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Calendar Maple

Martha Ball

Thu, Jun 4

Category:

Island Notes

Several years ago I first noticed a volunteer maple tree, seeded I guessed, from the older tree at the corner of the front yard. It was in the tall grass, perhaps three feet high but the time I even realized it was there, at the time partly in the shadow of a gnarly, dying olive. It seemed, in the...
Slow Waves

Martha Ball

Thu, May 28

Category:

Island Notes

Spring arrives in slow waves and we watch them crest and crash on the shore, then recede to become part of the wide ocean. Yellow daffodils and forsythia and creamy shad have all gone by, the first to withering stems, the others to greenery. Some trees flower only to be consumed by a day of searing...
VIDEO

Horseshoe Crab Season

Rosemary Connelli, at rconnelli@blockislandtimes.com

Wed, May 27

Category:

News, Video, Features

(VIDEO) Horseshoe crabs have begun to emerge around the Great Salt Pond recently, with their appearance serving as a reminder to their annual breeding event. Horseshoe crabs are one of Block Island's living fossils, and their appearance has not changed in 300 million years. Reporter Rosemary...
Roadblock Reminder

Martha Ball

Thu, May 21

Category:

Island Notes

We have learned, or had confirmed, these past, endless weeks, that all the talk of going back in time inspired by old photographs is the stuff of fantasy. I am old enough that I remember when all winter we had one boat from Galilee, one boat that landed at noon and left at two or two-thirty. As I...
360 VIDEO

Walk through Andy’s Way

Rosemary Connelli, at rconnelli@blockislandtimes.com

Tue, May 19

Category:

News, Video, Features

(360 VIDEO) Reporter Rosemary Connelli walked through Andy’s Way today: a large crescent of sandy beach on the eastern side of the Great Salt Pond, and home to a diverse list of plants and animals. The Block Island Times will be a featuring a story in this week’s paper on Andy’s Way, originally...
Sandhill Crane Makes a House Call

Kim Gaffett

Thu, May 14

Category:

Ocean Views

Any morning that includes a bird photo and the following text exchange, is a good one. Paige G: “Good morning:) Kate Musso just sent this and is curious what it is?” Kim G: “OMG where??? Sand Hill Crane. I need to see it!!!” I was at the banding station handling gray catbirds,...
Purposefully forward

J. V. Houlihan

Thu, May 14

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

Last week I was in Newport to check on our sailboat, and was shocked at seeing the harbor completely empty. There wasn’t a single sailboat on a mooring, and there were very few people out and about in town. This is not what the City of Newport is supposed to look like on a mild day in early April...
Stamina and perseverance

Martha Ball

Thu, May 14

Category:

Island Notes

There was a time when Canada Geese had about them a mystique. They were the birds in a Joni Mitchell song, those “in chevron flight, flapping and racing on before the snow.” We watched them fly in formation, rising up to leave us, honking as they passed over the open pastures, their long necks clad...
360 VIDEO

Walk to Mosquito Beach

Rosemary Connelli, at rconnelli@blockislandtimes.com

Wed, May 13

Category:

News, Video, Features

(360 VIDEO) Walk the path to Mosquito Beach, courtesy of The Block Island Times. Mosquito Beach, or Dinghy Beach, is a small sandy cove by the Great Salt Pond on Corn Neck Road. A bright and warm day by the pond yesterday, with slight winds blowing overhead. Note: Turn up the volume to fully...
You Don’t Know What You’ve Got

Martha Ball

Thu, May 7

Category:

Island Notes

“They paved paradise Put up a parking lot With a pink hotel, a boutique And a swinging hot spot Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘Til it’s gone” T he lyric of ”Big Yellow Taxi” was the written reaction of Canadian singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell to various vistas...
VIDEO

Watching the waves roll

Rosemary Connelli, at rconnelli@blockislandtimes.com

Mon, May 4

Category:

Video

(VIDEO) Reporter Rosemary Connelli visited Fred Benson Town Beach today. Start off your week with a relaxing video: watching the waves roll into the shore. Note: Turn up the volume to fully immerse yourself in the environment, and pause, and click on the video to drag it around for different...
Earth Day, Arbor Day, May Day: Calls of action

Kim Gaffett

Fri, May 1

Category:

Ocean Views

Ahhhhh, what an April it has been. We can only hope that the adage, “April showers bring May flowers , ” proves true. By my calculation, we have had only 10 mostly sunny days in April (30 percent). The other 20 days have been cloudy or rainy! Ahhhhh, keeping track of the weather is such a...
Dooryard

