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Island Notes

Summer Gifts

Martha Ball

Mon, Jul 21

Category:

Island Notes

The view of the New Harbor from the Neck Road has disappeared. It once was impossible to ignore the number of boats in the Great Salt Pond, white motorcraft most of those nearest the shore, the numbers in the ever-expanding rafts increasing with each passing year. Now, it is only at night when mast...
Summer Dock

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 11

Category:

Island Notes

Block Island’s seasons will always be defined by the boat schedule; today’s vessels are to me – to the horror of boat aficionados – not radically different from each other. There was no possibility of mistaking the little green & dark yellow Sprigg Carroll, the small winter boat of my childhood...
Sounds of Summer

Martha Ball

Thu, Jul 3

Category:

Island Notes

The beach is empty, a surprise in late June, even early on a foggy morning with a forecast of impending rain. There are sounds in the thick air that in winter are masked by the wind. The halyards clang against my neighbor’s flagpole in other seasons but as a part of cacophony; now the ringing is a...
Beach Epilogue

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 27

Category:

Island Notes

It seemed a simple enough query, sent out into cyberspace via the B.I. Bulletin Board and Facebook (yes, sadly, I am on Facebook) with little expectation of much response. Who remembered the playground equipment at the former State Beach? There came a flood of photographs and memories, as many as...
Muddy Water

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 13

Category:

Island Notes

It is cool this morning, and breezy, but bright, a beautiful day when the green, green grass will not be parched quickly by the high June sun. Yesterday, it rained but there is no great puddle in the barnyard, only a depression of darkened, dampened earth, reminding me of what was there. Not a week...
Golden & Glorious

Martha Ball

Mon, Jun 2

Category:

Island Notes

The sun is rising a bit after five in the morning and not setting until after eight o’clock at night and I am wondering how it was the days got so long, and already feeling the dark cloud of the summer solstice and shrinking sunlight hovering over the horizon. It is cold, far from the record, but...
Some Days are Diamonds

Martha Ball

Wed, May 21

Category:

Island Notes

Recently I saw a photograph of a dog looking stunningly like my Autumn, standing at the edge of a quiet sea, with the caption “Nothing there? Well, I'd better bark at it.” And so goes the life of my dog, barking at the deer, at the wind, at the air. I had forgotten another golden years ago,...
The Promise of the Moon

Martha Ball

Fri, May 16

Category:

Island Notes

Last week a leap of faith was using a year-old photograph with this column. It was taken last spring, showing my backyard at its hopeful best, new green surrounding shad in bloom, all under a blue, blue sky. It was the view I hoped would be beyond my window — the one that should have been beyond my...
A Voice and a Vote

Martha Ball

Fri, May 9

Category:

Island Notes

It is winter beyond my window. The ocean and the sky are shades of gray, the still bare branches of the wild poplar trees at the edge of the one-time orchard (names do not fade quickly down here) behind my house are dark against the pale sky. The view framed by a single pane in the two-over-two...
We're All Stakeholders

Martha Ball

Sat, Apr 26

Category:

Island Notes

Autumn is free of her cone and more importantly, I am free of her running into me with it. An exceedingly long 17 days it has been. Toward the end, I had let her run a bit and she would bound up the slope in the north lot, the explosion of joyful energy that is every golden retriever in every...
Eighteenth of April

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 25

Category:

Island Notes

The forsythia is shivering in the cold morning wind, the slow to bloom daffodils questioning their decision to unfold. The temperature was as low a week ago but once we have that point in April when the sun shines and the air warms, going back a mere six days is difficult even knowing the set-back...
More Than a Wildflower

Martha Ball

Wed, Apr 2

Category:

Island Notes

Last week, in the cold of the Historical Society, looking at photographs on the wall for an unimaginable summer project, I found myself explaining a particular streetscape, one including the facade of the Odd Fellows' Hall, still recognizable for its simplicity. When the Ragged Sailor Gallery,...
Castle Wall

Sat, Mar 15

Category:

Island Notes

Walking out on the new wood in the wash of the afternoon sun, treading wide planks securely in place it is impossible not to look out to the ragged end of the post-Sandy east wall and the empty sky where the green light tower used to stand. Then, amidst the newness and ruin, something different...
Now That It Is March

