A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

All photos and text © Bill Hess, unless otherwise noted 
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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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Sunday
Mar082009

Coming home from Iditarod: big cone, little cone; instead of the promised dogs, you will find a cat (the promise is not broken, just delayed)

On the way home from the Iditarod restart in Willow, where I did indeed photograph a few dogs and people too, I got a hankering for an ice cream cone from Miller's - vanilla, dipped in chocolate. 

So I stopped and got one and this is it.

As for the big cone in the background, that is Miller's "billboard." Not so many years ago, it was declared illegal under Alaska's billboard law.

When you drive the limited highways of our beautiful state, you do not see billboards, because they are illegal. Against Alaska, they are officially deemed to be an ugly blight.

One day, someone passing by Miller's decided that the cone, which had beckoned passers by for untold centuries, was a billboard. So they were ordered to remove it.

I stopped in a bit afterward, and the guy who owns Miller's was not happy. He was angry.

The cone disappeared for just a little while after that, but then it came back, closer to the store.

I think that's how they got around the billboard law, by moving it close to the store.

I don't know for certain, that's just what I surmise.

Yes, I had planned to put dogs on this blog tonight, and instead, here is a cat, Juniper, formerly known as Deborah by Default and then, for just a little while, as Jubilee. 

And this why the dogs have to wait.

I arrived home from the Iditarod about 5:00 PM and found both of my daughters here, along with Juniper.

So, instead of downloading my pictures, editing them, preparing them and blogging them, I hung out with my daughters and the cat.

Now, it is just too late to do all that editing, preparing and placing. Thank's to the fact that we went on Daylight Savings Time today, it is even later than it is.

And I am even more tired than I am - so the dogs will have to wait another day.

As for the cat and the daughters, they wanted to go out for coffee. For Lisa, that usually means Kaladi Brothers, but they do not allow cats inside Kaladi Brothers and she did not want to leave her cherished buddy in the car, so we decided to go to a Kiosk.

We were headed to Mocha Moose, also known as "Palin Fever," but the daughters decided that we should try a kiosk that we had never been to before.

So I head toward one and they said, "not that one," because it was too close to the house.

"You need to broaden your horizons, Dad," Melanie said. 

So I picked one out that I had never been to that was many miles away but when we got there, it was closed, too.

From there, we drove past a few that we were already familiar with and then the daughters suggested that we head down Knik Road. We did. The first kiosk that we came upon was closed. Melanie was certain the next would be open. It too was closed.

She then spoke of a kiosk on a certain corner - she said that was the original kiosk, the kiosk of all kiosks and it would be open because it is always open.

So I drove there. There was a sign on the door... "We closed at 4:00 PM today. Sorry for the inconvenience," or something close to that.

Well, we tried at least five more and they were all closed, so we wound up at Mocha Moose, anyway.

As you can see, Juniper had the cash, so she bought.

She was also the source of a fair amount of contention. Lisa's boyfriend and co-caretaker of Juniper originally did not like the name. After suffering some confusion and consternation, the name "Jubilee" materialized from somewhere and so that is what she was going to be named.

Then Bryce decided that he liked the name, "Juniper," after all.

So the cat is now "Juniper."

However, Melanie now claims that she had planned all along to name her first daughter "Juniper." "I can't name my daughter Juniper if your cat is already Juniper!" she scolded. "And its your fault, Dad, for putting the story in your blog. I liked "Jubilee."

"Yeah? Well, Lavina is always calling Kalib 'Muzzy,' and it works out okay."

And that's how life is around here.

Before the trio left, Juniper got to see an adolescent moose run across the back yard. "That's her first moose," Lisa said proudly.

Of course, we don't really know that. No telling what wonders Juniper saw in the ten months of her life that transpired before she came into ours.

Come back tomorrow for some real Iditarod pictures. I am pretty sure I will post them tomorrow.

 

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Reader Comments (2)

no billboards here either. we don't do daylight saving time though - we have plenty of that. Juniper is a fine name - for a fine feline. she appears to be so well-behaved in the automobile! our cats have to be inside a well-fastened container to travel on wheels - they tend to climb into the driver's hair with claws unsheathed otherwise... random trivia: did you know that gin is flavored with juniper berries? also - big congratulations on the little man's first steps - and thank you for sharing that precious moment in your family's life.

March 9, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterkalaluka

Yay for Juniper the Generous buying the coffee. Haven't been to Wasilla for a while is Mocha Moose the one with the fancy roof in Palmer or is that Purple something?

March 9, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterKelly Mitchell

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