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Columnists

Sunshine Afternoon

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 9

Category:

Island Notes

It is June and, when I am home, I leave the front doors, living room, hall, and entry all wide open. My springtime expectation of birds flying into the house, confused by plentiful natural light within, has not been much realized this year, although the season is new. A nest was begun in a corner...
Waiting for Summer

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 2

Category:

Island Notes

This past weekend I somewhere read that among the reasons May 30 was chosen for Memorial Day, before the Uniform Holiday Act relegated it to a Monday, was the fact that flowers were in fullest bloom. It is a harsh reality of the start of every June, that grasses, where allowed, have grown tall and...
Garden Report: Japanese Barberry and ticks

By

Renée Meyer

Sun, May 28

Category:

Gardening Report

What’s not to love about a drought- and deer-tolerant ornamental shrub with colorful foliage, plentiful red berries and cute, although inconspicuous little flowers? Quite a bit, it seems. Japanese barberry ( Berberis thunbergii ) was brought to the United States in the late 1800s. Fast...
The fish are here

By

Capt. Chris Willi and Capt. Hank Hewitt

Sat, May 27

Category:

Fishing Report

At last, after a seemingly interminable winter, the fish are here and the season is underway. To lead off with a shore-based report, the striped bass are here in numbers, yet no keeper sizes as of yet. They are feeding around sunset and sunrise in the Coast Guard Channel, and throughout the Great...
On the corner of... A Piccilo-Zither music box

By

Martha Ball and Mary Anderson

Fri, May 26

Category:

Columnists

The Block Island Historical Society was formed in immediate reaction to an item in Lucretia Mott Ball’s will, whereby personal items of especial interest and value were to be given “to museums or historical collections” preferably in New England. She died in 1941; the local organization was...
Morning Sounds

By

Martha Ball

Fri, May 26

Category:

Columnists

This morning I went outside, my feet still in the old sneakers I wear as slippers, in deference to a dog who, at any given time, may leave a chewed bit of a stick in my path. It was not especially early but the air was dense, on the verge of a light sprinkle, and the grass that is always wet at...
On the Mainland: A&B Family Appliances

By

Fraser Lang

Thu, May 25

Category:

Loose ends

Jim Buchanan is a hands-on owner. Jim and his wife Anne own A & B Family Appliances in Wakefield. He’s always told me that he “does what it takes” to keep his business going. I wasn’t surprised, therefore, to call one morning and learn that he was out delivering a refrigerator. I called later...
At the Harbor

By

Martha Ball

Fri, May 19

Category:

Island Notes

The rain has stopped, and with hanging sheets on the line I think of my mother saying this was the time to spread white linens on new grass to brighten them. Then I realize I feel the strength of the spring sun on my face from an hour spent beside the water yesterday afternoon. The work on the Old...
On the corner of...

By

Martha Ball and Mary Anderson

Fri, May 12

Category:

Columnists

Ed. note: The Block Island Historical Society was founded in 1942. To help celebrate its 75th year, the Society’s Diamond Anniversary, The Block Island Times will be publishing sketches and photographs of items in its collection. For those interested in joining or donating to The...
It’s An Island

By

Martha Ball

Fri, May 12

Category:

Island Notes

The last few years the prevalent theme of my columns written in early May has been centered on green and gray, underscored with a protest that it should not be this way. My easily recalled memories of the start of this month are all golden sunshine, long afternoons and verdant hills. While I do not...
Sirens in the Sea

By

Martha Ball

Fri, May 5

Category:

Island Notes

Monday was reminiscent of one of those Easters when we have to take on faith that there is a sun rising from the ocean out behind the clouds, easy enough when our imagining is buoyed by ambient light growing as we let slip our hope for a ray of gold to gild the sky and show us that morning truly...
On the Mainland: Inside Style

By

Fraser Lang

Sun, Apr 30

Category:

Trips Abroad

Lee Chartier, owner of Inside Style in Wakefield, wins your confidence right from the start. She is warm, knowledgeable and open. Her trademark approach is to work collaboratively with clients, getting to know what they are comfortable with to transform a space that reflects their tastes with her...
Jeremiah Littlefield’s fishing tackle

On the corner of...