Martha Ball

Sun, Mar 9

Category:

Island Notes

It is March and it is cold and gray and bleak and I wonder when the records were broken for this time of year. It is easy to find such information quickly on-line and armed with a date I flip back though The Block Island Times archive to the first week in March seven years ago. It was not so long...
Deer Fatigue

Martha Ball

Sun, Mar 2

Category:

Island Notes

While I say somewhat in jest that I cannot lose any more brains cells to any/all things deer it still surprises me that the word does induce a reflexive blackout. I was surprised this year to read of the second annual hunt in Rodman’s Hollow. Surely, I had read about the first one last year but put...
Winter Beach in Extreme

Martha Ball

Sat, Feb 22

Category:

Island Notes

The date on the paper in which these words will be printed will be Feb. 22, Washington’s Birthday, when the back of winter is broken, or so promised by my cousin, the late John Robinson Lewis. We were on the beach in mid-February, me with a dog, one of my golden Shads, and Rob surely wearing one of...
It'll Never Sink!

Wed, Feb 19

Category:

Island Notes

A few years back, in the course of a conversation about the general state of the water carriers (a Public Utilities Commission term for the boat) we had known, I realized “my” old, small boat was the Sprigg Carroll while everyone else had in their minds the Manitou , in my mind...
Snowy Migrant

Martha Ball

Sat, Feb 8

Category:

Island Notes

It is winter and snow seems to be a constant although as I write — knock on every piece of wood within reach — my road has not once been impassable. It is a gift of the weather gods who determine which way the wind will blow; here a shift of a few degrees can be the determining factor between a few...
Life, good and pure and hopeful

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 31

Category:

Island Notes

The early morning news of Pete Seeger’s passing came as a surprise but not a shock. He had, it seemed, an immortality which I realize even as I write the word, he truly does have. In the summer of 1969, I waited table at the Narragansett Inn. Radio was a different medium then and the cooks always...
Expectation of Winter

Martha Ball

Sat, Jan 25

Category:

Island Notes

It is snowing and I have to move my car, at least from the barnyard, out beyond the bend in the road that is drifted over in any storm. It is snowing and it is cold, but when I hear the time on the radio I realize with some joy that my reaction to it is “it’s only 4:02” as though I have...
Time to Go Home

Martha Ball

Sat, Jan 18

Category:

Island Notes

My dining room table is old, the kind with a leaf or two or three, down now to one, which I consider some minor victory. It collects paper in a way that surely defies science and leaves me every month or so sorting, which really means realigning piles of paper, as I search for one particular thing...
Paperwhites & Fountain Pens

Martha Ball

Sat, Jan 11

Category:

Island Notes

Cold came on either side of the New Year, with high tides that fell and left white ice hanging from the grasses rimming the tidal pond on the north side of Dunns’ Bridge. A few days later, Indian Head Neck Pond was partly frozen, and a solid sheet spread over an area of the lavender marsh, another...
You can't tell anyone where you got it

Martha Ball

Sat, Jan 4

Category:

Island Notes

On a sunny Christmas Day my growing puppy, Autumn, trots down the road, happily carrying a rapidly degrading tennis ball. She is a child, she wants both the slimy tennis ball and a stick found along the way. Her mouth filled with one, she tries to pick up the other and is for a second or two...
Good-bye Year, Good-bye Sofa

Sat, Dec 28

Category:

Island Notes

This year has been one of extraordinary sadness in our little town. Everyone knows that and needs no recounting so I search for topics uplifting which loosely translates to ones that make me happy. There is a golden dog lying in the sun on the kitchen floor, and I am startled by her presence. She...
Palatine Christmas Card

Martha Ball

Sat, Dec 21

Category:

Island Notes

Yesterday it did snow, not as forecast but enough to turn the farm next door to a Christmas card, the north roofs of the old Cape Cod house and big barn and outbuildings so oriented made solidly white in the fading light of afternoon. It was not on the ground any more than the slush snow we had...
Wouldn't It Be a Shame?

