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Home » Columnists

Island Notes

Green leaves and wavy glass

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 10

Category:

Island Notes

The season has peaked. The lilacs have turned brown and sere, their glory gone for another year, and tall grass hiding one side of the ever-narrowing lane behind my house is bending under the weight of seed. It is worse, even, at the gate, the turn off Mansion onto my road, a near tunnel these days...
Words to Remember

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 3

Category:

Opinion, Island Notes

It is Memorial Day on Block Island, a gray Monday, rainy then foggy then hopeful and back to some form of dampness in the air. It is only by the surfaces of the puddles that I can be certain if there is real precipitation falling from the sky or only the heavy mist that feels like rain on the skin...
We are all stakeholders

Martha Ball

Fri, May 27

Category:

Island Notes

This coming Saturday, May 28, the newly refurbished 1876 Captain Noah Dodge House, more commonly known since the 1950s as the Doctor’s House, will be open to the public for two hours, from 2 to 4 p.m. It stands as more than a mere renovation of an historic building. The word “murmuration” seems...
Amazon on the Neck

Martha Ball

Fri, May 20

Category:

Island Notes

Nature in May is dauntless. Spring has waited too long, it is not going to be off-put by cool days and cooler nights. The maple outside the kitchen window, grown from a wind-tossed seed, has unfurled new leaves, red-tinged green. “Amazon on the Neck,” I think, and wonder how many places there are...
Foundations in the brush

Martha Ball

Fri, May 13

Category:

Island Notes

The sun is shining. There are Canada geese to the east, sitting in the beaten grass of the pond lot behind my house. Their goslings have grown, already the size of small ducks, their baby feathers a fluffy gold, backlit by the new morning spreading across the land. I have not yet seen them down the...
Bridges to nowhere

Martha Ball

Fri, May 6

Category:

Island Notes

Last week we had a Primary in Rhode Island. Block Island almost running out of ballots, having an additional batch sent over on the last boat — which the Captain held until the packet arrived — was a story that got picked up by the national press. It was, in some cases, turned a bit on its side, a...
Ambling Muskrat

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 29

Category:

Island Notes

There is snow in northern Rhode Island, they are saying — in the dead spaces between the swooning over a Presidential candidate who made a whistle-stop in Rhode Island yesterday and confusion about “usual” polling places being closed, and insistence “no one has said anything” when it has been a...
Green Haze

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 22

Category:

Island Notes

Viewing the forecast, so often at odds with the world beyond my door, was my objective, but I am easily distracted today by an “Active Advisory Special Statement” issued by the National Weather Service, mirroring a “No Beach Fires” announcement issued by the local Fire Department. It would be a...
Green Haze

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 22

Category:

Island Notes

Viewing the forecast, so often at odds with the world beyond my door, was my objective, but I am easily distracted today by an “Active Advisory Special Statement” issued by the National Weather Service, mirroring a “No Beach Fires” announcement issued by the local Fire Department. It would be a...
Wet road

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 15

Category:

Island Notes

Here is a great swath of green lying along the coast all the way from South Carolina to Maine and beyond into Canada. I think statistics, the disproportionate percentage of the population of this nation living within fifty miles of the coast, the idle musings of someone living with exceedingly slow...
Dragons Passing

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 8

Category:

Island Notes

The first Sunday in April began a wild, beautiful, broken day. There was a snow squall in the morning, a cloud of white disbelief roiling beyond my window, the not-uncommon flurry but nonetheless evoking a but-it's-after-Easter! protest. These flurries are always a wonder, no matter how many ways...
Morning Broken

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 1

Category:

Island Notes

Last night I wondered that it was so dark before realizing it was almost seven o’clock in the evening and remembering it was March, yet. Later, there was a great wind and, again, I was reminded: March. The sun is moving to the north, spring is real. Easter morning I woke early, even before the dawn...
“He's a Farmer”

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 18

Category:

Island Notes

It was mild last week and the sweet night music of peepers rose from the low places in the early evenings. They were singing everywhere, all over the island, in other New England states and down the coast. Reports of them was widespread and joy-filled. Dawn came late, a line of deep rose, hovering...
There was Land

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 11

Category:

Island Notes

March 2010 — These days of high tides and high surfs make the last stretch of Corn Neck Road, the southern end, out beyond the protection of the dunes, feel like a bridge the water is so near. We have two roads that tempt the sea, this short stretch where the telephone poles bend,...
No Good Wind

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 26

Category:

Island Notes

There is no good wind in winter, there are only those days without wind that come as gifts, spreading over the land with the ever-earlier morning sun. They are to be met with gladness and thanksgiving; Sunday, a week after remarkable and unusual below-zero temperatures, was one, a "where-is-my-coat...
Breath of the Sea

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 19

Category:

Island Notes

Sunday, I got out my heaviest wool sweater, scratchy and brown, and officially gave in to winter. It was a from-the-ground-up process, starting with the bulky Baffins, the big blue boots have sat in my bedroom since spring, never making it to the box in the closet — as if they could on their own...
For A Song

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 12

Category:

Island Notes

The last Sunday in January came the sad news of the passing of Eugene Rankin, southern gentleman, accomplished pianist, teacher, beloved neighbor and friend. He was 93. Seven years ago this March, I wrote to my brother, idle musings on an approaching storm, then, because my heart could not contain...
Buddy

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 5

Category:

Island Notes

Last week, long-time mayor of Providence, Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, passed away, seemingly unexpectedly. In truth, he had been seriously ill and we had all known it, all of us who listened to WPRO radio, who gave even passing notice to politics, the blood sport of Rhode Island. Everyone in the state...
Name-Worthy Stature

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 29

Category:

Island Notes

Chili always tastes better the second night, but it really tastes better the second night when the power has not just gone off with no hope of restoration until well after morning light, leaving no talk or music, no mechanical rumblings of furnace or creaky heat or refrigerator motor, none of the...
Beyond the Hall of the Mountain King

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 22

Category:

Island Notes

Snow was in the forecast. It did not bother the Pesky Pond Troll of Clay Head Swamp (aka PPT) one little bit, not this year. He had a nice heavy winter coat, he had — he always had — plenty of provisions on hand, and he could tell by the direction of the sun and the length of the days that it was...
Sand In My Socks

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 15

Category:

Island Notes

Yesterday, the rain sheeted on the south-facing kitchen windows, but the southwest sky beyond was filled with the light of the sun on its early afternoon path. It appeared to be shining on white buildings around the harbor and, despite the rain, there were shadows, albeit with soft edges, on the...
Weather Station Window

Martha Ball

Sat, Jan 9

Category:

Island Notes

The glass panel in the west-facing entry door was covered with the uneven lace of frozen moisture when I first let the dog out this morning. The hole she has been digging or, more, the clay on the grass, the fruit of her excavations, was a different hue, more yellow than tan the under the low,...
Fifty-seven and foggy

Martha Ball

Wed, Jan 6

Category:

Island Notes

The Sunday morning after Christmas it was 57 and foggy when I left my house in the morning. There was little wind and the fog held us in its embrace of mystical magical mild made warm by the fact of it being in late December. Three hours later the temperature had dropped only two degrees but the...
Martha Ball: Dear's Eggnog

Martha Ball

Wed, Dec 23

Category:

Island Notes

It all began with an innocent comment from Andre Boudreau — perhaps the first “innocent” comment of his life — “Ya know what’s missing during the Christmas season on Block Island? The old Town Hall Christmas parties, with the centerpiece, Violette Connolly’s ‘Martha Washington’s’ egg nog. The place...
Tennis Ball Trials

Martha Ball

Sun, Dec 20

Category:

Island Notes

As December moved from its second to third week, new record high temperatures were reached. They peaked, apparently, at an unusual time, on either side of midnight, the 14th and 15th of the month. Yesterday was foggy and mild, by 4:30 the sun was well below the tree line, the ambient light of a low...
The other side of the world

