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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
Oct212010

This Volkswagen and Taco Bell is not the post that I have been working on, but a shallow substitute

DateThursday, October 21, 2010 at 3:33PM

I don't quite know what to do here. I have just spent at least four hours, maybe a bit more, working on a 20 image post that I had titled, "the day that I dropped by my brother's house to visit the ghosts of my parents." Text wise, I had worked my way through 10 pictures and still had 10 to go.

Not only was the effort taking up more time than I can afford, but it was creating a great deal of text that was plunging deeper into some aspects of my life and musings than I suspect many readers would care to go.

It's all material that I must write about, but maybe I am getting a little ahead of myself and this is not the right moment.

Anyway, I do not have the time to finish it today.

So I am going to drop it. Maybe I will pick it up again tomorrow or later, maybe I won't. Maybe it will just sit in the draft section of my blog - unpublished, unread, never viewed. 

Instead, just to get something up today, I now post this picture of a Volkswagen parked near the Taco Bell that sits about one block from my brother's house, where the ghosts of my parents reside - at least in the form of artifacts that play with my mind and memory.

As I have already noted, I am back in Wasilla, but, even if I never post what I have been working on, I want to introduce readers to my niece, Julie, and her family. They came to the wedding reception, which Rex and I missed, but not to the functions that I attended and photographed.

I did pay them a visit, however, and I did get photos of all, except for Riley, who had just suffered some dental work, felt like a chipmunk, and refused to be photographed.

And Melanie - please do not get upset with me. I did not eat at this Taco Bell. I was too stuffed to do that.

Maybe next time.

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

you could never write a thing that did not interest me. whatever you write about has merit, bill.

October 21, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterruth z deming

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