By

Mary Anderson and Martha Ball

Sat, Apr 29

Category:

Columnists

Ed. note: The Block Island Historical Society was founded in 1942. To help celebrate its 75th year, the Society’s Diamond Anniversary, The Block Island Times will be publishing sketches and photographs of items in its collection. For those interested in joining or donating to The...
Heavy at Times

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 28

Category:

Island Notes

We live in a small town, some of us have always lived in this small town, I think when crossing paths with someone, a younger brother of a classmate who will always be that, no matter that he is long grown, with a son of his own now in college. “Heavy at times” he remarks, a nod at the gentle rain...
50 Years of bird banding

By

Kim Gaffett

Sat, Apr 22

Category:

Ocean Views

Elise Lapham started the Block Island Bird Banding Station 50 years ago on April 27, 1967. However, beyond the fact of when it started, there are scores of stories and details to be told about the who, what, where, why and how of the banding station’s history. How and Who? While David and Elise...
From the Bayside

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 21

Category:

Island Notes

The poet who gave us “what is so rare as a day in June... ” called that month the “high-tide of the year” — which seems apt early in that month, when the days are still lengthening and tall grasses are just beginning to go to seed, when the beach roses blanket the dunes, and a lingering pale sky...
On the corner of...

By

Martha Ball and Mary Anderson

Sat, Apr 15

Category:

Columnists

The tools of dawn-to-dusk sustenance farming sit quietly. One is a wooden box with a crank on its side, its red paint faded. It is on a stand, heavy and awkward, and spills kernels of dry corn when jogged. Edith Littlefield Blane remembers being put to work manning one of these contraptions, a corn...
Look-at-me-yellow

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 14

Category:

Island Notes

My forsythia needs more attention than I have been willing to give it. The roots are old, the flowering shrub sprung from them has soared back toward the sun after several severe cuttings over the years. It always grew at an absurdly rapid pace, tall and lush, scraping the old wooden gutters that...
The unseen benefit of the wind turbines

By

Capt. Hank Hewitt

Sat, Apr 8

Category:

Fishing Report

As we witness the growth of offshore wind farms, there seems to be a benefit to them not readily apparent to most, yet known to anglers. The benefit of these installations is a term anglers refer to as structure. Structure comes in many different forms, yet has the same effect: it attracts marine...
The times they are a-changin’

By

J.V. Houlihan Jr.

Fri, Apr 7

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

During my wife’s recent travels to China and Iceland this year — and being a keen observer of fashion — she noticed how a certain hairstyle is reemerging. In Beijing, at the Great Wall, Reykjavik, and in the Blue Lagoon, she noticed people of all ages sporting the popular hairstyle of the 80s — the...
Rite of Passage

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 7

Category:

Island Notes

And so we come into April with great winds and high seas. The rains are heavy, with nothing of sweet spring showers about them. There are no boats today; tomorrow, April 2, in 1980 the spare notation in my mother's hand does not include a name but it was likely the Manitou, intrepid little vessel...
Moving Into April

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 31

Category:

Island Notes

Last night, after the final downstairs lights had been extinguished, I thought to look south, and for it saw a faint edge of a haze beyond an empty space I still call “The Mansion” after the grand structure that burned 51 years ago this spring. A story higher, even an old-house-story-higher,...
On the Mainland: Rawlings Floors in Wakefield

By

Fraser Lang

Sat, Mar 25

Category:

Trips Abroad

You get a warm welcome when you enter the door at Rawlings Floors at 241 Main Street in Wakefield. Mark and Richard Zambarano, who own the business, set a high standard for customer service. It obviously works; it’s why they have so many repeat customers. The brothers have seen lots of changes in...
Outside my own memory

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 24

Category:

Island Notes

A search for a particular postcard rarely ends with my putting my hand on the image I had in mind to start. It began with a thought of the Public Market, the brick-faced store on Dodge Street that was, when I was a child, truly a food market, one of two year-round groceries on the island. For a...
White Board Down

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 17

Category:

