Skip to main content area
Visitor Info
Dining
Transportation
New England Airlines
Pt. Judith Ferry
New London Ferry
Montauk Ferry
Getting Married?
News
B.I. Wind Farm
Opinion
Letters
Editorials
Featured Letters
Editorial Cartoon
Columnists
The Bird Corner
Gardening Times
Gardening Report
Island Notes
Loose ends
The Ferry Dock Scribbler
Ocean Views
Publisher's Notes
From the Desk of the Editor
Trips Abroad
Fishing Report
Tails from Beacon Hollow Farm
The Solar Report
Video
Writ & Wisdom
Inactive Columns
Features
Dish off the Block
Order This
Book Review
Community
On the Block
Off the Block
All Around the Block
Tricky Times
School Menu
Town Meeting Schedule
Medical Center Schedule
Religious Services
Legal Notices
Announcements
Weddings & Engagements
Births
Anniversaries
Obituaries
Sections
Visitor Info
Dining
Transportation
- New England Airlines
- Pt. Judith Ferry
- New London Ferry
- Montauk Ferry
Getting Married?
News
B.I. Wind Farm
- B.I. Times archive
- National archive
Opinion
- Letters
- Editorials
- Featured Letters
- Editorial Cartoon
Columnists
- The Bird Corner
- Gardening Times
- Gardening Report
- Island Notes
- Loose ends
- The Ferry Dock Scribbler
- Ocean Views
- Publisher's Notes
- From the Desk of the Editor
- Trips Abroad
- Fishing Report
- Tails from Beacon Hollow Farm
- The Solar Report
- Video
- Writ & Wisdom
- Inactive Columns
Features
- Dish off the Block
- Order This
- Book Review
Community
- On the Block
- Off the Block
- All Around the Block
- Tricky Times
- School Menu
- Town Meeting Schedule
- Medical Center Schedule
- Religious Services
- Legal Notices
Announcements
- Weddings & Engagements
- Births
- Anniversaries
- Obituaries
Resources
Home
Opinion
Columnists
Features
Community
Births
Weddings & Engagements
Anniversaries
Obituaries
Tides
Yellow Pages
Calendar
Real Estate
Classifieds
e-Edition
Subscribe
Photo Galleries
Visitor Information
Dining Guide
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Enter your keywords
BIT SubMain Menu
Home
Classifieds
e-Edition
Subscribe
Login
You are here
Home
»
Columnists
Island Notes
Happenstance
Martha Ball
Fri, Jun 23
Category:
Island Notes
In a small town things have a way of intersecting. I read a restaurant review of Breakfast at Ernie's and thought how happy my father would be to know another generation was carrying on the tradition in which he had such faith so many years ago. It happened to be the weekend of Father's Day and in...
June
Martha Ball
Fri, Jun 16
Category:
Island Notes
The heat came back and with it the June bugs, the air-borne, armored, harmless but annoying creatures that fly through open windows, buzzing about aimlessly until I feel a touch, the slightest weight of one landed on my head, in my hair. Then, all bets are off and the little tank of a beast is...
Sunshine Afternoon
Martha Ball
Fri, Jun 9
Category:
Island Notes
It is June and, when I am home, I leave the front doors, living room, hall, and entry all wide open. My springtime expectation of birds flying into the house, confused by plentiful natural light within, has not been much realized this year, although the season is new. A nest was begun in a corner...
Waiting for Summer
Martha Ball
Fri, Jun 2
Category:
Island Notes
This past weekend I somewhere read that among the reasons May 30 was chosen for Memorial Day, before the Uniform Holiday Act relegated it to a Monday, was the fact that flowers were in fullest bloom. It is a harsh reality of the start of every June, that grasses, where allowed, have grown tall and...
At the Harbor
Martha Ball
Fri, May 19
Category:
Island Notes
The rain has stopped, and with hanging sheets on the line I think of my mother saying this was the time to spread white linens on new grass to brighten them. Then I realize I feel the strength of the spring sun on my face from an hour spent beside the water yesterday afternoon. The work on the Old...
It’s An Island
Martha Ball
Fri, May 12
Category:
Island Notes
The last few years the prevalent theme of my columns written in early May has been centered on green and gray, underscored with a protest that it should not be this way. My easily recalled memories of the start of this month are all golden sunshine, long afternoons and verdant hills. While I do not...
