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Island Notes

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 “...
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...
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...
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,...
And then the sun came out

Martha Ball

Thu, Dec 12

Category:

Island Notes

I t is mid-December and these days are the shortest of the year. Still, I seem to wake when the first light of summer would be creeping up around the horizon, when it is very dark now and will be for hours, yet. If I am lucky I can retrieve sleep before it slips beyond my grasp and dances around...
Surprising December

Martha Ball

Thu, Dec 5

Category:

Island Notes

I t is more than two weeks, yet, until the Winter Solstice, but the afternoons do not get much shorter than they are these first days of December. At four-thirty on Monday, the incoming afternoon boat passed, its west facing side drawing from the fading sky whatever sunlight was lingering among the...
Gone-by Hotels

Martha Ball

Wed, Nov 27

Category:

Island Notes
November Landing 2

Martha Ball

Thu, Nov 21

Category:

Island Notes

Wh at of summer do I love? Watching the boat come and go, watching the vessels pass each other just outside the mouth of the harbor, seeing the wide fanning wake of the traditional carriers spread and diminish, and seeing the very different plume of white foam quickly rising and falling behind the...
In the Afternoon

Martha Ball

Thu, Nov 14

Category:

Island Notes

In the afternoon one or more of the horses are often near the gate, either waiting for dinner, or hoping for a second serving. The other day there was only one vehicle by the wall, and the corresponding animal missing. It was easy enough to put those pieces together, only one was being ridden that...
Come Along

Martha Ball

Thu, Nov 7

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

“W e're going out to the wind farm, come along,” the late Norris Pike cajoled me one day in the Town Hall. I did not go. I was up against a hard deadline for this column, which I would miss if I went on a sea cruise. “Come on, what are they gonna do, fire you?” he chuckled. I always regretted not...
Wind tossed and salt-bitten

Martha Ball

Thu, Oct 31

Category:

Island Notes

Listening to the news I hear of great winds in Southern California, 80 miles an hour, great by even our jaded weather standards, fanning the flames of terrible, all-consuming fires, which easily could consume the whole of Block Island as a snack. It is raw here, the days are shorter, winter, mild...
Knowledge of Pie

Martha Ball

Thu, Oct 24

Category:

Island Notes

It is October and we are not on the edge of another storm, there is no gloom and doom in the forecast, at least for a few days. The clocks don't even kick back until Nov. 3 although these beautiful sunsets are already happening before six as it is. And the Harbor Church has made it though another...
March, 1949

Martha Ball

Thu, Oct 17

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Th ere is another storm brewing, another October storm, the wind picking up in mid-afternoon as reports of rain are floating in from the west. It is going to be a dark and stormy night, there is a great green monster on the radar moving toward the little speck of white that is Block Island, sitting...
The Muted Colors of Fall

Martha Ball

Thu, Oct 10

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

It i s October and there is a storm gnawing around the edges of the day because it is October and in October the wind blows and the rain falls. We had an extraordinary summer with very little “weather,” a strange fact given that the grass remained green through August when it is usually brown and...
Suncatcher Clouds

Martha Ball

Thu, Sep 26

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

T he glorious weather of summer has extended into the fall. The other night I heard raindrops on the south-facing windows about the width of a sleeping golden retriever away from the foot of my bed. It was the mild splatter of showers, not the battering of a deluge, but it still came as a surprise...
The Last Week of Summer

Martha Ball

Thu, Sep 19

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Th ere stands a stone tower on Mansion Road. It was built with the Searles Mansion, for reasons that have varied with the teller, a sort of folly according to my aunt who was really some sort of cousin, or an entrance to the Poplar Cottage, as a favor or a payment for some right-of-way, or some...
On Golden Pond

Martha Ball

Thu, Sep 12

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

La st week feels to have been very long ago, indeed. Thursday evening was windless, a beautifully golden end of day which found me on the edges of the New Harbor. The forecast was not good but there was none of that eerie calm before the storm feeling in the air; it was a perfect end-of-summer...
Foretaste of Winter

Martha Ball

Thu, Sep 5

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

We have had so many Labor Day weekends of hurricanes that never materialized in the wings, so many years of late August storm threats, some with floating docks pulled from the New Harbor in precaution, so many times of cars filling the Interstate parking lot in an attempt to get out before their...
Beach Flags

Martha Ball

Thu, Aug 29

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

It felt like an exceedingly long afternoon, stretching out forever, like the prospect of summer in late June. It is almost September and I know the sun is setting earlier each day but it felt as though time was almost standing still. It was, almost. The batteries in the clock on the living room...
Celebration of Summer

