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Home » Columnists

Island Notes

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...
The Sea Is So Great...

Martha Ball

Thu, Jan 3

Category:

Island Notes

Th e New Year came in on a dour note, wind-driven rain slamming the south-facing windows near the foot of my bed. I would not sleep, I knew, so I stayed up late, reading a book loaned to me several years ago. The bookmark was about four pages in, then I must have put it down before eventually...
Another Year

Martha Ball

Thu, Dec 27

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Th ere was a dusting of snow on the ground one morning earlier this week. It appeared, at first, at least through lacy curtains, to be that super-frost that can glaze the world on a cold morning, and turn whole fields white. Later, though, there were actual clumps out in the field, real snow...
Before the yule

Martha Ball

Thu, Dec 20

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

The d ays are at their shortest, the Solstice is nearly upon us, with the great, silver Cold — or the Before the Yule — Moon immediately following it. Last night, after a windy, chilly day, the night was settling and bright, the moon shadows of one leafless tree stretched across the yard when I...
December Dark

Martha Ball

Thu, Dec 13

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Ea rlier in the week we had a sunset so magnificent the thought of taking out a paltry phone to try to capture the sheer majesty of it was not even formed. I happened to be out, in the stillness that sometimes comes at day's end, talking with people come to tend the horses that live in my reclaimed...
Relics

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 7

Category:

Island Notes

Autumn is lying on the grass in the front yard, watchful for any activity on the road, ever hopeful a vehicle will turn this way. It is warmer than it was, the temperature creeping above freezing as noontime approaches, and the sun is shining. My dog, as an exploring adolescent, first discovered a...
Creaking Tree

Martha Ball

Thu, Nov 29

Category:

Island Notes

Th e Thanksgiving weekend was cold, just plain silly cold. I remember a freak snow one year, when I was in Massachusetts, “trough snow” they called it, falling unexpectedly between two weather systems, neither of which had given any indication the previous night that there would be inches of white...
Keepers of the Light

Martha Ball

Tue, Nov 20

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

The solitary white beacon at the North End of the island has drawn people to it since its construction. The Rev. Livermore wrote of the fourth, and final, lighthouse to occupy that spot “In 1861 Hr. Hiram D. Ball was appointed keeper of the Sandy Point lighthouse, under President Lincoln. “This...
Too Early

Martha Ball

Thu, Nov 15

Category:

Island Notes

The fall brings us darkening days punctuated by east wind driven rain. We think of extreme weather, the Perfect Storm in 1991 and Sandy in 2012 but the truth is it happens every year to some degree, the wet before the winter, the fabled filling of the ponds purportedly prerequisite to the settling...
For a Mint

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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,...

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