Martha Ball

Sat, Dec 12

Category:

Island Notes

Going out the Mansion Road this morning I spotted a light golden dog standing on the walk to “his” house and waved to him. A split-second later I remember asking my mother what she thought she was doing, waving to the horses who used to inhabit a pasture on the same road. I cannot remember her...
Come December

Martha Ball

Sat, Dec 5

Category:

Island Notes

When I come home and open the door to find Autumn anxious to go out it is not, I have learned, because she “has to go out,” rather because she has gotten into something she should not have touched and she knows she has been some variation of bad. She must think if she is out of sight I will not...
Gift of Lester Dodge

Martha Ball

Mon, Nov 30

Category:

Island Notes

There is not a great deal in this town with the name of Lester Dodge written upon it. It is in the cemetery, on his gravestone, and beneath one of the long stained-glass windows in the Harbor Church, given by him in memory of his mother, Emmaline. He put her name on awards at school, and that of...
Surrounded By Water

Martha Ball

Sun, Nov 15

Category:

Island Notes

It is with an abundance of caution thrown to the wind that I say my reaction to last month's meeting on coastal change, one intensified with my reaction to other people's reactions, was “what has happened to us?” I do understand the politics of it all and, absolutely, it is always a positive thing...
Sweet November

Martha Ball

Sun, Nov 8

Category:

Island Notes

“She needs a tennis ball,” an old friend comments on a photo of Autumn’s collection of toys. My response is “it’s in the yard!” thinking also of a net bag nearly full of the bouncy yellow spheres hanging in the kitchen. My dog has, at last, decided they are fun, although her dedication is not at...
The Hardest Time of the Year

Martha Ball

Sun, Nov 1

Category:

Island Notes

Too late, I think, for it to be sunrise, I open my eyes to a bank of color along the eastern horizon, that “red sky at morning, sailors warning” that makes one want to burrow deeper under the covers on the best of days. It is late October, and however beautiful it can be in mid-day, the daily...
More than a dinner

Martha Ball

Sun, Oct 25

Category:

Island Notes

Roll Call began in October of 1900 when the congregation of the First Baptist Church was only newly moved from the old Civic Center, in the middle of the island, to the flourishing center of commerce grown around the Old Harbor. Their church on Chapel Street originally had been built as an ultimate...
Our Lady of Fountain Square

Martha Ball

Sun, Oct 18

Category:

Island Notes

Columbus Day this year was magnificent, a perfect coda to a near perfect season of weather. In town, in the late afternoon, a young dad called back to his trailing family, all of them on bicycles: “Is everybody ready for one more climb... to the summit!” before leading them up the hill. There was...
October Blue

Martha Ball

Mon, Oct 12

Category:

Island Notes

Walking out in the morning to play with the dog, moving from the west-facing door in shadow to the barnyard in sun is like walking back into summer. Last week, during a morning of radio hysteria over a hurricane that seemed every moment to be less of a threat to us, the weather site upon which I...
Grounded Autumn

Martha Ball

Sun, Oct 4

Category:

Island Notes

It is fall, it is the season my dog, Autumn, came to live with me, just over two years ago. She has gone back to the chair she eschewed the summer long, my chair, that is, not one of the others in the living room I would gladly cover with an old sheet were she to favor it. She pretends not to see...
Smoke on the Water...

