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Columnists
Tails from Beacon Hollow Farm: Radar and Dee
John Willis
Sun, Jun 25
Category:
Columnists
We have two donkeys on a small farm on the island. They came to us out of necessity and as a primitive security system, so to speak. Having chickens, ducks and goats roaming free range (there are no real predators on this island other than dogs), therefore loose dogs are a real problem. Word came...
On the corner of... The Statue of Rebecca
Martha Ball and Mary Anderson
Sat, Jun 24
Category:
Columnists
The day after the Patriots win a Super Bowl, Rebecca wears a football jersey. A great fan of local sports, she also proudly wears the red and white of the Block Island Hurricanes after a significant game. “Who is Rebecca?” or “Is there some significance to the statue?” is an oft-asked question in...
On the mainland... Pasquale’s
Fraser Lang
Fri, Jun 23
Category:
News
,
Trips Abroad
When I say “authentic,” I really mean it. Pasquale’s, A Pizza Napulitana, is the real deal. Pasquale’s is located in South County Commons in Wakefield, but its roots are in Italy. Owner Pasquale Illiano was born and raised in Naples. That’s where he leaned to cook and perfected his techniques. A...
The Dutch Inn: A retrospective
J.V. Houlihan, Jr.
Fri, Jun 23
Category:
The Ferry Dock Scribbler
When the Dutch Inn was built in Galilee many years ago, it looked more ornate than it does today. It had a faux windmill and windows on its tower. It was designed as a full-blown resort hotel. The Inn had an indoor pool (with real parrots in the trees), outdoor tennis courts, a sauna and gym,...
Happenstance
Martha Ball
Fri, Jun 23
Category:
Island Notes
In a small town things have a way of intersecting. I read a restaurant review of Breakfast at Ernie's and thought how happy my father would be to know another generation was carrying on the tradition in which he had such faith so many years ago. It happened to be the weekend of Father's Day and in...
June
Martha Ball
Fri, Jun 16
Category:
Island Notes
The heat came back and with it the June bugs, the air-borne, armored, harmless but annoying creatures that fly through open windows, buzzing about aimlessly until I feel a touch, the slightest weight of one landed on my head, in my hair. Then, all bets are off and the little tank of a beast is...
An old butter churn
Martha Ball and Mary Anderson
Sat, Jun 10
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...
Sunshine Afternoon
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...
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
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
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
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...
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
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
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
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...
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
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
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’
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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’
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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/...
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Island Buzz
Antique Maps and Vintage Photographs
Posted By
Block Island Historical Society
1/25
The Block Island Historical Society has a great selection of antique maps; vintage photographs; unique posters & prints...
This weeks Nature Conservancy Schedule
Posted By
The Block Island Times
1/25
Check out this weeks Nature Conservancy Schedule at https:// www.natureblockisland.org
Still Looking for a Summer Rental?
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1/25
Sullivan Sotheby’s International Realty has some great options, if your still searching for that perfect Summer Rental. We...
New Year, New Hope, New You! Offers Await at Solstice at Groton
Posted By
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1/25
New year. New hope. New you! Embrace your life to the fullest this year at Solstice Senior Living at Groton. Visit our...
History Happening Here
Posted By
Block Island Historical Society
1/24
*** Annual Meeting September 20th 11am Program 11:30 am Please join us on zoom ** Thank you for your interest in the Block...
In the Heart of Block Island https://liladelman.com/listing/1501-beacon-hill-rd-block-island/
Posted By
Lila Delman Real Estate
1/23
In the heart of Block Island, this captivating estate is nestled on almost 12 acres of rolling hills, pastures, stone walls...
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Island Religion
PART 4 HAVE TO? WANT TO?
Posted By
Block Island Christian Fellowship
1/21
PART 4 HAVE TO? WANT TO? What should be the basis for financial giving? CHAPTER 5 THE CHURCH AGE Now we come to the current...
Sunday Worship - in house and Virtually
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PART 3 HAVE TO? WANT TO?
Posted By
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