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A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

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Wasilla

Wasilla is the place where I have lived for the past 29 years - sort of. The house in which my wife and I raised our family sits here, but I have made my rather odd career as a different sort of photojournalist by continually wandering off to other places to photograph people and gather information, which I have then put together in various publications that have served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities.

Although I did not have a great of free time to devote to this rather strange community, named after a Tanaina Athabascan Indian chief who knew Wasilla in the way that I so impossibly long to, I have still documented it regularly over the past quarter-century plus. In the early days, my Wasilla photographs focused mostly upon my children and the events they participated in - baseball, football, figure skating, hockey, frog catching, fire cracker detonation, Fourth of July parade - that sort of thing. 

In 2002, I purchased my first digital camera and then, whenever I was home, I began to photograph Wasilla upon a daily basis, but not in a conventional way. These were grab shots - whatever caught my eye as I took my many long walks or drove through the town, shooting through the car window at people and scenes that appeared and disappeared before I could even focus and compose in the traditional photographic way.

Thus, the Wasilla portion of this blog will be devoted both to the images that I take as I wander about and those that I have taken in the past. Despite the odd, random, nature of the images, I believe they communicate something powerful about this town that I have never seen expressed anywhere else. 

Wasilla is a sprawling community that has been slapped down hodge-podge upon what was so recently wilderness of the most exquisite beauty. In its design, it is deliberately anti-zoned, anti-planned. In the building of Wasilla, the desire to make a buck has trumped aesthetics and all other considerations. This town, built in the midst of exquisite beauty, has largely become an unsightly, unattractive, mess of urban sprawl. Largely because of this, it often seems to me that Wasilla is a community with no sense of community, a town devoid of town soul.

Yet - Wasilla is my home and if I am lucky it will be until I grow old and die. Despite its horrific failings, it is still made of the stuff of any small city: people; moms and dads, grammas and grampas, teens, children, churches, bars, professionals, laborers, soldiers, missionaries, artists, athletes, geniuses, do-gooders, hoodlums, the wealthy, the homeless, the rational and logical, the slightly insane and the wholly insane - and, yes, as is now obvious to the whole world, politicians, too.

So perhaps, if one were to search hard enough, it might just be possible to find a sense of community here, and a town soul. So, using my skills as a photojournalist and a writer, I hope to do just that. If this place has a sense of community, I will find it. If there is a town soul to Wasilla, I will document it. I won't compete with the newspapers. Hell no! But as time and income allow, it will be fun to wander into the places where the folks described above gather, and then put what I find on this blog.

 

by 300...

Anywhere within a 300 mile radius of Wasilla. This encompasses perhaps the most wild, dramatic, gorgeous, beautiful section of land and sea to be found in any comparable space anywhere on Earth. I can never explore it all, but I will do the best that I can, and will here share what I find and experience with you.  

and then some...

Anywhere else in the world that I happen to get to, such as Point Lay, Alaska; Missoula, Montana; Serenki, Chukotka, Russia; or Bangalore, India. Perhaps even Lagos, Nigeria. I have both a desire and scheme to get me there. It is a long shot. We shall see if I succeed.

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« Physically fit and mentally alert, Gwich'in Matriarch Hannah Solomon Celebrates her 100th birthday | Main | I drive to the 100th birthday party for Hannah Solomon, a beloved matriarch of the Gwich'in Nation »
Wednesday
Oct152008

100th birthday party post under construction, but am experiencing technical problems with Squarespace, the host for this blog

DateWednesday, October 15, 2008 at 12:11AM

Folks, if any of you come back looking for Hannah's 100th birthday party before I can successfully post it, please know that I am working on it. Unfortunately, although it comes with very nice possibilities, this online Squarespace program that I am using to host this blog can also be a glitch-filled nightmare.

Tonight it is a nightmare. As I would have done any other night, I placed three of the birthday photos, along with text, in the entry that is supposed to be here. On pictures two and three, I had to repeat the final placement action two or three times, but I did succeed.

Then, on the fourth photo, no matter how many times I tried, the online program would not complete the action. It is the same final action that was necessary to place all the photos that appear elsewhere in this blog. I spent close to half-an-hour trying to place that photo alone. I closed and restarted the program - all to no avail. As there are several more photos left to place and I simply cannot keep wasting this kind of time, I had to stop. I will try again tomorrow. Maybe it will work better then.

The frustrating thing is, I keep another blog on Google's blogspot, which is 100 percent free, and I never encounter the kind of glitches that I do on this one, which I pay for. As I have begun this blog here, and the pictures display a bit larger, and the program, once I master it, and if Squarespace works these horrible glitches out of it, seems to have more potential, I want to keep it here.

But I might give up, and move it elsewhere if these kind of problems persist. 

Anyway, come back Wednesday night or Thursday and see if I have been able to finish the post.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comments Off |

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Reader Comments (2)

Oh, dear, so sorry about the posting problems. I will return tomorrow to see the birthday pictures. You went a long way in awful weather to get there!

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterNina

I soooo understand I would just move on.
also take some time and do code if your really interested,
Dreamweaver can also be helpful to get you through problems
when other peoples Java is letting you down.

By the way you do really nice work

October 20, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterAdmirer
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