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Home » Columnists

Island Notes

For a Mint

By

Martha Ball

Thu, Nov 8

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

My big golden dog is a sort of pointless sentry. She lies on my bed in the morning sun, looking out over the meadows, imagining herself on some high alert, making a little noise, somewhere between a purr and a baby growl, in the back of her throat, barking on occasion, usually at something I cannot...
Four in fourteen

By

Martha Ball

Thu, Nov 1

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

To day the duck boats rolled through Boston, celebrating yet another World Series Championship. A few fans were a bit too taken by the moment and threw full cans of beer, I gather to be caught by the riders who could open them and spray anyone nearby. I thought, as I have many times over these past...
Pie!

By

Martha Ball

Thu, Oct 25

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

T w o years ago, I walked past a window and for the first time realized I could see from it one of the wind turbines that had been installed the previous summer. It was a surprise, I knew there was some visibility from the Mansion Beach, but I had never before noticed one from my house. It had to...
October Rose

By

Martha Ball

Thu, Oct 18

Category:

Island Notes

On ce or twice a month I go to the airport to pick up some prescription, by a slightly out-of-the-way route, across the bridge and along the length of Beach Avenue. There is dramatically less traffic than there has been, the funny little jog when Beach and Ocean cross not a spot of merging traffic...
Bookends

By

Martha Ball

Thu, Oct 11

Category:

Island Notes

Th ere were, last night, traces of light in the western sky as seven o'clock approached and I reminded myself how differently I will feel on the other side of the the year when such is an indication of lengthening sunlight, a climbing out of the abyss of winter. Except there is no true counterpart...
From August into October

By

Martha Ball

Thu, Oct 4

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Th e birds in the collection at the school bear little hand-written tags, identification and history crammed onto small rectangles of aging paper, or they were, perhaps the originals have been archived. Nonetheless, I know some include a notation of being found at the Southeast Lighthouse,...
Sun Shower

By

Martha Ball

Thu, Sep 27

Category:

Island Notes

This morning it poured, thunder rolled, the radar showed green with localized, just over us, splotches of electric yellow. The rain slowed and stopped and the sky turned a dour gray. It is a time of seasonal uncertainty, and the first hours of the days were spent opening and closing windows,...
Green and Gold and Gray

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Sep 21

Category:

Island Notes

In the morning my dog lies on my bed, her nose to the open, west-facing window, watching, waiting for a sign of activity on the road that bisects my front lot. Sometimes it is only an early deer, or five, that catches her attention and after a brief “are you sure you don't want to come?” wag of her...
North End

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Sep 14

Category:

Island Notes

La st week someone came into the photography gallery where I work, intending to show companions photos of the North Light. He was, he claimed, a descendant of the first keeper, something I thought unlikely, based on knowledge even more narrow than I realized. The first keeper was Hiram Ball; that...
Butterflies and Bouquets

By

Martha Ball

Thu, Sep 6

Category:

Island Notes

B usted, my dog is busted! Several days this summer I have come home to find her lying on the thick grass in the shade of the knotweed, the singular stand that has always been in place, a buffer, perhaps, from when the barn yard was truly that and twice a day cows trekked across it to the... barn...
On the Hill

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 31

Category:

Island Notes

“S um mer is over!” was the proclamation several days ago, when the temperature dropped and the breezes swept away the lingering humidity. I delighted in the weight of a blanket on a cool night, knowing it would be a long time before there was anything approaching deep cold. Then the heat came back...
Butterfly Morning

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 24

Category:

Island Notes

It has been a hot, humid summer, but for those two weeks of heaven after the tropical stretch surrounding the Fourth of July. Rain has come at last, albeit sporadically, and every night I check the forecast before leaving my car windows open, one of those luxuries of the season. Mornings are...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Waiting for the Wind

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 9

Category:

Island Notes

In the late 1970s, we were often surrounded by blizzard conditions. Forty-one years ago yesterday my mother wrote: “Heavy snow. Drifts. John (Littlefield, Sr,) plowed the gate 3 times. Huge drift in barnyard.” Forty years ago yesterday her neat hand recorded: “Everyone at the store at 10 a.m. Power...
Going to the Registry