Martha Ball

Sat, Dec 14

Category:

Island Notes

The rain I hear is before first light, pounding on the windows, reminding me, yet again, how fortunate in puppy terms, I have been with Autumn. By early afternoon, following a few moments of hopefully clearing sky, a heavy mist clings to the branches and fills the air with moisture. There was a...
Circles in the Grass

Wed, Dec 4

Category:

Island Notes

The late afternoon sun comes in mid-afternoon these days of the year when it sets earliest. “It doesn’t get any worse than this,” my mother would say in early December and, of course, she was right. While the mornings continue to devour the day into January, the sunsets have hit their nadir by the...
Apple Pie Day

Martha Ball

Sat, Nov 30

Category:

Island Notes

First light is not so early these days, but Nature does not follow a clock and in an abundance of caution I let the pup out for a few moments while I wait in the entry, shoes half on, shielding my feet from the cold cement floor. There are sunrise deer in the front field, their coats blended with...
Lingering Wildflowers

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 15

Category:

Island Notes

There is no need to hurry sundown in November; gray clouds hang over the cemetery, ready to drop like an anvil on Veterans Day. A week ago, after yet another service that should not have been, I walked over to my uncle’s grave to run my fingers over the name cut into the stone. The only prayer I...
Patriots' Day Legacy, 2013

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 8

Category:

Island Notes

It is a beautiful morning, all sunshine and still air. Autumn, my growing puppy, races across the barnyard in pursuit of a toy thrown, a golden streak of focused determination moving so fast when she reaches her destination that instead of coming to a halt she tumbles onto the grass. She is...
Into November

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 1

Category:

Island Notes

It has been a year since Superstorm Sandy wrecked her havoc along the eastern seaboard. This day could not be more different from that one. Yes, I spent the summer telling visitors who asked if those pictures of devastation were really Block Island. We were hit, and while we lost the edge of Spring...
Snips and Snails and Pond Trolls' Tails

Martha Ball

Sat, Oct 26

Category:

Island Notes

The Pesky Pond Troll (PPT) of Clay Head Swamp was grumpy. (For the uninitiated, or the forgetful, the PPT makes occasional appearances in this space. He is a creature with Hobbit-like feet and a heavy coat of long brown hair, be it a natural color or simply one from years of wallowing in the mud is...
Waiting for rain

Martha Ball

Sat, Oct 19

Category:

Island Notes

When we leave the house I have no intention of continuing beyond the gate but it is warmer and sunnier than I had expected and I decide to keep walking realizing too late I have neither tissues – for me nor treats – for my fast growing puppy, Autumn, in my pocket. It will be a short walk I assure...
Pilfered Shoes

Martha Ball

Sat, Oct 12

Category:

Island Notes

The room in which I sleep is an unlikely place in an old house, an odd space at the top of the narrow stairs on the end of a narrow two-story ell. In the oldest photographs, faded and scratched, it is not even an ell, rather an almost separate 1 ¾-story building joined only at its corner to the...
Only October

Martha Ball

Sat, Oct 5

Category:

Island Notes

The morning of the Equinox I was awakened by a pounding, slamming downpour, the kind that batters the windows and hits the roof so hard it bounces. It had lessened to steady rain a few hours later when I parked my car in what appeared to be a created space at the end of a row in the Interstate...
Arrival of Autumn

Sat, Sep 28

Category:

Island Notes

It has been like this for years, I do not go off-Island for months then twice in a week. This time it has been three times in 10 days which may have set a new bar and one way too high at that. Summer is over by every measure, gone in a split second on a Sunday afternoon. Today the morning air is...
To Look for America

Martha Ball

Sat, Sep 21

Category:

Island Notes

It is not so often I go Off, to the Other Side, to the mainland, that place people are too fond of saying we “all” call America when some of us most decidedly do not. There is Block Island and there is the rest of the world. We go down the Neck because we descend Bush Lot Hill to reach the North...
Notes from Leona

Sat, Sep 14

Category:

Island Notes

People may think of a boat when they hear “Leona,” but she was a person first, the sister of the owner of the little fishing vessel that met a sad out-of-water end. Leona lived out on the West Side in a house painted dark green. My dad was a roofer and sometimes he took me along when he was going...
Last Days of Summer

