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Home » Columnists

Island Notes

In the Water

Martha Ball

Fri, Jun 12

Category:

Island Notes

Then there are the nights I walk into my kitchen and see a white glow behind the old farm next door. It is not the color of flame nor is it in the right place for a beach fire, rather an other-worldly light from a source that is hidden, mysterious. It is too even to be any natural phenomena, surely...
Cusp of Summer

Martha Ball

Fri, May 29

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

The lilacs I picked two days ago have consumed most of the water in their bulb shaped vase, the one that makes me wonder why all vases are not so shaped; it is not top heavy, and the smaller neck supports stripped stems, keeping the flowers from fanning out awkwardly. The fragrance of these...
Nothing Gold Can Stay

Martha Ball

Fri, May 22

Category:

Island Notes

Two days ago the shad at the edge of my back yard was in full glorious bloom, shadblow at its most fragile — and best — moment. My little camera may have finally given up the ghost, it sits on the table, its little lens stuck in the wrong position. "Will shut down automatically” its screen reads...
Nathan's Park

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 17

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Old signs disappear and fall from memory. Some, if we are lucky, reappear, such as the one that once graced the entrance to the Nathan Mott Park. It is big, neatly lettered, including the names of the original park trustees: Clarence Lewis, Lester Dodge, Russell Champlin, Harry Smith and W. Earl...
Easter Monday

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 10

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

The day after Easter is a holiday in many countries, one of those bits of information that has somehow eluded me all these years. Further, it is the day of the Egg Roll at the White House. That it is and always has been on Monday is something else I learned today. The ways in which one can be...
Palm Sunday

Martha Ball

Fri, Apr 3

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

The day after Palm Sunday there is a red-wing blackbird fluttering about my front field and crocuses have braved the cold. It was my long ago understanding that the trinity of spring, the appearance of this fauna and flora was sealed by a flurry of snow. Saturday night the dog...
Harbor Refuge

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 27

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

It was snowing at the moment of the Equinox, soft flakes, but snow nonetheless, falling into the softest wind, but a wind nonetheless, floating between north and east. It continued through the night, never heavy but there, coloring the world with winter well into the morning. Then it stopped, the...
Spring Swale

Martha Ball

Fri, Mar 20

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

The list of things wrong with my old house is one people who have long lived in old houses can well understand — although after this winter of no frozen pipes I am hesitant to complain about the lack of closets and limited electrical outlets. Then there are all the nights I climb the narrow stairs...
Almost spring

Martha Ball

Mon, Mar 16

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

The sun is shining, a miracle it seems. The air is clear, the ocean deeply blue, its surface annoyed, all little tears, white caps. I think of an evening knitting at the Library, hearing someone say “wintry mix” and, before looking up from my own stitch counting, envisioning yarn, a soft wool, new...
Around the Island

Sat, Mar 7

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

Snow was forecast last night. Just snow, no great wind or tidal surge, nothing to turn the shouting red “advisory” on my favored weather site to a screaming bloody “alert!” So it snowed into very little wind, unusual-for-Block Island snow, settling in thick blankets on cars and walkways. It is the...
Winter Whining

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 27

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

To the east of my house is a field a handful of us call The Orchard, a place where trees have not grown in my lifetime. They were, I speculate, apples, big enough that my dad and his three older brothers climbed among the branches. Tightrope walking between them may have been in the realm of...
Cold

Martha Ball, Photos by David Hawkins

Fri, Feb 20

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

One of the talk show hosts on WPRO tells a story of being in the newsroom during a storm years ago and the excitement among the less experienced weathermen. One of them ran into the room shouting “It just hit 105 [mph] on Block Island!” That was yesterday; today I am feeling as old as he claims he...
Kodachrome 1965

Martha Ball, Photos by David Hawkins

Fri, Feb 13

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

We had what seemed a routine snow storm in 1965. At the close of the school year, David Hawkins, one of our teachers, treated us to a slide show in lieu of an algebra or science class. He was young, just out of Brown, and he and his wife lived in the Bayside, the lovely white building on the west...
Spatters of salt

Martha Ball

Fri, Feb 6

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

One time not so long ago — and I swear it happened once and only once — I was out in the afternoon, late afternoon ran into early evening, and I suddenly realized I had at home a dog who had been expecting her dinner for over two hours. So, I set an alarm on my phone, allowing me enough time to get...
Before the Storm

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 30

Category:

Columnists, Island Notes

There was a dusting of snow on the ground a few days ago and new snow at first light today, but it quickly devolved into plain old cold winter rain. Yesterday, last Friday, someone who needed to be back by Sunday called for advice about travel plans. I went to the NOAA site; it did not sound bad...
Return of the Manitou

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 23

Category:

Island Notes

The clock on my phone, one of the few in my house not set five — or 10 — minutes early, read 6:59 when I finally pulled myself out of some quickly forgotten dream in which the odd sound of the alarm, set at three different times in consideration of having to make the early boat, had long been...
Piano Moving Day

