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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
Mar122009

Margie gets rid of cast, keeps brace and gets another brace

DateThursday, March 12, 2009 at 11:45PM

Here is the answer to the question that I ended yesterday's post with: Yes! Margie's X-rays showed good progress and she did get her wrist cast removed. Still, she still has a ways to go before her healing is complete.

And when the cast came off, her hand and forearm was dry and itchy.

Here is how it went down: I drove her to the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, where she had to wait just a little bit before going in for X-rays.

I had thought she would have to wait longer, so I left her briefly for a restroom visit. When I returned just minutes later, they had already taken her in.

So I did not get any pictures of the X-ray process.

I was there when the nurse cut off her cast. She said the tongue de-presser was there only for Margie's comfort. "I don't need it," she assured us. "I know what I am doing."

The nurse was right. She cut that cast off and removed it from Margie's wrist with skill and expertise.

Margie had been longing to scratch her hand for weeks and now she could, but it and her full forearm was terribly dry. Her skin was peeling.

She rinsed her hand off and then spent some time studying it.

The break in her kneecap remains significant; in need of a few more weeks time.

She put her knee brace back on.

And then, because her wrist needs protection and support, she got a new brace for it.

Don't worry. She does not need to be in a wheelchair now. It's just that it got hard for her, walking through the hospital. So I wheeled her here and I wheeled her there, then finally I wheeled her to the door, where she got out and walked to the curb.

There, I picked her up in the Escape.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment1 Comment |
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Reader Comments (1)

I am glad to hear that Aunt Margie is also recovering quick! I will check the other blog now. It has been sometime now, I am quite out of track with the blogs :( bad internet for 2 months, pending stuff etc.

April 1, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterVijay

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