Martha Ball

Fri, May 1

Category:

Island Notes

In the interests of full disclosure I have never been a student of poetry, and, I admit envying poets all that white space that us writers of prose must fill with words. Nonetheless, even I had some vague knowledge of “When Lilacs Last on the Dooryard Bloom’d,” the long poem Walt Whitman penned the...
The George W. Danielson

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 24

Category:

Island Notes

“What was the first ferry to bring folks?” someone asked and I realized I would have to look that up, and is so often the case with everything Block Island, how to define such a thing? Would it have been the first recorded excursion, a group rowed into the landing, before there was a proper harbor...
Kim Gaffett’s Ocean Views: Earth Day meets Poetry Month

Kim Gaffett

Fri, Apr 17

Category:

Ocean Views

Everything is Going to be All Right How should I not be glad to contemplate the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window and a high tide reflected on the ceiling? There will be dying, there will be dying, but there is no need to go into that. The poems flow from the hand unbidden and the hidden...
Kitchen Tools

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 17

Category:

Island Notes

Somewhere, I sort of stopped cooking beyond the most basic of dishes. On some level I realized what was happening, but how far it had gone hit me squarely the other night when it took four, yes, four, implements to open a bottle of olive oil. A knife to cut the foil, then there were two jar openers...
Video

Windy day at Mohegan Bluffs

Rosemary Connelli

Mon, Apr 13

Category:

News, Video

(VIDEO) Reporter Rosemary Connelli visited the Mohegan Bluffs today, and was greeted with strong wind speeds and rough waters. Wind speeds are expected to reach up to 60 m.p.h. today for coastal communities. Note: Turn up the volume to fully immerse yourself in the environment, and pause, and click...
Certainties in an uncertain world

Martha Ball

Thu, Apr 9

Category:

Island Notes

I t feels the calendar revolves even more than usual around the sunny, hopeful, days, the dramatic spring tides, the great moon filling the sky, all pushing aside the inevitable gray April rains that mirror a national mood. Monday was glorious and I left the door open, tired of Autumn's let-me-go-...
Rolling spring

Martha Ball

Thu, Apr 2

Category:

Island Notes

W hen I came inside yesterday afternoon the sparse forsythia scraping my window, the same that seems unable to recover from having been cut to the ground a few years ago, that refuses to do more than send ever taller shoots upward, glowed. Its yellow blossoms were like so many little suns on the...
VIDEO

Daily reminders for practicing good hygiene

Rosemary Connelli

Fri, Mar 27

Category:

News, Video

(VIDEO) Reporter Rosemary Connelli shares daily reminders on how to practice good hygiene. Stay safe, and let's continue to do our part in slowing the spread of COVID-19! To learn more on hygiene practices and COVID-19: www.cdc.gov www.who.int www.whitehouse.gov www.health.ri.gov www.new-shoreham...
Horizon Bound

J. V. Houlihan

Fri, Mar 27

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

John Walmsley grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and spent his summers at Point Judith’s Breakwater Village. Walmsley started angling at the age of four and would fish the east wall or go out on his dad’s boat. (I remember his grandfather, Samuel Walmsley, when I was growing up in the Village — he...
Everlasting

Martha Ball

Thu, Mar 26

Category:

Island Notes

I t is March and it is 43, the sky is cloudy and gray, the wind is blowing from the east, the sound of it rising and falling, blocking out birdsong and the dull thunder of the white-capped ocean. I do hear the dog, moving between the yard and the front lot, barking at whatever she has decided it is...
Our little island

Martha Ball

Thu, Mar 19

Category:

Island Notes

W e live on an island. It is not the Block Island of 1918, already sliding from the Glory Days of early tourism. A war was winding down while another trend was emerging: transportation was starting to shift away from the rail and steamers that had fed the great hotels all along the New England...
Celebrating seals and the Vernal Equinox

Kim Gaffett

Thu, Mar 12

Category:

Ocean Views

As we teeter on the cusp of spring we may find ourselves suddenly in a day where the wind has abated, and the afternoon sun feels so warm that it is like a Siren’s call to sit, and loll, on the lee side of a favorite stone wall while taking a little rest. If we are lucky, and let ourselves succumb...
Information and voting

Martha Ball

Thu, Mar 12

Category:

