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Home » Columnists

Island Notes

Catch the Wind

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 27

Category:

Island Notes

The airport is too frequent a destination when it is almost exclusively to collect a bag from the pharmacy in Westerly. I have learned over time if I do not make that my first stop, if I do not take that first left coming out of Neck, onto Beach Avenue, I will be back home, or worse, still in town...
January Hope

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 20

Category:

Island Notes

There is something about the world through the lens of a rearview mirror that I love. Last Saturday I remembered to go to the gas station — I long ago decided, probably after missing a seasonal shift — that the station always closes at 1:30 and is never open on Sunday. And I don’t have to consider...
Winter Blue

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 13

Category:

Island Notes

Yesterday was winter-raw, a January day, when the temperature hovers in the upper thirties but the sky is gray, when the wind isn’t much, but what there is holds a cutting damp and it feels far colder than it is, far colder than a mere “feels like” chart indicates. Away from the slicing air the...
New Roof, Old Roof

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 6

Category:

Island Notes

Coming down the hill from the Harbor Church on Sunday, January 1, 2023, it was impossible to miss the work in progress that is the building without a name, to a very few the old Post Office, to many Finn’s, never mind that Finn’s will become a great memory, to most Ernie’s, the name attached to it...
Between the covers

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 30

Category:

Island Notes

In the course of the day I was talking to someone who had come upon a copy of the League of Women’s Voters publication “Know Your Town” from 1978. It was interesting, she said it had information she did not know, and it seemed a good source for this publication, this 53rd issue of The Block...
My Block Island

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 23

Category:

Island Notes

Christmas comes in many ways to Block Island. It slips in early, following the rest of the world with a Thanksgiving weekend of shopping that has showed over the years how many people keep their houses open well into the fall, if not winter, how many people want an alternative to the busy mainland...
We were Angels: The Living Christmas Card

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 16

Category:

Island Notes

The world and the nation have changed radically in the last several decades, gradually pulling Block Island into the vortex spinning forward. Much of the technology we take for granted has evolved during my lifetime, from the first spacecraft to orbit the earth to the moon landing that today’s...
Castle Wall

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 9

Category:

Island Notes

Christmas was coming, the Pesky Pond Troll of Clay Head Swamp (aka PPT) was sure of it. The energy of the island always shifted around the Thanksgiving weekend when people came and went, when the big lobster pot tree went up in town and lots of places had decorations. Being invisible to human eyes...
Gray December Day

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 2

Category:

Island Notes

Yes, it’s still November as I write but I am tired of gray November and when this is in print it will be December. There was no need to take a photograph, scrolling through my absurdly large number of photos on my phone, many duplicates I should delete, I notice multiple shots from locations such...
From the archives

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 25

Category:

Island Notes

At Thanksgiving I like to pull out old photos and in my search often come across something more. The text is from Telco News, in October 1961, a cover feature story on Block Island’s lone telephone man, Mary’s beloved husband, John Donnelly, who came for a few years when the microwave was new and...
Flag of Color

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 18

Category:

Island Notes

It was the grass that caught my attention, richly green, nearly springtime verdant, freshly washed from the overnight rain, sparkling in the afternoon sun. Then I saw the sun dog, a fragment of a rainbow, caught in the white cloud over the battered spruce tree. I knew it was unlikely I’d be able to...
Four-star family

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 11

Category:

Island Notes

The text in this photo of a photo of a clipping in a scrapbook opens: “BLOCK ISLAND has only one four-star family. Its members are the sons of Mrs. Anna Partridge Ball and the late Nicholas Ball. . .” As it is “this week’s” Four-Star Family, I presume it was a regular feature of the Providence...
October Fog

Martha Ball

Fri, Oct 28

Category:

Island Notes

Years ago, I was often surprised when I flipped back through the electronic files of my columns and found what seemed unusual weather in fact to have been the norm year after year, weather that was annoying more than dramatically bad. It was the muggies of mid-August one year, the fog next, the...
The wide blue sea

Martha Ball

Fri, Oct 21

Category:

Island Notes

The ocean surrounding our little island changes minute to minute and hour to hour and day by day. The shore we see so easily, the gently-curved arm of the east beach, doesn’t need a storm to alter its face, just a shifted summer breeze or changing current of a tide. The shore we can see so easily,...
October Blue

Martha Ball

Fri, Oct 14

Category:

Island Notes

It has been a beautiful day, the best of a few truly glorious October days. The sun is setting too early, taking with it the warmth but I am loath to close the door until I must. Autumn is settled, it seems, and I hesitate, drawn by the sound of the crickets outside. The night is soft, filled with...
Over the ocean, beyond the clouds

Martha Ball

Fri, Oct 7

Category:

Island Notes

Often, I stop by the Town Hall to pick up papers the content of which still lacks the impact when read from a screen, to check some bit of history that inevitably leads into another and another and when was the east end of the airport extended folds over to some obscure water rights to Fresh Pond...
With Rebecca as Witness

Fri, Sep 30

Category:

