Skip to main content area
Visitor Info
Dining
Transportation
New England Airlines
Pt. Judith Ferry
New London Ferry
Montauk Ferry
Getting Married?
News
B.I. Wind Farm
Opinion
Letters
Editorials
Featured Letters
Editorial Cartoon
Columnists
The Bird Corner
Gardening Times
Gardening Report
Island Notes
Loose ends
The Ferry Dock Scribbler
Ocean Views
Publisher's Notes
From the Desk of the Editor
Trips Abroad
Fishing Report
Tails from Beacon Hollow Farm
The Solar Report
Video
Writ & Wisdom
Inactive Columns
Features
Dish off the Block
Order This
Book Review
Community
On the Block
Off the Block
All Around the Block
Tricky Times
School Menu
Town Meeting Schedule
Medical Center Schedule
Religious Services
Legal Notices
Announcements
Weddings & Engagements
Births
Anniversaries
Obituaries
Sections
Visitor Info
Dining
Transportation
- New England Airlines
- Pt. Judith Ferry
- New London Ferry
- Montauk Ferry
Getting Married?
News
B.I. Wind Farm
- B.I. Times archive
- National archive
Opinion
- Letters
- Editorials
- Featured Letters
- Editorial Cartoon
Columnists
- The Bird Corner
- Gardening Times
- Gardening Report
- Island Notes
- Loose ends
- The Ferry Dock Scribbler
- Ocean Views
- Publisher's Notes
- From the Desk of the Editor
- Trips Abroad
- Fishing Report
- Tails from Beacon Hollow Farm
- The Solar Report
- Video
- Writ & Wisdom
- Inactive Columns
Features
- Dish off the Block
- Order This
- Book Review
Community
- On the Block
- Off the Block
- All Around the Block
- Tricky Times
- School Menu
- Town Meeting Schedule
- Medical Center Schedule
- Religious Services
- Legal Notices
Announcements
- Weddings & Engagements
- Births
- Anniversaries
- Obituaries
Resources
Home
Opinion
Columnists
Features
Community
Births
Weddings & Engagements
Anniversaries
Obituaries
Tides
Yellow Pages
Calendar
Real Estate
Classifieds
e-Edition
Subscribe
Photo Galleries
Visitor Information
Dining Guide
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
BIT SubMain Menu
Home
Classifieds
e-Edition
Subscribe
Login
You are here
Home
»
Columnists
Island Notes
Odd Storm
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...
Day Is Done
Martha Ball
Fri, Oct 13
Category:
Island Notes
A few minutes before six, the land was near golden with the light of a lowering sun. The shadows were long, reaching down to the back lot, but still it was a shock to realize sundown was less than twenty minutes distant. It is not yet — quite — that heavy hammer of winter that falls swiftly and...
Fallen Leaves
Martha Ball
Fri, Sep 29
Category:
Island Notes
The last Monday in September, the first Monday of fall, it did not seem it would be as difficult as it proved to be to find the scant few seconds it required to take a photo of the Water Street curb, with no foot or vehicular traffic in the frame. It looked, strangely, like fall on the mainland,...
Forgotten Reality
Martha Ball
Fri, Sep 22
Category:
News
,
Island Notes
Mo nday and the sky is pale, almost without color, the mid-day sun diffused by a cover of fog. September, I am hearing, is never like this and I try not to say too quickly or emphatically, “well, actually. . .” September is remembered as crisp and sunny, a month of gentle breezes and warm water and...
September Hay
Martha Ball
Fri, Sep 15
Category:
Island Notes
I live on the Mansion Road, I grew up living on the Mansion Road. The Searles Mansion burned during school vacation in April of 1963 and in the twenty some years between that time and the purchase of the land and road by the town — with a healthy contribution from Block Island Conservancy — the...
Scattered Showers and Dappled Sunshine
Martha Ball
Fri, Sep 8
Category:
Island Notes
It is going to be one of those days. The sun was out early, brighter and clearer than I expected it to be given last night's forecast. I dawdled but still made it to the dump with bins of recyclables, stacks of paper and three bags of trash. That seeming bounty represents no more than a long time...
Windy but Hopeful
Martha Ball
Fri, Sep 1
Category:
Island Notes
T u esday was gray and windy but hopeful. We are near the close of a summer of ever-escalating terrible traffic stories, mine capped, perhaps, by meeting a truck on Water Street, in its busiest section, between the turn onto Chapel and the statue of Rebecca. It came at me, not with great speed but...
Rain
Martha Ball
Fri, Aug 18
Category:
Island Notes
L ast week, I came home with every expectation of going back out in the evening, but I started reading an old document about a summer of disease on Block Island, written at the start of the 19th century, then fell down the vortex of old documents in archaic language. The forecast was not good and I...
August Day
Martha Ball
Fri, Aug 4
Category:
Island Notes
It is August, long awaited by some, too quickly arrived for others. The already frenetic pace of summer on Block Island goes into overdrive as The End looms earlier and earlier, driven by school openings long before the once traditional Wednesday after Labor Day. When I was a child, the tourists...
Feathered Sunshine
Martha Ball
Fri, Jul 28
Category:
Island Notes
Chiicory was leaning into the road, still the vivid blue in mid-morning that is generally reserved for early day. It opens bright and hopeful before the sun climbs high and blanches it to a pale ghost of its early self. It is a weed, with a deep tap root, the enduring green of an old yard like mine...