Matha Ball

Thu, Aug 22

Category:

Island Notes

La st night the sky was dark before sunset, a dramatic band of gray blue that promised yet another storm that never quite materialized here. There were splatters on my windshield on the Neck Road, a flash of lightning as I swung round in my barnyard, some wet on a few west-facing windowsills, then...
Summer, still

Martha Ball

Thu, Aug 15

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Fo ur years ago on this date I took a photo of the maple at the edge of the yard, noting the amount of sky I could see though its branches in mid-August when two months earlier it had been dense and lush. The rain that was never quite torrential here had ceased when I went out to compare this year'...
Summer Observed

Martha Ball

Thu, Aug 8

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

My R ebecca Rotary/Roundabout Report on Facebook began a few summers ago, a line from one of those lovely, overheard family conversations. Bits and pieces of summer observed from one little corner in town, the world passing by — and coming into — the Greenaway Gallery. There are movie matinee...
Disruption

Martha Ball

Thu, Aug 1

Category:

Island Notes

So metime over the weekend Verizon cell service went from increasingly spotty to dark. I remain hopeful, even as I write, that it will be restored shortly, certainly a memory by the time this column is printed. I have a landline, it is my fallback, my fail safe; it is the line to which my computer...
Summer Storm Tide

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 26

Category:

Island Notes

There is a screen in my window. Not in all my windows, and the door remains open while I am home, but firmly in the one the that draws the most birds, regardless of the season. It is the window at which I hear a thump and sometimes see a bird lying on the ground beneath the glass, generally stunned...
Mid-July

Martha Ball

Thu, Jul 18

Category:

Island Notes

There are banks of roses around the island, ramblers I have always called them, probably because my mother did, flowers in varying shades of pink that bloom after the multiflora has faded and fallen, long after the first, the most stunningly dramatic round of beach roses has passed. They spill over...
Gift of the Morning

Martha Ball

Thu, Jul 11

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Among the things that horrify some of my relatives is my open door (Autumn has to have free access to the outside while it is seasonable and I am home, a bird flying in every now and then is no big deal as long as it does not start building a nest, or panic) and no fixed screens (in the too many...
This land...

Martha Ball

Wed, Jul 3

Category:

Island Notes

We graduated from the stage of the Empire in June 1969. It was evening, we all wore “dignified” black caps and gowns, a United States Senator was our guest speaker. The country was at war, we knew it, but it seemed far removed from our lives. None of our classmates was going into the service, nor...
A dark, short-lived fury

Martha Ball

Thu, Jun 27

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

On Saturday, we were not hit by the storm that dropped hail and pounding rain on the mainland. It was one of those times we were able to watch it, creeping across the northern sky in layers of dark clouds from which curtains of water hung, giving them a strange look of being land — or ocean —...
Falki at the Gate

Martha Ball

Thu, Jun 20

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Th ere had been some grumbling in the Clay Head Swamp. The Pesky Pond Troll — the PPT — always lurking, had heard snippets of conversation he chose to ignore, all involving “his” Icelandic horse, Lukka, going north, not over the hill where he could visit, but across the wide ocean, to a place...
Miniature Yews

Martha Ball

Thu, May 23

Category:

Island Notes

A clitter-clatter follows me into the kitchen when I go to refill my coffee cup. I know it is Autumn. She does it all the time, and still makes me laugh, standing there, giving her empty dish — then me — a mournful look. Breakfast was served, I remind her, and she turns, dejected, only to plop down...
Memories of the bridges we’ve crossed

Martha Ball

Thu, May 16

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

S p ring is coming in spurts, as it is prone to do, but not at such extremes as this year. We always wait for the shad to bloom, watching it bud in the cool of April, often to flower and fade in a very few days of bright sun. It is the ornamentals that put the passage of time more certainly at our...
A Summer At Sea

Martha Ball

Thu, May 9

Category:

Island Notes

Th e first year I know there was an egret at the edge of the pond behind my house was 1990. It was May and I was out front playing with my new golden retriever puppy, my precious Shad. The fields were clear, and folks from up the road were out walking. They saw us and came up to see the puppy, or,...
The First of May

Martha Ball

Fri, May 3

Category:

Island Notes

It is the first of May and it is green and gray, the sky a parfait of pale blues and whites over a calm and near-silver ocean. The shad on Clay Head is still waiting for a day or two of full sunshine to burst open. The grass out back is thick but it is heavy with moisture, newly reclaimed, just a...
April Blue

Martha Ball

Thu, Apr 25

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

S ome years ago this paper asked about holiday traditions, be it Christmas or Easter, I do not remember, or it may well have been a theme through the seasons. I had little to offer, no recipes handed down over generations, carried from Europe in someone’s head or on a carefully folded slip of paper...
Cathedral of Spring

