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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Wednesday
May272009

A saree for Melanie (part 2) - traveling and snacking in Bangalore

I pick up where I left off - on the bus, the same one that carried Sanju and Jesse in the last post, but a little further back. That's Vasanthi, of course, smiling at the right, and if you look close, you can also see our buddy, Buddy. See the hand that grips the yellow overhead rail to the right?

That's Buddy's hand. Now, follow the arm downward into the crowd of men and there you will see one eye peering out from behind another arm. That's Buddy's eye.

We would be on this bus for about one hour before we reached our destination.

This was our destination, or at least one of them - a saree shop. The salesman said that this was a most beautiful piece of saree fabric and, while no one had any problem disagreeing with the salesmen, in this care, everyone agreed.

Vasanthi made the purchase.

Elsewhere in another shop, Buddy sits, enthralled by the whole process. I think that it does not matter what nation you are in, what culture you come from, we males tend to pretty much react the same when we go shopping with females, especially when it involves clothing and fabric.

Or just about anything else that females buy - except food, for we males to eat, in a restaurant.

Out on the street, Melanie works her way through the bustling crowd. No matter where we went in India, from the tiniest village to the heart of the biggest city, the place always bustled.

India is a bustling place. India is on the move. Absolutely.  And the place that it is moving to is called the future.

Vasanthi buys bananas to eat. As you will see in a subsequent post when we get to Chennai, India has all kinds of bananas that we never see here in the USA. 

Every banana that we tried was good, but my favorite were the little tiny ones with the thin, delicate, skins.

They are too delicate to be transported far, but, my goodness, are they good!

Especially with Indian coffee.

We go into a refreshment shop, where Vasanthi buys us flavored milk and sweets.

Vasanthi shovels sweets into the eager mouth of Sanju.

The sweets were very sweet - and very good.

We return via an "auto-rickshaw." Buddy, Melanie and I rode together.

The view from the ric.

I see another way to photograph the three of us.

The ric carrying Jesse, Sanju and Vasanthi pulls up alongside us.

Add to these visuals the sounds of the hustle and bustle - a continuous fusillade of horns honking, engines, big and small, revving up and falling back, birds squawking and calling, throw in a high degree of heat and humidty, plus the fumes of two stroke engines wafting through, coupled with the ever present scent of incense and spice.

Traffic in Bangalore is frenetic.

At about 4:00 AM the next morning Melanie dons her saree, accented by gold earrings that Vasanthi loaned to her.

It is May 10, 2009 - the day that Soundarya and Anil will wed.

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Reader Comments (5)

I saw your post on dpreview about your 5DII's failure in India. In June 2007 during my journey through Kerala in the monsoon season, the mirror of my 5D popped out in what were extremely humid conditions. It turned out that the 5D had that particular problem with mirrors coming unglued. I got the mirror glued back at a Canon centre in Cochin (it was a clumsy job by the local tech but it served its purpose) and continued onward, shooting in pouring rain at times (with Aquatech covers). The 5D held out well. Later, back in the US, Canon replaced the entire mirror box for free. I now have the 5DII and your posting gives me pause since I will be shooting in the Indian conditions in the not-too-distant-future.

May 28, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterRajan P. Parrikar

>> I see another way to photograph the three of us.

And you know what, you just got a picture of "Annavaru" (meaning, "elder brother" in Kannada), the veteran late actor Rajkumar. His picture is in the rear of the auto-rickshaw that was riding next to yours.

May 29, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterVijay

Melanie looks cool in a saree and she looked very Indian.

May 29, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterkavitha

Uncle Bill, you have mentioned

>> As you will see in a subsequent post when we get to Chennai, India has all kinds of bananas that we never see here in the USA.

Those pics are not up yet :-?

September 7, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterVijay

No, Vijay - not yet. I returned with so many nice little picture stories from India that I wanted to post, and then life overwhelmed me and forced me to move on even before I could finish all the sequences related to Sandy's wedding.

BUT... one of these days, probably in the dark, dead of winter, I will make time to get back into my India work and, I promise you, that series will go up.

As will the scorpion that your mom so badly wanted to see.

September 7, 2009 | Registered CommenterWasilla, Alaska, by 300

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