Sirens in the Sea
Martha Ball
Fri, May 5
Category:
Island Notes
Monday was reminiscent of one of those Easters when we have to take on faith that there is a sun rising from the ocean out behind the clouds, easy enough when our imagining is buoyed by ambient light growing as we let slip our hope for a ray of gold to gild the sky and show us that morning truly...
Heavy at Times
Martha Ball
Fri, Apr 28
Category:
Island Notes
We live in a small town, some of us have always lived in this small town, I think when crossing paths with someone, a younger brother of a classmate who will always be that, no matter that he is long grown, with a son of his own now in college. “Heavy at times” he remarks, a nod at the gentle rain...
From the Bayside
Martha Ball
Fri, Apr 21
Category:
Island Notes
The poet who gave us “what is so rare as a day in June... ” called that month the “high-tide of the year” — which seems apt early in that month, when the days are still lengthening and tall grasses are just beginning to go to seed, when the beach roses blanket the dunes, and a lingering pale sky...
Look-at-me-yellow
Martha Ball
Fri, Apr 14
Category:
Island Notes
My forsythia needs more attention than I have been willing to give it. The roots are old, the flowering shrub sprung from them has soared back toward the sun after several severe cuttings over the years. It always grew at an absurdly rapid pace, tall and lush, scraping the old wooden gutters that...
Rite of Passage
Martha Ball
Fri, Apr 7
Category:
Island Notes
And so we come into April with great winds and high seas. The rains are heavy, with nothing of sweet spring showers about them. There are no boats today; tomorrow, April 2, in 1980 the spare notation in my mother's hand does not include a name but it was likely the Manitou, intrepid little vessel...
Moving Into April
Martha Ball
Fri, Mar 31
Category:
Island Notes
Last night, after the final downstairs lights had been extinguished, I thought to look south, and for it saw a faint edge of a haze beyond an empty space I still call “The Mansion” after the grand structure that burned 51 years ago this spring. A story higher, even an old-house-story-higher,...
Outside my own memory
Martha Ball
Fri, Mar 24
Category:
Island Notes
A search for a particular postcard rarely ends with my putting my hand on the image I had in mind to start. It began with a thought of the Public Market, the brick-faced store on Dodge Street that was, when I was a child, truly a food market, one of two year-round groceries on the island. For a...
White Board Down
Martha Ball
Fri, Mar 17
Category:
Island Notes
A single white board lies on the grass, lifted out of the slots of the two uprights that support it, forming a new sort of an old fashioned bar-way, a single piece of wood barring entry through a gap in a stone wall. It is just there and I have to presume it is a leftover of yesterday's great wind...
On Big Dog Paws
Martha Ball
Fri, Mar 3
Category:
Island Notes
The first day of March comes in like a lamb, the morning filled with birdsong and fog. I look out to the south, to my measure of visibility, and see, as I can in all but the heaviest snows and thickest mist, the shape of the farm buildings on the far side of the one-time pasture. They stand, from...
Washington's Birthday
Martha Ball
Fri, Feb 24
Category:
Island Notes
Snow chased my dreams. It is rare I remember these stories my mind tells while I sleep, rarer, still, that they are more than scraps, jumbled snapshots, overlapping, utterly confusing seasons and places and decades. This one, or a segment thereof, fell into current time and place, a snow come...
Spot of Hope
Martha Ball
Fri, Feb 17
Category:
Island Notes
The sun is moving out of its winter home in the south. First light falls differently in different seasons and now it comes through the more southern of the east windows in the ell of my house, in the room where I sleep. It rises, visibly, from the ocean, at the edge of one of the places where the...
Happiness
J.V. Houlihan, Jr.
Sun, Feb 12
Category:
Island Notes
,
The Ferry Dock Scribbler
An old Chinese proverb:
If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a month, get married. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody else.
Yeah, I know,...
Before the storm
Martha Ball
Fri, Feb 10
Category:
Island Notes
I t is unseasonably warm, 50 degrees and sunny, a day I have twice caught myself leaving my coat on the car seat as I walk away wearing a sweater that is more a weight for spring and fall than winter. The ground is slightly soft from yesterday's rain but there has been no deep frost and no mud...
