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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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Thursday
Oct302008

Wasilla: Birthday party, curious cat, curious baby; New York City: Sarcophagus and kids

DateThursday, October 30, 2008 at 12:02AM

Today was Lavina's birthday. No, despite the number of "candles," my daughter-in-law did not turn five, but 27 - I think. I could ask her, but she and Kalib have already gone to bed. As for the candles, we did not have any, so we used matches instead. Now you know why there are only five and not 27. Just imagine the difficulties we would have faced if we had tried to light 27 matches on Lavina's cake, all at once.

Earlier in the day, Kalib had found something mighty interesting in the box. Martigny was riveted by something outside. We never did figure out what. We looked through the windows and could not see it. Margie even went outside to check it out. Not a clue.

Two boys and an Egyptian sarcophagus - the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. It is late and right now I am just too tired to carry out the plan that I laid out last night. In fact, I edited and prepared several pictures from my walk through the museum to put into this entry, but, with the exception of this one, I will save them for tomorrow.

Also, I took a number of pictures as I wandered about Wasilla today, but I am too tired to bother with any of them, save for the two above. As for my plan to include a few of the Wasilla images that I took to New York in each entry until I am finished with this trip to New York, yes, I am too tired to do that tonight as well.

But with Wasilla images in this entry, and one from New York, I am keeping to the spirit of my plan, if not the letter.

All the images in this entry were shot with the Canon Powershot G9 point and shoot pocket camera. I am trying to decide whether or not I should get the new G10.

 

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