Martha Ball

Fri, Sep 25

Category:

Island Notes

It is the 21st of September, the day we grew up thinking of as the first of fall; this year the equinox does not come until early morning of the 23rd. There will still be an hour more of visible than actual daylight, a standard which holds true across the year. It is such both in summer when the...
September Sojourn

Martha Ball

Fri, Sep 18

Category:

Island Notes

The cousins and their families are walking out to the North Light. My pace is not what it used to be I tell them and time is at a premium, I will stay behind; it is not until I look out along the beach that I realize they, too, have grown older. But I remain in the parking lot, looking at the big...
Summertime Dream

Martha Ball

Fri, Sep 11

Category:

Island Notes

It has been the longest and the shortest summer of my life. It is warm, summer warm, too warm for after Labor Day when school starts but every conversation is of all the other years it has been too warm, another anomaly of the season that is not. But my yard looks like fall, the tiny apples on the...
For Denice

Martha Ball

Fri, Sep 4

Category:

Island Notes

Labor Day is as late as it can be this year, and the town feels September-quiet in the week preceding the holiday. The humid heat is back with a vengeance much like the cancer that returned last year and finally, yesterday, took my cousin Denice's life. The world conspires in odd ways. Today came...
Another August's end

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 28

Category:

Island Notes

Years ago, I thought every year was so special, that every August was unique. Then I scrolled back through columns I had written other years at the same time and found “August Muggies” the year it was so damp the gaps between the planks in the old table in the editor's house briefly lessened and a...
Flashing Green

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 21

Category:

Island Notes

T he trees at the west end of Chapel Street are burnished, as is the great horse chestnut at the old Town Center. Yet it came as a surprise that the maple at the corner of my yard was not full and lush; only in a photo did I notice sky showing through its branches. Perhaps I do not notice it when...
August

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 14

Category:

Island Notes

In the midst of a beautiful summer day, I want back all the time I have spent on the phone trying to get Verizon service to be Verizon service. Forty-six minutes today with no resolution to the problem I called about on Saturday. Weirdly, it is not the internet — just the email. I think I should...
250 and Counting

Martha Ball

Fri, Aug 7

Category:

Island Notes

This year, the Harbor Church celebrates its 250th anniversary in October. “Gathered” is the word on the sign on the lawn of the current home of the congregation. Some place the date of origin to the earliest settlers meeting in the Bay Colony, seeking a different life in a place where they could...
Sunday Night Still

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 31

Category:

Island Notes

S unday night and the Harbor Church is strangely still. Even for this building in summer, the activity of the past week was manic. In addition to our regular services and programs, scheduled meetings of outside groups, twice-weekly bridge gatherings and dinners for international students, we had...
All Too Possible

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 24

Category:

Island Notes

Y esterday it was hot. The air, I think at first, was a heavy, sodden blanket then realize all that sun could not have gotten though such a cover. I wonder if even out here in the middle of the ocean we are feeling the impacts of the pollution that causes Ozone Alerts to be issued in the cities on...
Baling twine

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 17

Category:

Island Notes

T his morning I looked out to the east and had a strange flash of misplaced memory, sheep on my neighbor’s bank lot, between the big pond behind my house and the ocean. Once they were in those meadows, big wooly beasts sheared in the summertime, probably just as they were about to keel over in the...
Arc of history

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 10

Category:

Island Notes

We all have one of those youthful summers of exceptional remembrance, mine was the summer of 1969, historic by any account. It was the year Pete Seeger and his crew launched the sloop Clearwater and sailed into the New Harbor and came to town and performed on the stage...
Sirens and Summer

Martha Ball

Thu, Jul 2

Category:

Island Notes

A few minutes ago, the police stopped traffic at Fountain Square, something they do only when an emergency vehicle is expected. A moment or two later one of the ambulances, sirens blaring, came through and headed up High Street toward the Medical Center. Now, they have been followed by a fire...
Rearview Mirror

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 26

Category:

Island Notes

A week before the Summer Solstice I picked some of the peonies by my front door, solid buds ready to open into glorious pink flowers, and brought them to town where I put them in a vase. These were joined by two creamy white boutonnieres, a sweet reminder chivalry is not completely dead...
Week Of White

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 19

Category:

Island Notes

Of wild roses, legendary leviathans and great white sharks. It is a drab and rainy Monday, startlingly cool after a glorious summer weekend. Even Autumn, my golden retriever, who spent the winter whining to be out in the snow turns to me at the door with her plaintive “fix it!” look. It is both...

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