Ode to the Eagle
Martha Ball
Fri, Jul 21
Category:
Island Notes
A p lane roars by, seemingly outside my window, and I think of open windows and the sounds of summer they gift us, airborne engines as well as chirping birds. It’s a nice moment, before I remember that, of course, there is more air traffic in the summer. As there are more people, strangers, among...
Near Mansion Beach
Martha Ball
Fri, Jul 7
Category:
Island Notes
In summer, we are not surrounded by the great whoosh of the winter wind. The first day after a very long Fourth of July weekend celebration is not peppered with fireworks and boat horns, instead, softer, gentler, sounds fill the air. I realize it first when I go outside, to hang clothes on the line...
Relocations
Martha Ball
Fri, Jun 30
Category:
Island Notes
“How do you do that every week?” someone just asked me, a question I find validating every time I sit down to a blank screen and the reality of not only a deadline, but of having to find a topic. Today I have loose ends swirling around me. Last week I wrote about the building that became Ernie's...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Pages
« first
‹ previous
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
next ›
last »
Island Buzz
Looking for a great rug?
4/16
Looking for something great underfoot? We have a terrific selection of rugs both in stock and for custom order. Wool, Cotton...
New Listing! Views of Old Harbor and Atlantic
Posted By
Ballard Hall Sales Group
4/16
We are excited to announce 245 Southeast Road to the market! This property is already Pending Sale! This property is being...
Why Solstice? Learn Why Seniors Choose Us
Posted By
Solstice Senior Living
4/16
Why now? Independence without isolation, quality amenities and more. Feel like yourself again at Solstice at Groton. Visit...
Still Looking for a Summer Rental?
Posted By
Sullivan Sotheby's International Realty
4/16
Sullivan Sotheby’s International Realty has some great options, if your still searching for that perfect Summer Rental. We...
Highland Farm has Fresh Spring Nursery Stock
Posted By
Highland Farm Inc.
4/16
Highland Farm has fresh nursery stock arriving daily! From large evergreens which can be planted to make an instant green...
History Happening Here- Join our Membership in 2021
Posted By
Block Island Historical Society
4/15
Thank you for your interest in the Block Island Historical Society. We all value everyone who shares our love of the island...
Receive our weekly email-letters!
Email Address
Email Type
Weekly Features-letter
Weekly News-letter
Breaking News
Tweets by BITimes
Real Estate
1,775,000
356 High Street, Block Island, RI 02807
Lila Delman Real Estate
A traditional New England style Inn, built in 1882 by native Block Island residents Lorenzo Mott...
2,250,000
Walk to Mansion Beach from this Contemporary
Ballard Hall Sales Group
Dreaming of Mansion Beach? Consider this rare opportunity to purchase property on Mansion Road...
1,250,000
Waterfront land on Dorrie’s Cove Road
Sullivan Sotheby's International Realty
One of the last undeveloped, waterfront properties available. Build your dream home on this...
349,000
West Side Sunset lot
Beach Real Estate
Imagine beautiful Block Island Sunsets from your own front yard! Lovely rolling 2.5 acre lot on...
3,200,000
Beautiful Contemporary with Views!
Ballard Hall Sales Group
Located on the second highest point on the island, overlooking the Southeast Light, this wonderful...
550,000
1456 Payne Road, Block Island, RI 02807
Lila Delman Real Estate
Lot 58-2 of "The Plains" sub-division is located off of Payne Road with easy access off of Payne...
3,600,000
1432 Cooneymus Road, Block Island, RI 02807
Lila Delman Real Estate
Catering to coastal lifestyle, this exclusive residence immaculately presents privacy and genuine...
985,000
592 Old Mill Road, Block Island, RI 02807
Lila Delman Real Estate
Silent Sounds & Conservancy. Located down one of the Island’s private roads Old Mill Road, this...
Upcoming Events
Easter Sunday Snrise and Worship Services
Sun, 4/18, 10:00am
Easter Sunday Snrise and Worship Services
Sun, 4/25, 10:00am
Easter Sunday Snrise and Worship Services
Sun, 5/2, 10:00am
Easter Sunday Snrise and Worship Services
Sun, 5/9, 10:00am
Easter Sunday Snrise and Worship Services
Sun, 5/16, 10:00am
Easter Sunday Snrise and Worship Services
Sun, 5/23, 10:00am
Easter Sunday Snrise and Worship Services
Sun, 5/30, 10:00am
Easter Sunday Snrise and Worship Services
Sun, 6/6, 10:00am
Easter Sunday Snrise and Worship Services
Sun, 6/13, 10:00am
Easter Sunday Snrise and Worship Services
Sun, 6/20, 10:00am
Island Religion
PART 1 THE CHRISTIAN’S DESIRE
Posted By
Block Island Christian Fellowship
4/14
PART 1 THE CHRISTIAN’S DESIRE INTRODUCTION Now that we are a Christian, what is probably the most important spiritual thing...
PART 7 ASPIRING TO BE A WITNESS FOR CHRIST
Posted By
Block Island Christian Fellowship
4/8
PART 7 ASPIRING TO BE A WITNESS FOR CHRIST CHAPTER 8 BEING A WITNESS OF ATTENDING TO THE ASSEMBLING OF THE SAINTS Acts 2:42...
PART 6 ASPIRING TO BE A WITNESS FOR CHRIST
Posted By
Block Island Christian Fellowship
3/31
PART 6 ASPIRING TO BE A WITNESS FOR CHRIST CHAPTER 7 BEING A WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT-FILLED LIFE What we are going to talk...