Island Notes

In the fall of 1986, it was becoming more difficult for my mother to ascribe to “arthritis” the visible impact of the terminal bone cancer that had been diagnosed in January 1981. She told us, my brother and me, at the outset that she would not be making it public, she didn't want people asking her...
VIDEO

Nature Walks

Lars Trodson

Tue, Mar 10

Category:

News, Video

(VIDEO) Follow along on Editor Lars Trodson’s walk through Payne's Dock, Town Beach, and Win Dodge property. Video was previously taken on Monday, March 9. Note: Turn up the volume to fully immerse yourself in the environment, and pause, and click on the video to drag it around for different...
A noontime phenomenon

Martha Ball

Thu, Mar 5

Category:

Island Notes

M y father was a roofer. It seems odd, now, that back in the 1950's and 60's, when work was so scarce, there would be any specialization of labor and, in retrospect, I suppose when push came to shove there was none of the “I don't paint” sort of talk one hears today. Still it is roofs I remember...
Breaking nice

J. V. Houlihan

Thu, Feb 27

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

“I don’t like Walter, and the writing is weak since Gus died. I don’t like this program, anymore.” This is how the hit series “Breaking Bad,” ended in our household. It was not a negotiation for the bride to continue for a few more episodes to see how the writers would wrap up the hellacious...
Februarymarch

Martha Ball

Thu, Feb 27

Category:

Island Notes

I t's one of those years again, one of those divisible by four years wherein February has an extra day, and still remains the shortest month. Except, of course, for those years which are also evenly divisible by 100 unless — wait for it — they they are evenly divisible by 400. And while George...
360 Video

Walk the Hodge Preserve

Rosemary Connelli

Tue, Feb 25

Category:

News, Video

(360 VIDEO) Walk through the Hodge Family Wildlife Preserve on Corn Neck Road, courtesy of The Block Island Times. Watch the video all the way through, to see the landscape open up to Middle Pond and its surrounding diverse environments. Note: Turn up the volume to fully immerse yourself in the...
Behind the Barn

Martha Ball

Thu, Feb 20

Category:

Island Notes

W hen the area around the old barn foundation was opened up in preparation for the arrival of the Icelandic horses two years ago I had cautions, hidden stones and steps in one field, an old cistern behind the barn. Strangely, only recently has it struck me that it was never known as more than The...
360 Video

Walk the stairs at the Mohegan Bluffs

Rosemary Connelli

Wed, Feb 19

Category:

News, Video

(360 VIDEO) Walk the stairs at the Mohegan Bluffs, courtesy of The Block Island Times. A sunny and warm day by the bluffs, with slight winds blowing overhead. Note: Turn up the volume to fully immerse yourself in the environment, and pause, and click on the video to drag it around for different...
A New Purpose

Martha Ball

Thu, Feb 13

Category:

Island Notes

H ow long has it been since the Champlin's case began? Sometime near the start, the end of 2003 or the start of 2004, I answered my landline, my phone of choice as I tried to keep the minutes on my town-issued cell down. It was a friend in North Kingstown, who told me to go to the Town Hall and “...
To windward, charge! (Or, how did we make it this far?)

J.V. Houlihan

Thu, Jan 30

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

This coming year of 2020 my wife and I are both charging on the quick step toward our 70th trip around the sun, and sometimes we have little discussions about how we got this far — in one piece. We both came up in Scotch/Irish/Yankee working-class families in Pawtucket, R.I. in the 50s. We came of...
Threads of Gold

Martha Ball

Thu, Jan 30

Category:

Island Notes

Ed. Note: Martha is out sick this week. We found this column that was published 20 years ago on Jan. 29, 2000: T he sun was a reluctant player on the first day in eight the temperature crept above freezing. Statistically, they tell us, the week just beginning, the last in January, is the...
Humble and Ambitious

Martha Ball

Thu, Jan 23

Category:

Island Notes

There are, all around us, bits and pieces of other eras, scraps of history quite literally along the roadsides we travel every day. In particular, cement steps have long fascinated me; they belong, in large part, to the time Block Island first opened her doors and said “welcome” to the outside...
January Saturday

Martha Ball

Thu, Jan 16

Category:

Island Notes

La st weekend some temperature records were broken. The longer we keep track, and the more easily accessible that tracking becomes, the more we see very little is new again. It happens, I learned years ago, flipping back through columns with a like date and finding the weather I thought so...
360 Video