Martha Ball

Thu, Apr 18

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

A p ril came slowly, the daffodils at the turn off Mansion Road that some years bloom the first of the month opened a solid two weeks later this year. The forsythia, part of the yellow wave that belongs to this part of spring, has finally flowered, tossing splashes of color into the awakening, but...
Head for the Steeple

Martha Ball

Thu, Apr 11

Category:

Island Notes

Martha Ball is out sick this week. This column was originally published in April 2011. Y ou can’t go wrong when you head for the steeple. Sage advice, it was, from my cousin the mariner, he still so belonging to the world of deepwater he will not park close to the supermarket door. He...
Year To Year

Martha Ball

Thu, Apr 4

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

It is April. All of the requisite calendar markers have been passed, the gas station is open on Sunday, the boat is making more runs, the grocery closes later, some restaurants are opening over weekends, others posting countdown notices until they will welcome diners. What happened to the winter I...
Under Changed Conditions

Martha Ball

Thu, Mar 28

Category:

Island Notes

We come to the end of March, Women's History Month. And so I go to the stack of paper that occupies the left-hand corner of my desk. It does not contain timely paperwork, rather bits and pieces of history, of things I might “need” someday. It is, to my credit, slowly diminishing, but there are some...
Between the Seasons

Martha Ball

Thu, Mar 21

Category:

News, Island Notes

We have crossed the many thresholds that mark the transition from winter to spring. We passed Washington's birthday; meteorological winter ended on March 1; our man-imposed measure of time shifted, a blip pushing the sunrise back before seven for a few days; and the closing hour of the grocery was...
Sprung Ahead

Martha Ball

Thu, Mar 14

Category:

Island Notes

No t so long ago my brother commented from Michigan the wonder of technology we have seen in our lives, of our ability to take photographs, see the result and transmit them almost instantaneously. We grew up in a world of black — or gray — and white, of snapshots that were taken sparingly, the film...
Founding Mother

Martha Ball

Thu, Mar 7

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Even in 1877, long before women could vote or anyone thought of Women’s History Month, Sarah Sands was included in the Rev. Livermore's sketches on important players in the early European settlement of Block Island, and as more than the footnoted “wife of. . .” He wrote of Sarah: T...
In Another Century

Martha Ball

Thu, Feb 28

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

I t is a strange thing not to be exceedingly, record-breakingly old, but remember so clearly a world so different from the one we know. Technology has erased boundaries and miles even as it has built walls, taking away the communications that required some thought and effort, a pen and paper vs...
The Effrontery To Frolic

Martha Ball

Thu, Feb 21

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

“W he n we reach Washington’s Birthday the back of winter is broken” was one of the many adages I learned from the late Capt. Lewis when we would meet walking the low tide beach on a winter day. My dad, of the same generation, would talk of the true date of the birth of our first President at the...
Expectations of Cardinals

Martha Ball

Thu, Feb 14

Category:

Island Notes

Y esterday afternoon it snowed, the same snow that was forecast, at least by Facebook page eweather.com that I have come to rely on above all else except NOAA. We live, I was again reminded, in a part of the world where the weather can vary wildly: from the south shore of Rhode Island to its...
Veils of fog

Martha Ball

Thu, Feb 7

Category:

Island Notes

Mu ch of last February was weirdly mild, springtime come early it felt, after a short winter of deep cold come and gone in early January. Winter never truly did return, but spring, even for Block Island, was exceedingly late and short last year, after a seemingly endless misery of chilling damp...
The storm will come again

Martha Ball

Thu, Jan 31

Category:

Island Notes

Is the level of the sea rising? It seems to be, I am not a denier. The rim of the dredged Old Harbor basin once was regularly visible on a low tide; now it is a rarity. Still, it is hard to tell, here. The beach is a fluid place where a six-inch pyramid poking out of sand in early September is a...
Gold and Blue

Martha Ball

Thu, Jan 17

Category:

Island Notes

Th e afternoon is 26 minutes longer than it was in mid-December, when sunset came the earliest it does the whole year. I keep reminding myself it is only mid-January, there is much cold weather to come before we again hear peepers. Then I come home just before four, after a dull morning and an...
Water light

Martha Ball

Thu, Jan 10

Category:

Island Notes

It is January, the traffic is sparse and the town highway crew is out with its long-armed mower, gnawing back the ever-encroaching brush that grows up over walls wanting the roads. That effort, coupled with the seasonal loss of leaves, opens the wider view we experience in winter. The sun is in a...

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