Martha Ball

Sat, Sep 7

Category:

Island Notes

Last night I dreamt of the blackberries down my lane, as they should be, not as they are this year. In my nocturnal wanderings they were perfect, the drought-stricken-in-an-unusually-green-world fruit plumped to the sweet dark state of my memory. It was a harvest salvaged, I surmised even in sleep...
Another Rainy Tuesday

Martha Ball

Sat, Aug 31

Category:

Island Notes

The days of summer run together by August, but I know it rained two weeks ago because it was the day of the Historical Society House Tour. I had signed up for an earlier shift of hostessing at one of the houses on the loop and could have avoided the whole wet mess had I not had visiting relatives...
Whisper

Martha Ball

Sat, Aug 24

Category:

Island Notes

The sun has moved, I look up when a familiar car pauses at the stop sign at the elbow of Water Street and am temporarily blinded by the reflection on the glass and chrome. It has moved, I can tell by the evening shadows on the City Drug — known by various names by various generations — the ornate...
Ghosts of Coffee Hours Past III

Martha Ball

Sat, Aug 17

Category:

Island Notes

Two years ago I wrote of the coffee pots lurking in the depths of the Harbor Church, relics of Coffee Hours Past, the great stash of urns that lurked like inhabitants of some twisted gothic graveyard where things dead refuse to fade away. They were not without history, they did not lack a back...
Clothesline kind of day

Martha Ball

Sat, Aug 10

Category:

Island Notes

Yesterday I restrung clothesline. This morning I am struck by the fact I can look out and tell who hung which pieces of damp fabric on the line. Accustomed to the wind, I anchor thinner materials with something heavier to keep them from slip-sliding into a bunch. The sheet I put out is neatly...
A Fading Pluto

Martha Ball

Sat, Aug 3

Category:

Island Notes

Earlier this week I wrote the numerals “7/29” and thought in passing — as I do every year — that it was my mother’s birthday, forever engrained from the year I was in junior high and decided to make a cake at a friend’s house on Connecticut Avenue, one since completely renovated. It was a wonderful...
Summer World

Martha Ball

Sat, Jul 27

Category:

Island Notes

Day is ending and the temperature is finally dropping; perhaps the weather will take its long-promised turn. Last week was what this week — and a second in the earlier part of August — should be. The world is a different place, it is unthinkable that all our excesses would not make it so, but I...
It Is the Heat!

Martha Ball

Sat, Jul 20

Category:

Island Notes

There are very few days of the year I turn on the air in my car for more than a minute or two, going up the dusty road on a hot day, keeping out most of the grit and cooling the piping just enough that a regular fan on cool will suffice for the short distance I am going. Today I gave up, and after...
July

Martha Ball

Sat, Jul 13

Category:

Island Notes

The air is shifting by the hour. Yesterday I walked down the hill from the church and wondered that the grass, so open to even this occasional summer sun, was harsh and dry underfoot. The soles of my feet were not happy when I crossed the pavement from the you-can’t-get-there-from-here stone steps...
Porches and other places II

Martha Ball

Sat, Jul 6

Category:

Island Notes

White flash met white flash all ’round me, with no delay before the booming thunder shook the foundations of the earth, and I wondered how it could be that I used to meet people who would speak of a raging storm the night before that was news to me. Still, wandering about, not wanting to do...
Porches and other places

Martha Ball

Thu, Jul 4

Category:

Island Notes

As I look out my open window I cannot get much past lines from Prelude in James Russell Lowell’s The Vision of Sir Launfal, or what we tend to know better as the “what is so rare a day in June” poem which I too often think of as the “what is so fine as a day in June...” The work is old, over a 150...
Privet & Picket Fences

Martha Ball

Sat, Jun 22

Category:

Island Notes

It rained great buckets and I found myself on the Neck Road thinking of driving with my brother out in Michigan, at night, between Lansing and Grosse Pointe, where every underpass felt like a fording. My brother, the submariner, just plowed on. Of course there is no connection between running a...

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