Reaching for the sun
Martha Ball
Fri, Feb 3
Category:
Island Notes
It is the last day of January and it is snowing softly in mid-afternoon, wreaking far more havoc on the mainland — where multiple crashes are being reported on the highway — than on Block Island — where the distant horizon moves between sharp and fuzzy and back again. It does not promise to be much...
Inflexible spirit
Martha Ball
Fri, Jan 27
Category:
Island Notes
The week began with rain shifting from drizzle to downpour and back but with a hard, steady, wind, the blast of winter that roils the sea and keeps the boat in port for two days in a row and even kept the planes on the ground for a part of the time. The wind slammed in from the east and northeast,...
January Road
Martha Ball
Fri, Jan 20
Category:
Island Notes
There was an after the storm lull this morning, a moment of near calm, in which the sound of the ocean, a muted surf, rolled up from the beach. When I opened the west-facing front door to let Autumn out I was met with the distant beep-beep of a truck backing up, an early visitor to the dump/...
Without the Sound
Martha Ball
Fri, Jan 6
Category:
Island Notes
The rain has abated at last, the drizzle that began yesterday as we approached the big church on Chapel Street to attend a funeral dreaded for the fact of it marking the end of a life cut too short. It proved to be quite beautiful in its celebration, filled with both ritual and simplicity, with the...
The tractor, 25 years later
Martha Ball
Fri, Dec 30
Category:
Island Notes
Twenty-five years ago I submitted a handful of short pieces of writing to Peter Wood, then Editor/Publisher of
The Block Island Times
. The first he used was my recollection of sitting, with my niece from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, on the old cistern cover in the back yard. The neighbor was...
Winter Sun
Martha Ball
Fri, Dec 23
Category:
Island Notes
It is, technically, the last day of fall, sunnier and calmer than forecast. On the other side of the year we have an abundance, nay, an embarrassment, of light, come so early and staying so late I wonder how anyone can function more to the north than we. Now, the length of day in Anchorage is three...
From the Lighthouse
Martha Ball
Fri, Dec 16
Category:
Columnists
,
Island Notes
It has been too long since I have been to the lighthouse, the grand gothic structure sitting on the bluff high above the ocean. It is never far removed from my life; it is visible from my house, a silhouette on the crest of the land in day, a faint green blink at night. The structure, all two...
On a distant hill
Martha Ball
Fri, Dec 9
Category:
Island Notes
It rained through the night, battering the east windows, and the wind howled its winter banshee wail. It sounded cold so it felt cold, but did not make me think beyond reaching in the dark for the comforter that has been waiting, patiently, at the foot of my bed. There was an odd noise, continuing...
Displaced Autumn
Martha Ball
Fri, Dec 2
Category:
Island Notes
In the damp, sun-deprived days of late fall and early winter — and in winter's cold — I sometimes walk into my kitchen solely to feel the sun pouring through the south facing windows. Of late, at a certain time of day, that short trip involves stepping over a big golden dog who lies in the pool of...
Postcards from the edge
Martha Ball
Wed, Nov 23
Category:
Island Notes
For the holidays, postcard images from half a century ago, showing Block Island, still the sleepy little town time almost forgot, when a few cars constituted a busy summer day and views were wide and open. The same things were advertised as are today, “...
Surrounded by the Sea
Martha Ball
Fri, Nov 18
Category:
Island Notes
We live surrounded by the sea, we hear the sound of it in the dark and feel its dampness on the raw east wind. We smell it when it is filled with sea weed and roiled by a storm passing off to the east, we taste it on our skin when we walk too close to its salty mist. We see more or less of it...
Such great hope
Martha Ball
Fri, Nov 11
Category:
Island Notes
The morning dawned bright after a long dark night, the sky and sea spread with the same rose gold, a vibrant and hopeful color reflected in the flat calm surface of the big pond behind my house, emerged in early November from its cover of summer greenery. I wondered at it for a bit, even thought of...
Bells
Martha Ball
Fri, Nov 4
Category:
Island Notes
W e are in that time in the fall when first morning sun is still too far to the east to spill through the south-facing kitchen windows and provide that flood of sunlight that is the saving grace of those cold winter days when it is warmer when I come downstairs than it is in early November. By noon...
117 and counting
Martha Ball
Fri, Oct 28
Category:
Island Notes
T oday, it is likely more people know — or have some vague familiarity with — the quote “justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream” from the extraordinary speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington DC on a hot summer day more than 50 years ago, than from...