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 2

Category:

Island Notes

Rhode Islanders think they are unique in their nightmare tales of Going to the Registry — after ascertaining the hours which mainland office is open. We are not. Neither does one have to travel to the other side of the water and enter a building to have a Registry Encounter. This year, when I...
Rivers in the Roads

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 26

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Old maps of Block Island, drawn with great precision in the latter part of the nineteenth century, show single, unsteady lines interconnecting many of the ponds. Some are visible, dark streaks, on aerial photographs taken in the early 1950s, before the land surrendered to overgrowth. Collectively,...
Don’t lie to me, ma’am

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 19

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

We all get them, those annoying calls, be they robo or live, from bogus or legitimate companies, all ready to solve problems we do not have and/or to take our money. They come more on my landline, which I maintain for internet connection — and because it has the same number that was assigned this...
Road to Eldorado

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 12

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

We are riding the roller coaster that is January, moving from deep, deep cold to seemingly mild upper twenties to ground-thawing, muck-threatening days of sunny, above freezing, temperatures. It is a time of staying oil deliveries, trying to dance around that seasonal trifecta of drifted snow, its...
Spinning stories of winter

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 5

Category:

Island Notes

Jan. 1, 1976 my mother wrote in her little diary “sunny above freezing,” which would have been an item of note only if the days preceding had been below 32. She was a teacher and five days into the new year vacation ended — or not — as her inscription reads “1st day of school. No oil, no heat,...
Another year

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 29

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Twenty-four and sunny” is the status of the moment. The “feels like” is considerably lower, but I do not believe that number; I have been outside and the sun is shining and the wind is light for late December. And, I remind myself, the onset of the cold is the price we are expected to pay for the...
After the Snow

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 22

Category:

Island Notes

Tomorrow brings the Solstice, the turn into the cold and the light. It falls on the 21st this year, the sort of generic default date assigned to the change of the seasons, that does not always hold true. “Watch the way of the wind when the sun crosses the line,” a statement by an old-timer down the...
Maps

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 1

Category:

Island Notes

There was a rumbling in the morning, the kind that sounds close and I walked across the yard thinking I might see the source of it; tree cutters, perhaps, although I could not remember if I had seen pink ties marking any trees on Mansion Road. It could simply be routine work on the old dirt road,...
Block Island Summer

By

Martha Ball

Wed, Nov 22

Category:

Island Notes

The book “Block Island Summer” was published in 1971. Black and white photographs and eloquent little essays contained within its pages hold the island we think we remember but sometimes doubt truly existed. Yet, here it is, chronicled by Klaus and Elizabeth Gemming, printed and bound, a volume...
Osage

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 17

Category:

Island Notes

On e week ago, the charger for my computer died. It was not sudden. I first noticed that the cord was starting to fray last summer, but in one of my habits that defies all logic, I did not order a new one as the delivery time seemed too many days away.It was a good three months before the little...
Remembering the songs

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 10

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

It was chilly, today. We seemed to have skimmed over crisp fall sunshine, like one of those flattish, roundish rocks my father tried to teach me to toss with a spin so they would skip over the surface of open water until a last, fatal, ker-plunk sent them to darkness below the waves. I am not ready...
Small Miracles

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Oct 27

Category:

Island Notes

Wh en duties for this year's Roll Call Dinner were handed out many were the “what you did last year” default and so I happened to already have been assigned to the greeting of people and collection of money when I tumbled on Sunday and hurt my hand/wrist landing on the pavement. There were no...
Between Traffic and Wind

By

Martha Ball

Fri, Oct 20

Category:

Island Notes

It is a time of year between the traffic that becomes ambient noise — a background we do not notice, but think we do in the blaring horns and foolishly loud motors and pounding speakers — and the constant of our winter lives: wind. Now, after the morning cool is displaced by mid-day warmth and car...

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Posted By

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