Walking the National Wildlife Refuge

Tue, Jan 14

Category:

News, Video

(360 VIDEO) Walk the shoreline of the National Wildlife Refuge at the North Light, courtesy of The Block Island Times. It was a windy, cloudy day with temperatures in the low 40s. Note: Turn up the volume to fully immerse yourself in the environment, and pause, and click on the video to drag it...
The 2019 Bird Count

Kim Gaffett

Thu, Jan 9

Category:

Ocean Views

The 2019 Bird Count By Kim Gaffett A letter to Miss Elizabeth Dickens on the 2019 Community Bird Census: Dear Miss Dickens, You were missed on our annual Community Bird Count, which of course was on Dec. 26. It felt like a drab day of low numbers with no sun, and although...
The Machinations of Autumn

Martha Ball

Thu, Jan 9

Category:

Island Notes

A utumn is napping. She has been outside, done a little perimeter re-con, chased a few geese, sat in the yard and barked at something far, far away, then came in for breakfast and a snooze. Yesterday, I was ignoring her morning barkfest. She does it when anything moves out on Mansion Road, or on...
The Collaborators

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Sat, Jan 4

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

“ You get something remarkable and unique when it’s a combination of collaborative, that you just can’t do with your own DNA. You just can’t.” — Jakob Dylan The night I witnessed Jakob Dylan’s dad play his Fender Stratocaster in Newport in ’65, it was clear that a shift was happening in...
Carry Me Home

Martha Ball

Thu, Jan 2

Category:

Island Notes

T he Thursday before Christmas I intended to go to the mainland to have my car inspected. I watched the weather and fretted for days beforehand, tracking a forecast of wind and deep cold that held steady. The latter did not make me happy but it was the former that caused worry. The day before I,...
The light of eternity

Pastor Peter Preiser

Sat, Dec 28

Category:

Columnists

In this column, we’ve shared some thoughts about seeking the divine in the everyday moments and place of our lives. Let’s conclude by considering the search for God in the light of eternity. The Psalmist writes: In the eyes of God, A thousand years are like a passing day, Or as brief as a few hours...
Christmas and the animals

John Willis

Fri, Dec 27

Category:

Columnists

We all associate Christmas with children. Most of us have experienced Christmas mornings of surprises around the tree, smiling little faces and happy memories that will last for years. The true meaning of Christmas is the birth of baby Jesus surrounded by Mary and Joseph and the wise men with their...
Intentional Emptiness

Martha Ball

Thu, Dec 26

Category:

Columnists

I t was Christmas Day, mild and sunny and surprisingly quiet when I drove out the Neck around one in the afternoon. The sun was low the whole day, the fluffy plumes of the gone-to-seed phragmities between the road and the New Harbor glowed pale against a milky sky. There was a small cluster of...
Song sparrow stanzas

Kim Gaffett

Fri, Dec 20

Category:

Columnists

It is the time of year when during any walk — along a nature trail, busy street, or in the dooryard — you are apt to be accompanied by a scampering, yet spritely, avian companion. The song sparrow, Melospiza melodia , is the quintessential LBJ (little brown job). It is easy to see the beauty...
The Watermen

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Dec 20

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

“Never leave the playground and you won’t grow old.” — Anonymous South County resident Paul Murray and Block Island’s Jeff Cowles have known each other for years and share a couple common interests. They work — Murray’s retired — on home heating boiler systems, and they both have passions...
The Escape

Martha Ball

Thu, Dec 19

Category:

Columnists

A utumn stood in the yard in the snow, on high alert looking south to the wide open field. There might be geese out there, although she saw no geese. There might be deer but, again, she saw no deer. Still, she sensed something was there, that elusive something that lurked around the edges of the...
Church is still good for you (and your family)

Pastor Peter Preiser

Sat, Dec 14

Category:

Columnists

We have all driven by what was formerly the West Side Baptist Church of Block Island. It’s a private residence now. The details as to why this particular church closed its doors may not be as important as the fact that this is happening with increasing frequency in our country. The Gallup Poll...
Decadent Dessert

Pam Gelsomini

Sat, Dec 14

Category:

Columnists, Dish off the Block

I created this decadent delight for a contest where you had to highlight eggs and you had to infuse a local ingredient or theme. Living in Massachusetts (when I am not on Block Island), cranberries came to mind… and loving dark chocolate, I thought, what a great combo --- tart cranberries, sweet...

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