The Point Judith - Block Island ferry, having just delivered me to the island, is moored in Old Harbor, Block Island, loading passengers and vehicles for the return trip.
This is a view of "downtown" Block Island taken from the upper deck of the ferry in Old Harbor. The white building to the right is the 19th century National Hotel.
As I walk down Ocean Avenue toward the radio tower, I am stuck by the utter silence of the place except for myriad bird calls and the distant roar of the ocean. It never gets so quiet where I live, not even in the dead of night. It's 10:15 A.M. here, but it's March, and most of the island is still shuttered. Less than a thousand people live on Block Island year round.
Block Island has the highest electric rates of any place in the continental United States. There are no power lines from "America", as the locals call the mainland, and the only commercial power on the island comes from diesel generators. More than a few residents balk at paying the power company and use windmills; this one is perhaps the most prominent. Its capacity is ten kilowatts, I'm told.
Ocean Avenue curves to the right as I approach the tower site. The gray building ahead is the local hardware store, owned, I am told, by a couple who played a prominent role in the founding of Home Depot.
And here is the tower. The dark colored balls at the top are elements of an antenna shared by the island's two radio stations: classical WCRI 95.9 and jazz WJZS 99.3. The two dish antennas carry programming for WJZS from studios in Newport, 25 miles away. The rest of what you see are all cellular telephone antennas.
This is WCRI. The station is programmed by a computer in the center rack (you may be able to make out an LCD monitor); the transmitter is the tall white box to the left of the rack. Further to the left, topped by three copper fittings, is part of a device called a combiner that allows the two radio stations to feed a shared antenna. WJZS's equipment is out of the picture to the left. The thin box standing on its side on the floor at the extreme right is a spare satellite receiver I brought with me; as it turned out, I didn't need it.
This is the satellite dish through which WCRI receives programming from WCRB in Waltham. The little white thing at the tip of the feedhorn, with the cable coming out of it, is called a "low noise block downconverter"; it is bad and needs replacement. Oh, joy.
Standing on top of a ladder to unfasten and replace the low noise block downconverter, I look out at the surrounding countryside. To the left some of the guy wires holding up the tower can be seen; they are attached to a big block of concrete buried in the swamp. Getting permission to put a block of concrete in wetlands was one of the reasons this tower took two years to build; it was finished in August, 2001.
This is a salt water inlet, part of what the locals call the Great Salt Pond. About 150 years ago a channel was dug from the Pond to the sea, and it is called New Harbor now. In the summer a ferry runs to New Harbor from Montauk on Long Island, about 13 miles away.
This is Ocean Avenue, looking toward "downtown". The hardware store is visible in the distance on the right.
There are many interesting 19th century homes on Block Island; this one is on Ocean Avenue near the hardware store.
Town Beach, off Corn Neck Road, will be crowded with swimmers in a few weeks. The view is to the north; the ferry from Point Judith runs right past the cliffs in the distance.
Water Street at Old Harbor is the heart of "downtown" Block Island. The buildings all seem to date from the late nineteenth century, and the locals do not permit anything to be built here unless it is in a similar style. Even the prefabricated transmitter huts at the tower site had to be so styled.
From the upper deck of the departing ferry, the National Hotel, Old Harbor, and Town Beach are visible. This was a perfect day to visit; I wish I could have stayed longer.
The dead low noise block downconverter sits on top of the spare satellite receiver on the floor of my computer room at home.