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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Monday
Jun272011

Following a week of aggravation, the day turns good - the cake is baked, the candle blown out

The previous week had been one of exasperation and frustration. There were the computer problems that I have already whined about. While I had completed a load of billable work, I had run into a red-tape glitch that took weeks to work out and had been unable to invoice and so we had gone completely broke, with all the aggravation and frustration that brings on.

Among the bills that went upaid was cable TV, so we lost our TV service. This does not really bother me because I don't watch much TV, but Margie and Caleb miss it. Technically, Caleb was supposed to pay the bill, but he managed to go broke, too.

And then Pistol, who had been abused as a kitten and came to us with some bad habits that took a lot of time, patience and love to undo, had suddenly reverted and had peed several times in our bedroom, in this office and on the foot mat by the front door, making a very bad smell and giving us a whole new, very complicated, problem to deal with.

Then, yesterday, an amazing thing happened. The day began in aggravation as I struggled with this computer to pull up, process and post the three pictures that appeared in yesterday's blog, but once I got that out of the way, everything changed. 

I had a ton of undone work backed up, but, with this computer malfunctioning, there was nothing I could do about it. We had no money, but there was plenty of food in the house and Jacob, Lavina, Melanie, Charlie and Lisa brought more with them when they came to celebrate Caleb's birthday.

I had two happy grandsons, scurrying all about, laughing and having fun.

As there was not a thing I could do to remedy the aggravations, I just placed them all aside and forgot about them. And the day turned out great. I relaxed. I laughed. I enjoyed my children and my grandchildren and cats. The food, fresh off the barbecue grill, was delicious, so much so that I over indulged and so, late at night, I took a long bicycle ride and paid a visit to the Mahoney horses, then stopped at Grotto Iona and on the way home stopped to visit and photograph some friendly neighbors, Joseph and Ruth, brother and sister to the young photographer, George, who appeared in this blog last Thursday.

So when the day ended, I felt quite happy and content.

I did face a major problem, though - a potential great aggravation. I had shot  A LOT of pictures. Given the state of this computer, trying to take even a superficial look at them would be a terrible aggravation and would waste tremendous time. So I would only go for one picture. Which one?

As explained yesterday, we had celebrated Caleb's birthday without him. He did come home earlier than we expected but went straight to bed, so he could get some sleep before going to work. But he did wake up for cake. So of course, that had to be the picture. 

Knowing that it would take my computer hours to transfer the RAW images off the card, onto the harddrive and for the thumbnails to appear in Lightroom, I set the process in motion just before I went to bed and let the computer deal with it as I slept.

The task was completed this morning. I grabbed the Lightroom slider and scrolled down through the thumbnails, all of which appeared as gray rectangles. About three quarters of the way down, I stopped scrolling, hoping that I would have stopped not too far from the cake pictures. 

I then waited a few minutes for the computer to fill in the gray with pictures. I had stopped right on the cake pictures! I would not have to suffer the aggravation of searching for them. Having had that kind of luck, I figured I might as well go for three pics. 

So here they are: Caleb holding Kalib as his birthday cake is brought to him and people sing, each in their own unique key, "happy birthday." the CKaleib's blowing out the candle, and Kalib cutting the cake.

Before today is over, I expect to have money in my bank account. Now I must get out and do some serious computer shopping - because I have a huge amount of work to do and I am behind schedule. 

 

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Reader Comments (3)

Happy Birthday :)

June 27, 2011 | Unregistered Commentertwain12

Don't you love the small victories that happen in the midst of the larger battle?........I think they're best kind.

June 27, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterMGSoCal

Kalib's tee is soooo cuteeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!! Luv it ! :) Happy belated bday to Caleb.

July 1, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterSuji

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