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 9

Category:

Island Notes

The most wonderful sound in the world on a cold winter morning: the furnace kicking back on after a power outage. It signals not only that the electricity has been restored, but whatever happened did not do something to the electronics of the still almost new burner. The second most wonderful sound...
To the heart of winter

Martha Ball

Fri, Jan 2

Category:

Island Notes

It’s all relative. The windshield wipers on my car are disintegrating. It would have been a dreadful realization had I not first noticed the piece of frayed, fluttering black rubber when I was driving and the wipers were at rest. I thought it was the gasket holding the windshield in place that was...
Glorious Stuff

Martha Ball

Wed, Dec 24

Category:

Island Notes

It was dark and moonless, a circumstance that made the Pesky Pond Troll (PPT) of Clay Head Swamp bask in his invisibility. Unlike Peter Pan, the PPT never managed to lose his shadow, in fact, it was the only thing about him that was visible to human eyes. But, no bright light, no shadow. He’d...
A Living Christmas Card

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 19

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...
Steadfast and True

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 12

Category:

Island Notes

It is only 36 but the wind is not blowing and the moon is almost full and it is not until I return home from the Mansion Beach – low tide empty, the lights of the harbor shining bright — that I realize how cold my ears have become. Somewhere I have a hat... Autumn, my golden dog, is blissful and...
Vintage Patina

Martha Ball

Fri, Dec 5

Category:

Island Notes

Several years ago I had a big dog who needed to be walked on a leash lest he get into mischief. In winter I like to burrow into my multi-layered night time apparel early, and inevitably I would fall asleep in my chair, book fallen to the floor, end of the movie unwatched, and in the early hours of...
Focus

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 21

Category:

Island Notes

I t has been a golden fall, one of more color than I remember, hues lingering well into November. It has been there along the roadsides, on the hills, not only in the usual isolated — and known — locations. Like Lowell’s rarest June day, it “may be had by the poorest comer.” Today, though, it is...
Collective Memory

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 14

Category:

Island Notes

Yesterday’s forecast of rain has been diminished to overcast with a slight chance of a shower and the radar is clear but I walk out into the yard and hear rain drops. It is the moisture that collected on the leaves of the knotweed and pin oak, fog settling and adhering into water which tumbles from...
Reach of the Gale

Martha Ball

Fri, Nov 7

Category:

Island Notes

Last week was one of the worst of any year, that stretch of days leading to the morning the clocks fall back. It is never as bad in reality as in anticipation, come after days of looking at the darkening sky and thinking “next week it will be like this at . . .” The impact was lessened this year by...
Old Post Office

Fri, Oct 31

Category:

Island Notes

The sign on the building reads “Old Post Office” and I am surprised, every time I see it, how quickly the facility that occupied that site for more then three decades has faded from memory. This time I can offer with assurance it is not my aging mind; the building never captured the imagination as...
Bird Heaven

Mon, Oct 27

Category:

Island Notes

Our world was very small when we were children. There was no kindergarten; when I started school I knew two of the other three children, the boys, in my first grade class from Sunday School. The fourth, the other girl in that class, went to the Center Church and was a total stranger. It was not...
Roll Call 2014

Martha Ball

Fri, Oct 17

Category:

Island Notes

It is October at its glorious best, the Virginia creeper that is invisible most of the year is in its season, turning red, the bittersweet on the old shed is bright yellow. There is a maple on the Neck Road, across from the entrance to Mitchell Farm, that is singing, reminding us that it – and a...
Little things

Martha Ball

Mon, Aug 25

Category:

Island Notes

We are past mid-August and everyone is tired and “wanting this to end” and/or longing for a few days rest, but also thinking “where did the summer go?” Weekends are filled with visitors asking, “Is it always this bad?” Over the last weekend the air seemed more than ever filled with the sounds of...
Not a Bad Record

Thu, Aug 14

Category:

Island Notes

After the following was written, I learned onions are not good for dogs. It was, now, a few weeks ago and I can be sure my Autumn suffered no ill effects so it is a story I feel safe telling. ***** There is a partly naked onion on the floor, its darkened skin almost completely detached, all...
Time to rethink

Martha Ball

Sat, Aug 2

Category:

Island Notes

There are days in high summer when the number of cars lining the Neck Road is so such that it is impossible to tally while driving past. Even adhering to the posted speed limit of 25 miles an hour, even creeping more slowly as drivers, as impatient as I would be were I behind me, form a quickly...
Performance Art

Martha Ball

Fri, Jul 25

Category:

Island Notes

These are the days of summer about which we talk, the ones I sometimes think exist only in our memories — or worse, our imaginations. It is breezy and sunny in the morning, settling into beautiful beach weather that leaves the Neck Road lined with cars (160 on the east side only Tuesday). There are...
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...

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