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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
Nov132008

Sarah Palin keeps popping up on the TV, dogs, cat, fourwheeler, boy, house, library at sunset

DateThursday, November 13, 2008 at 12:12AM

Everytime I came within sight of a TV today, Governor Palin was on it. One thing that I find a little odd is that since I came to Alaska nearly three decades okay, I have met every governor, except one; I have photographed every governor for publication, except one; I have interviewed the majority of the governors.

Of course you figured it out. The one governor that I have not met, photographed or interviewed is Sarah Palin, the one who lives in the same town as me, the one whose father was a substitute teacher to my own children.

When I got the idea for this blog, I did not even think about Governor Sarah Palin, only about documenting life in Wasilla, getting to know my community a little better while still getting away from it from time to time, and of experimenting to see if I could create a new kind of platform for my work, which has always been print based.

So, I thought that one day, when the time was right and I had the time, I would start the blog. Then Governor Palin became VP candidate Palin, and even though the time was still not right and I had very little time to spare, I decided I had to launch.

I suppose it is inevitable that I will photograph her one day. Perhaps I will interview her, too. True, I voted for Barack Obama and there was much about Governor Palin's campaign that greatly disturbed me, but the Anchorage Daily News endorsed Obama-Biden and she still gave them an interview, just the other day, when she let them into her house as she prepared dinner.

Here are some other Wasilla scenes that I saw today, when I was out and about without a TV in front of me:

 

Man riding a four-wheeler.

Charlie, the frisky pup who I first met yesterday.

Charlie again.

Varmit, the tiny cat who hangs with Dan, a camera-shy but friendly disabled veteran who I often talk to when I go walking.

Another dog.

An under-construction house in upper Serendipity. This just makes me sad. For over 20 years, these woods were mine, and I was not in the field, I was in them daily, walking, skiing, mountain biking. Then this damn Serendipity development comes along and now I must stay out of the woods, walk on roads, with houses all about. There is no place to pee. Back then, a person could pee anyplace he felt like.

A boy in the post office. His mother has dropped something on the floor. They looked good together and I wanted to photograph them together, but by the time she picked whatever it was she dropped up, I was being waited on, and had to give my full attention to the clerk.

The Wasilla Library, as I found it when I came out of the post office at 4:30. I heard this library mentioned by Governor Palin a number of times on the TV over the past couple of days. She cited it as an example of the absurdity of all the untruths circulated about her during the campaign. One of the rumors that she cited was the falsehood that she had banned books - even Harry Potter - from this library.

As I recall, she never did ban a book, but she was reported to have asked the librarian if she would be willing to ban books. The librarian said, 'no.' Sarah Palin fired her. This resulted in a community uproar and Sarah Palin hired the librarian back. No books were ever banned. 

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Reader Comments (2)

HEY, I got this site from your NYMAG comment. Awesome, beautiful photos. It seems like you have one of those really cool, laid back fantasy lives that we city dwellers secretly dream of running away to Like something out of a Annie Proulx novel (but without all the misery...if that makes sense.) I love this!

There's plenty of us who know very well that SP does NOT rep every Alaskan--sorry that you have to have this one person be the thing everyone will think of when they hear "Wasilla".

Hey, if I ever go nuts and need to "run away", can I swing by Wasilla and share a drink w/you???

peace & love, rr!!

November 13, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterrebeccarose2004

Sure, Rebecca, swing by any time. We will go out on the town! Wasilla town!

November 14, 2008 | Registered CommenterWasilla, Alaska, by 300
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