Island Notes

We are on the edge of October, the sky is blindingly blue, the goldenrods are in a multitude of stages, from long gone to blazing yellow, red berries are becoming increasingly visible as leaves burnish and crinkle. A few hours later the southern sky is a parfait of soft pinks against a fading...
Horses and tractors

Martha Ball

Fri, Sep 23

Category:

Island Notes

Summer, by its final milepost, the Autumnal Equinox, ends tomorrow night, in the dark, a bit after nine, a time three months ago there was light lingering in the sky. Slowly, at first imperceptibly, then with increasing speed, the days have shortened since then. It was a while ago, now, I looked at...
History in plain view

Martha Ball

Fri, Sep 16

Category:

Island Notes

It is the middle of September, the sun has made that turn it should not until until after the equinox, and is setting after 7. It seems a tad earlier on the eastern side where the earliest sun strikes the cliffs and beaches and east-facing windows. We tumble, now, down the black slide that suddenly...
Two years, three summers, a lifetime

Martha Ball

Fri, Sep 9

Category:

Island Notes

Two, two-and-a-half years ago, really, we were on the edge of the pandemic. Despite the forecasts of the global experts we were, in March of 2020, still hopeful we would somehow slip through it if we were really, really careful. And we did because we were, it seemed, until the fall of that year...
Early morning rain

Martha Ball

Fri, Sep 2

Category:

Island Notes

It was almost dark tonight when Autumn started barking her most excited “someone is here, someone is here!” bark. I saw headlights, then the shape of a big black box turning into the barn-less barnyard — not unlike the treeless Orchard or the pig-less Pig Lot — and thought impossibly her dog food...
On Monday it rained

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 26

Category:

Island Notes

Monday rain was forecast, in ever-diminishing percentages, but rain nonetheless which was falling in the morning, not in a deluge but enough to make me think of lowering windows. I was careful to take the little rain jacket that can fold into its own pocket and keeps out as much rain as a heavy...
By the monument

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 19

Category:

Island Notes

The water by the monument was up to the rip-rap below it this afternoon. There used to be a deeper strip of land there and a little beach below it. In 1993, before technology and electronic communication had taken so much from our day-to-day conversations, a contingent from the Army Corps of...
A Matter of Attitude

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 12

Category:

Island Notes

Last night the power went out. I am not sure when it happened. It was nearly dark when I came home from helping serve another dinner cooked by other people to the delightfully grateful, endlessly polite international students who come up the hill once a week for food at Harbor Church. I had stopped...
Finding Gratitude

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 5

Category:

Island Notes

Years ago now, a doctor friend in the city (doesn’t that sound posh, at least more than my sixth cousin or first cousin six times removed, depending upon which one of us is drawing the chart) started sending me dire predictions of the pandemic just creeping into this part of the country, complete...
Not Exceeding Three Percent

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 29

Category:

Island Notes

It is hot outside but lovely and breezy here down the Neck. The house is cooled by a cross-breeze but Autumn wants to go out and lie in the cooler shade of the trees in the yard. She is under house arrest, I hope under the last full day of the dreaded cone. The nice vet in Westerly called last week...
A single photograph

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 22

Category:

Island Notes

Twenty some years ago, when the Carolinas were suffering horrific hurricanes, terrible flooding, devastation of pig farm lagoons, which rolled into widespread death of whole flocks of domesticated turkeys, it happened that I was officiating at a wedding with guests from that part of the country. I...
A little beach background

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 15

Category:

Island Notes

Perhaps, for the bathing beach, the true Golden Age – so far – began in the early 1950s. At the start of that decade the wheels were turning for the new pavilion, a modern structure to complement the airport construction that marked a mid-century looking to the future. Air traffic was increasing...
The last first day of summer

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 8

Category:

Island Notes

Two nights after the Monday Fourth of July, fireworks are still exploding off the beach. My dog is still snoozing through them after a perfunctory “woof” or two. The same dog that barks at the boat passing off to the east or a great silver bird catching the sun high above us. She cannot go out and...
Buffalo Springfield

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 1

Category:

Island Notes

The Fourth of July has always been the first real holiday of summer. Memorial Day opened the door when I was growing up, but our lives went quickly back to school and places around us gradually opened up for the season. More than anything, I remember going to the Old Harbor Dock, Payne’s New Harbor...
Dump Days

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 24

Category:

Island Notes

On a Sunday at mid-day, any Sunday, any time of year, it is odd to find the Neck Road so empty one can stop and take a photo without pulling over, without waiting for at least one vehicle to pass. Even in winter it is dump day. It was back when the dump was a casual operation, when refuse was less...
Patterns

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 17

Category:

Island Notes

My peonies were late to open this year. It has been a cool spring but other people on the island had them in glorious bloom while I had the single plant by the door graced by multiple buds that seemed so tightly clenched I could only think “white knuckle.” There were three plants from sometime in...
On the Way to Summer

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 10

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Yesterday I went out to check on the dog’s whereabouts, thinking it is coming to that time of year when I have to pay her better mind. She’d been under the big maple at the corner of the yard but seemed to have vanished from that nice, shaded spot. As my eyes adjusted to the bright sun I realized...
Back to the Hill

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 3

Category:

