are very few days I do not leave my house at all; last Friday was one of those rarities. I, literally, did not step outside, remaining in the doorway, blessedly on the west and lee side...
A new Rockwell classic

By

J.V. Houlihan Jr.

Fri, Mar 2

Category:

Columnists, The Ferry Dock Scribbler

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” — W. Somerset Maugham The above quote could also pertain to writing a screenplay. Irish/British writer Martin McDonagh penned a script that became the movie, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri...
The End of February

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 2

Category:

Island Notes

“W in ter won’t come until the ponds are full” the old-timers always said, an adage haunting me through the ceaseless rains of February. “But we had winter!” was my silent protest every wet, gray, day, citing the already long-ago deep cold of January. “Real but short” I would concede, hoping to...
SNOWstorm

By

Kim Gaffett

Fri, Feb 23

Category:

Ocean Views

From Elizabeth Dickens’ 1926 bird journal: “In Nov. and Dec. the greatest flight of Snow Owls ever recorded.” That entry goes on to identify sightings of 23 individual snowy owls on Block Island that winter. Since 1926 there have been several irruptions of snowy owls into our region, and well...
Gray and White and Foggy

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 23

Category:

Island Notes

Clouds of white roll across the field beyond the kitchen windows, the dog comes back in from her morning jaunt around the yard not quite wet but damp all over. I cannot see from the yard but I know there is a tree out in the field, newly solitary, cleared of the brush and vines in which it was...
Walking on Sunshine

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 16

Category:

Island Notes

There is sometimes a disconnect between the way I remember months and the way they are, in reality. February is cold, the month the snows we hoped we had evaded arrive, last year cloaking the vines climbing up the old shed, creating a scene momentarily magical. A photo of it brings to mind one of...
Great Backyard Bird Count, Block Island-style

By

Kim Gaffett

Thu, Feb 15

Category:

Ocean Views

The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is this weekend: Feb. 16 – 19. This is a global effort to observe and report which bird species are where during the winter — between migration times. "The 2018 GBBC again promises to provide an important snapshot of bird occurrence in February," says the...

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Island Buzz

Need new kitchen counters?

Posted By

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8/20

We have all types of counter tops and can often install in just one day! Representative is on island once a week and offers...
Block Island Cemetery Tour - Aug 26th

Posted By

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Posted By

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8/19

Check out this weeks Nature Conservancy Schedule at https://www.nature.org
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24 West Side Road: Elegant renovation for the wonderful West Side Church! This turn key property is a must see with it’s...

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Island Religion

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Posted By

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8/17

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