Island Notes

A single white board lies on the grass, lifted out of the slots of the two uprights that support it, forming a new sort of an old fashioned bar-way, a single piece of wood barring entry through a gap in a stone wall. It is just there and I have to presume it is a leftover of yesterday's great wind...
The pillow from hell

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Mar 10

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

Karma is a Buddhist concept which basically says that our destiny or fate is based on a series of causes and effects; if we’re doing good things then there is a possibility that good things will happen to us. A demonstration of this can be witnessed every day when we see people holding the door for...
On the corner of... A 19th century policeman’s badge

By

Mary Anderson and Martha Ball

Sun, Mar 5

Category:

Columnists

Ed. note: The Block Island Historical Society was founded in 1942. To help celebrate its 75th year. the Society’s Diamond Anniversary, The Block Island Times will be publishing sketches and photographs of items in its collection. For those interested in joining or donating to The...
On Big Dog Paws

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 3

Category:

Island Notes

The first day of March comes in like a lamb, the morning filled with birdsong and fog. I look out to the south, to my measure of visibility, and see, as I can in all but the heaviest snows and thickest mist, the shape of the farm buildings on the far side of the one-time pasture. They stand, from...
Where the wild things are: Galilee

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Feb 24

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

I saw her as I stood by the port loading door — while working aboard the M/V Quonset — and scanned the rock jetty. There in the hot and blinding July sun was the blonde woman in the skimpy two-piece bathing suit slathering sun tan oil on her lithe and toned body — her hair was perfect. She...
Washington's Birthday

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 24

Category:

Island Notes

Snow chased my dreams. It is rare I remember these stories my mind tells while I sleep, rarer, still, that they are more than scraps, jumbled snapshots, overlapping, utterly confusing seasons and places and decades. This one, or a segment thereof, fell into current time and place, a snow come...
Join ‘Expedition Block Island’

By

Kim Gaffett

Fri, Feb 24

Category:

Ocean Views

Have you ever wondered what was in that cove, around that point, or over that dune? After the Groundhog Day count, many islanders go in search of mountain slopes, coral reefs, hunting lodges, colossal amusement rides, grandma’s attic, or any oasis for introspection — in general, we head to parts...
Spot of Hope

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 17

Category:

Island Notes

The sun is moving out of its winter home in the south. First light falls differently in different seasons and now it comes through the more southern of the east windows in the ell of my house, in the room where I sleep. It rises, visibly, from the ocean, at the edge of one of the places where the...
Happiness

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Sun, Feb 12

Category:

Island Notes, The Ferry Dock Scribbler

An old Chinese proverb: If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a month, get married. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody else. Yeah, I know,...
Before the storm

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 10

Category:

Island Notes

I t is unseasonably warm, 50 degrees and sunny, a day I have twice caught myself leaving my coat on the car seat as I walk away wearing a sweater that is more a weight for spring and fall than winter. The ground is slightly soft from yesterday's rain but there has been no deep frost and no mud...
On the corner... of the past and present

By

Mary Anderson and Martha Ball

Sat, Feb 4

Category:

Columnists

Ed. note: The Block Island Historical Society was founded in 1942. To help celebrate its 75th year, the Society’s Diamond Anniversary, The Block Island Times will be publishing sketches and photographs of some items it has in its collection throughout 2017. Among the founders of...
In the Hallway: School on the Block

By

Jake Douglas

Sat, Feb 4

Category:

Columnists

Almost everyone I talk with in the summer asks me about how school is on the island. I reply: “it’s a decent school.” I don’t have the experience of attending an off-island high school but, from what some of my friends have told me it is very different from the island. At first I was not sure how...
The bright jacket

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Feb 3

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

A month ago I was strolling around a West Marine store looking at stuff for our sailboat. There was nothing the boat needed, yet — she’s tied to her winter dock in Newport; however, burning up the clock while looking at boat stuff is more fun than looking at stuff at a place like the...
Reaching for the sun

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 3

Category:

Island Notes

It is the last day of January and it is snowing softly in mid-afternoon, wreaking far more havoc on the mainland — where multiple crashes are being reported on the highway — than on Block Island — where the distant horizon moves between sharp and fuzzy and back again. It does not promise to be much...
Charts to steer by