Island Notes

It is always the same this time of year. The “summer” beach roses are in their fullest glory, some days in bright sun, others in fog, the grasses that have not yet been cut have gone to seed, but are still young and pliant and run before the breeze. The lilacs have truly faded while the blue flag...
Saucy Swallows

Martha Ball

Fri, May 27

Category:

Island Notes

Today, I have no words. A little over 23 years ago I was at a friend’s house. We told each other we would not watch the memorial service about to be broadcast, live, from Columbine, Colorado, site of a horrific school shooting. There was nothing to be gained, nothing to be changed by our wallowing...
Stages of Spring

Martha Ball

Fri, May 20

Category:

Island Notes

Every year I try to take a photograph of the lilac at the corner of the dooryard, and every year I have varying degrees of failure. The wind is always blowing, the sun is never quite right, the blooms are never as lush as they appear to the naked eye. They are, on the other hand, great examples of...
Everyone knows it's Windy

Martha Ball

Fri, May 13

Category:

Island Notes

Yes, it is a line from a song, a very old song, from the 1960s. It was cute and catchy and did not make a whole lot of sense. Unlike some of those tunes there is no “oh, that’s what they were saying” revelation when I read the lyrics. No, it’s just Windy. It’s been windy, the hard, lasting wind...
Hope

Martha Ball

Fri, May 6

Category:

Island Notes

It is Rhode Island Independence Day, a fact I feel obligated to share every May 4. I am greatly chagrined these words will not be printed until well after this date, as I am writing of it only after the fact. It did not fall off my calendar in the usual way of dates forgotten, rather this late-...
Mist over New England

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 29

Category:

Island Notes

I was, as usual, half-listening to the news, and not watching at all. It was almost 7:30 and had been on for quite a while, recycling some bits of local events and human disasters that have become the staple of newscasts, no matter how distant, and a blurb or two about the machinations of Hollywood...
After the Storm

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 22

Category:

Island Notes

Easter Sunday on Block Island was beautiful, sunny, not too warm, with a dip of short-lived clouds in the afternoon before a golden end. Monday, I looked out and saw the egret closer to the house than I’d ever seen it, walking down the lane just beneath my dining room window. It is usually right...
Thanks and celebration

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 15

Category:

Island Notes

A few times I have opened the door from the hall to the open entry and heard a flurry of wings, birds in a nest location scouting or building mode I presumed. It is not an issue, as long as they stay out of my way. And my bookcase when all the doors are open. It is a bit of a haven for them down...
More than a wildflower

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 8

Category:

Island Notes

The building should look familiar, it is the old Odd Fellows Hall, today its anchor business a café of the same name. This piece should have been in March, for Women’s History month but it is rainy and gray in April, it feels like March. When the Ragged Sailor Gallery, the creation of Eileen Lee...
April too soon

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 1

Category:

Island Notes

It has seemed overall a milder winter than many. We had one big snow, but it was cleared quickly and what was left was gone in the fast-arriving rainy mild. The wind has been great, it has felt the last two winters it was even more omnipresent than before if that is possible. So I am somewhat...
Red Roof, Blue Sky

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 25

Category:

Island Notes

One day last summer or early fall someone came into the photography gallery on the corner with an old photo. They’d been sent to me - not to the gallery - as a last-ditch effort in identifying the location in the faded shot. It was taken from somewhere on High Street they thought and following that...
The end of winter

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 18

Category:

Island Notes

It is winter, still, by the calendar. The vernal equinox comes early, in late morning on the twentieth of March, a whole week after we have “sprung ahead” I feel obligated to note. The world makes less and less sense. It is the end of winter, the last of the days we can see what will be hidden by...
Among the Lobster Pots

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 11

Category:

Island Notes

Sunday, it was gray when I left the Harbor Church after worship. By the time I reached the Seaside I had either driven down into the fog or it had deepened: the Surf was clouded by gray. Turning down the Neck Road it was a wall, none of that rolling-in business, just a wall, so dense I pulled over...
April Illusion

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 4

Category:

Island Notes

Thirty years ago there was a snowstorm on the vernal equinox. I remember it well, I was transitioning from a typewriter to a computer with a word processor and misfiled the piece I had written and had to re-write it. Which, because it was all new, I could recall and still do, opening with putting...
Sunday, 6:03 p.m.

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 25

Category:

Island Notes

Sunday, 6:03 p.m. The time of the photo, taken on February 20. Sunsets have their own glory on the east side of the island and in middling-toward-late February it is the aftermath, the light lingering so much after the sky would have been dark in December that is such a balm to the soul. We are...
Climbing temperature

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 18

Category:

Island Notes

Earlier, around mid-morning, I stood washing dishes, looking out over the snow-dappled field. It looked like winter, the good winter of clear, sunny skies and the remnants of a storm. It was not the rare, perfect snow fallen in the calm, a gentle blanket on the land that could last days in sub-...
Hidden in Plain Sight

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 11

Category:

Island Notes

A photo of the west side of Front Street from roughly 1900 shows an iteration of many of the buildings that stand there today, seeming to be neatly aligned, their facades a wall facing the newly constructed harbor, from the National to the Seaside. The street, such as it was, did not move, the...

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