October's Offering
Martha Ball
Fri, Oct 21
Category:
Columnists
,
Island Notes
It is one of those October days that is the reminder that comes every year and every year comes as a blessing. These are days — I am sure I have written other Octobers — of miracle and wonder. By week's end we will have slipped into the darkening world of sunrises after 7 a.m. and sunsets before 6...
Storms of Autumn
Martha Ball
Fri, Oct 14
Category:
Island Notes
Three years ago, Autumn was a fluffy puppy and I was acutely attuned to the weather, or more precisely, to the possibility of rain that had not fallen for nearly a month. It stayed warm and dry, open door weather deep into October, even as the inevitable darkness strengthened and with it that sense...
Fallen Butterfly
Martha Ball
Sun, Oct 9
Category:
Island Notes
F or a moment it seemed as though Autumn, my sweet golden dog, had finally come to the realization that the vacuum cleaner is not a beast with its own mind and energies, one bound and determined to attack her. At some point in her growing and shedding youth, I merely pushed it to the side of the...
Autumn Gold
Martha Ball
Fri, Sep 23
Category:
Island Notes
One poor pair of socks wasn’t quite dry when I brought laundry in some time last week. “Tomorrow,” I thought, knowing I’d likely forget. They are there yet, two socks made of material that cannot fade in the sun or be harmed by rounds of heavy rain. My yard is a jungle. At first I try to tell...
Softer Season
Martha Ball
Fri, Sep 16
Category:
Island Notes
Fifteen years it has been since the towers fell. The sky is as beautiful as it was that terrible week, the blue it so often is in September. It is more the norm than not, cyclical, as is so much in nature, this azure that often returns, a repeat of what we could only call “insidious,” as it was cut...
Storm Fatigue
Martha Ball
Fri, Sep 9
Category:
Island Notes
Suddenly, after days of ever-changing tropical storm advisories and screaming red banners on the weather sites, shifting from one to three to one to four days in length, even the fear-mongering ratings seekers have surrendered. All warnings and watches have been cancelled, the only tag remaining a...
Hat on a Hydrant
Martha Ball
Fri, Sep 2
Category:
Island Notes
There was a gentle breeze this morning, the east wind that blows harsh and heavy in the winter bringing a welcome cooling change in late August. The sun has come around, I realized a few days ago when my house was unseasonably warm, more than it had been, when I came home as afternoon wound to...
Tipping
Martha Ball
Fri, Aug 26
Category:
Island Notes
Yesterday, Monday, was not a good day on “my” corner in town. I went out the door of the gallery I tend just after noon, absolutely sure of the time as I was running close to the edge of being two hours parked in the little lot below the church, the green spot named not for the great-great...
Last week, this week
Martha Ball
Fri, Aug 19
Category:
Island Notes
It is August hot on Block Island, the weather cycle everyone seems to forget exists. I forgot, until several years ago, going back through August columns, I found a recurring thread of hot, muggy, foggy, damp, doors swollen by the moisture in the air, coming back from the morning beach dripping wet...
Royal Weed
Martha Ball
Fri, Aug 12
Category:
Island Notes
Today the sun shone and people thronged to the beach. There are but a few days a year traffic is so crazily busy on the Mansion Road, and the upper and lower lots are almost impassable for all the cars parked in whatever way they can fit. This was one of those days, I realized when part way to Corn...
Day Is Done
Martha Ball
Fri, Aug 5
Category:
News
,
Island Notes
There is but a band of pink above a line of white clouds in the blue sky to the east, a remnant of the sunset, but it is after eight and it is August. The big high speed flies by, seeming to move faster than in full light, as though there is nothing left for it to do but zip back to the mainland...
Summer Weekend
Martha Ball
Fri, Jul 29
Category:
Island Notes
The week preceding the fourth Saturday of July, the long-standing date of the Harbor Church Fair and Auction, is always one of conflicting schedules and heated humidity and time racing even faster than its usual summer pace. Friday night I was hot and tired and, knowing I had to be up especially...
Green Light Still Gone
Martha Ball
Fri, Jul 22
Category:
Island Notes
It is a lovely night, cool and still; the only sound when I lean out the open window is of crickets in the tall grass. The moon is big and round and white after climbing up from behind layers of clouds in the east. Autumn will surely arise, as she has been doing the past few nights, and rouse me...