By

J. V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Jan 27

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

When Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, was young he aspired to work on a Mississippi River steamboat. Clemens, like many of his pals, wanted to be a steamboat pilot. As it turned out he got his wish, and a steamboat pilot named Horace E. Bixby trained the young Clemens as a “cub,” and...
Inflexible spirit

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 27

Category:

Island Notes

The week began with rain shifting from drizzle to downpour and back but with a hard, steady, wind, the blast of winter that roils the sea and keeps the boat in port for two days in a row and even kept the planes on the ground for a part of the time. The wind slammed in from the east and northeast,...
Visiting the Emerald Isle

Sun, Jan 22

Category:

Columnists

The following were written by Block Island School students and submitted to The Block Island Times: “One of the most beautiful places.” Recently, I went on an extraordinary trip to Ireland with my family and three friends. My father grew up in London, but his family is originally from...
Facts, opinions

By

J.V. Houlihan, Jr.

Fri, Jan 20

Category:

The Ferry Dock Scribbler

While watching Saturday Night Live many years ago — in the infancy of the show — I saw a skit with Chevy Chase and Jane Curtin. It was a parody of a life insurance commercial. As I watched the skit, it looked like a real advertisement. The narrator of the piece spoke in a smooth reassuring voice...
January Road

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 20

Category:

Island Notes

There was an after the storm lull this morning, a moment of near calm, in which the sound of the ocean, a muted surf, rolled up from the beach. When I opened the west-facing front door to let Autumn out I was met with the distant beep-beep of a truck backing up, an early visitor to the dump/...
Without the Sound

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 6

Category:

Island Notes

The rain has abated at last, the drizzle that began yesterday as we approached the big church on Chapel Street to attend a funeral dreaded for the fact of it marking the end of a life cut too short. It proved to be quite beautiful in its celebration, filled with both ritual and simplicity, with the...
Alabaster swans and charcoal coots

By

Kim Gaffett

Sun, Jan 1

Category:

Ocean Views

On Dec. 26, 2016, the Ocean View Foundation organized its 16th annual Community Bird Census (CBC) in the tradition of Elizabeth Dickens, who for nearly 50 years orchestrated the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count on Block Island. Each of those years she would rally the island’s...
Reflections on the morning of Dec. 25, 2016

By

Gloria S. Redlich

Sun, Jan 1

Category:

Treehouse Chronicles

Waking this morning to Christmas and the first day of Chanukah 2016, there is sunlight streaming through all the windows of our home in a cozy neighborhood on this tiny island off the coast of Rhode Island. Sunlight falls onto the struggling plants in my southeasterly bay window. It also falls...
Better luck next year

By

Renée Meyer

Sat, Dec 31

Category:

Gardening Report

It’s been awhile since there’s been a Garden Report. It was a year of drought and being busy with other things, it was a good excuse to drop out, however temporarily, of the 2016 gardening season. With the water being diverted almost exclusively to the vegetable garden, even the weeds in the flower...
Bed and Bistro in Narragansett

By

Fraser Lang

Sat, Dec 31

Category:

Trips Abroad

If you find yourself off-island on a weekday and need a place to stay, you should head straight to The Bed and Bistro in Narragansett. The nightly rate for islanders is only $75 during the off season and during the week. In fact, at any time of the year, Block Islanders get a $25 discount...
The tractor, 25 years later

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 30

Category:

Island Notes

Twenty-five years ago I submitted a handful of short pieces of writing to Peter Wood, then Editor/Publisher of The Block Island Times . The first he used was my recollection of sitting, with my niece from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, on the old cistern cover in the back yard. The neighbor was...
Whistling Swans on Sachem Pond

By

Kim Gaffett

Fri, Dec 23

Category:

Ocean Views

On a chilly, Dec. 7 morning, Maggie Komosinski and I waited for the rain to stop and give way to a leaden sky of clouds before heading out in search of an odd-looking goose that we had seen – but not identified – the day before. We traipsed through field and dune and pond edge. We wended through...

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