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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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Island Buzz
This weeks Nature Conservancy Schedule
Posted By
The Block Island Times
8/8
Check out this weeks Nature Conservancy Schedule at https:// www.natureblockisland.org
Highland Farm Update
Posted By
Highland Farm Inc.
8/7
Hello Block Islanders! While it has been a troubling spring to say the least, there has never been a better time to do some...
TimberTech by AZEK
Posted By
Riverhead Building Supply
8/4
Riverhead Building Supply offers TimberTech by AZEK Building Products. Click here for the latest collections and styles...
For Sale - Mansion Beach!
Posted By
Ballard Hall Sales Group
7/29
Extraordinary opportunity to own property on Mansion Road on Block Island! Located in very close proximity to Mansion Beach...
Spring 2022 Update
Posted By
Highland Farm Inc.
7/29
Hello all! We are now open for the season, call today to get your orders in! A rriving daily; New inventory of Trees and...
It’s Hydrangea Season at Highland Farm
Posted By
Highland Farm Inc.
7/26
We have reached peak hydrangea season here at Highland Farm. Oak leaf, big leaf, and panicle hydrangeas - in tree or shrub...
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Island Religion
PART 6 PRAYER - Does God hear and answer our prayers?
Posted By
Block Island Christian Fellowship
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PART 5 PRAYER - Does God hear and answer our prayers?
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