Back in the 60s
Martha Ball
Fri, Jul 15
Category:
Island Notes
Sunday morning, listening to the latest terrible news, it seemed years since July 4th, then not even a full seven days past. This time the sensationalist headlines did not need padding to scream; it had been a week of bloodshed. I thought in passing it was feeling more and more like the 1960s. A...
On the Other Side
Martha Ball
Fri, Jul 8
Category:
Island Notes
We’ve come out on the other side of another Fourth of July holiday, fallen on a Monday by coincidence this year. We became a Fourth of July “destination” long ago. The harbors begin filling with largely white boats jockeying for position days before the holiday. I watch the Salt Pond from the Neck...
Miles to go
Martha Ball
Fri, Jul 1
Category:
Island Notes
There are many more miles to go before anyone involved in the Deepwater Wind project sleeps, but major milestones have been reached. A week ago I was watching the progress of
Big Max
, the cable laying barge, creeping offshore, from the gap south of Clay Head to disappear behind the low...
Solstice
Martha Ball
Fri, Jun 24
Category:
News
,
Island Notes
Today the summer solstice and the full moon coincide, the headlines declare, an event that has not occurred since 1948. Or 1967. Or 1986. It is one of those black holes of
Man v. Nature
into which I too easily and too often tumble. It is like the calendar, an attempt by man to define...
Pages
« first
‹ previous
…
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
next ›
last »
Island Buzz
This weeks Nature Conservancy Schedule
Posted By
The Block Island Times
8/12
Check out this weeks Nature Conservancy Schedule at https:// www.natureblockisland.org
TimberTech by AZEK
Posted By
Riverhead Building Supply
8/11
Riverhead Building Supply offers TimberTech by AZEK Building Products. Click here for the latest collections and styles...
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...
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...
Receive our weekly email-letters!
Email Address
Email Type
Weekly Features-letter
Weekly News-letter
Breaking News
Tweets by BITimes
Real Estate
1,500,000
1645 off Southeast Road, Block Island, RI 02807
Lila Delman Real Estate
This distinctive property overlooks southeast’s, Cat Rock Cove and its unique character and...
349,000
West Side Sunset lot
Beach Real Estate
Imagine beautiful Block Island Sunsets from your own front yard! Lovely rolling 2.5 acre lot on...
1,100,000
Sheep’s Meadow Cottage
Sullivan Sotheby's International Realty
Once in a blue moon does a summer cottage come on the market in the coveted location of Sheep's...
3,500,000
Holiday Haven on Center Road
Ballard Hall Sales Group
The opportunity to own a property like "Holiday Haven" does not happen very often. Built in 1884 by...
1,750,000
SOLD 3-Family Home off Old Town Road
Ballard Hall Sales Group
SOLD JUNE 2022: Circa 1880, traditional in style, but converted into three apartments, this...
985,000
72 West Side Road, Unit 4 at Salt Pond Settlement, Block Island, RI 02807
Lila Delman Real Estate
SOLD Come and go as you please with simple, stress free condominium/townhouse living at Block...
3,650,000
1357 Black Rock Road, Block Island, RI 02807
Lila Delman Real Estate
You may believe that you are on the shores of Ireland, but this home sits in the very private,...
2,900,000
1052 Spring Street, Block Island, RI 02807
Lila Delman Real Estate
Amazing views of the Atlantic, breathtaking sunrises in the mornings and otherworldly visions of...
Island Religion
PART 7 PRAYERS - Does God hear and answer our prayers?
Posted By
Block Island Christian Fellowship
8/10
PART 7 PRAYER 7 Before We Ask God for Anything, What Should Be the Basis of Our Prayers? Have you ever attempted to pray and...
PART 6 PRAYER - Does God hear and answer our prayers?
Posted By
Block Island Christian Fellowship
8/2
PART 6 PRAYER 6 When, How Long, and What Did the Assembly of the Saints in the Early Church Pray for? Here are some...
PART 5 PRAYER - Does God hear and answer our prayers?
Posted By
Block Island Christian Fellowship
7/26
PART 5 PRAYER 5 When, How Long, and What Did the Leadership in the Early Church Pray for? Now that we’ve just learned about...