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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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Tuesday
Jun072011

A bug moves in, takes Margie down, then me too

DateTuesday, June 7, 2011 at 1:59PM

IPhone photo of the cat warmer Chicago beneath the red and black blanket.

Yesterday, Margie ate only a few bites of her breakfast, then announced that she was strangely full and could eat no more. Shortly afterward, she announced that she was not feeling well and her tummy hurt. She then descended into a state of misery. Except for a few saltine crackers, she has eaten no food since and she basically spent the remainder of the day on the couch, looking miserable, able to do nothing at all.

I had three hopes: one, that she would soon get better, two, that my body would fight off whatever bug had got her (and Caleb) and that if it didn't the illness would be short-lived and would not affect me so badly as it had her.

I have too much to do to be sick.

Often, bugs hit others around me and do miss me. When they get me, they do not generally take me down as far as they do Margie. I might feel miserable, but I can generally function whereas she had been rendered unfunctionable.

When I woke up this morning at about 7:30, I felt a little queasy. I hoped it was just an early morning thing and would soon go away. I set some coffee to brew, then came out here to my office to skim through the beluga pictures from which I planned to make today's post, to check emails, do a comment respond, etc., and then I went back in to cook my oatmeal.

But I did not cook my oatmeal, for I knew I could not eat it if I did and Margie said she still couldn't eat. I knew I needed to eat something, so I got one of those little pre-packaged half-cups of applesauce. I took one teaspoonful and it felt like it was about to rip my stomach out. I did not take a second teaspoon.

I forced myself to drink a glass of water, which I feared was going to rocket right back up but it didn't.

I then found a red and black blanket near the couch-that-is-good-to-nap-on and summoned two cat warmers to join. I lay down upon the couch with one cat warmer beneath the blanket on my torso and the other atop the blanket on my shins and there I stayed in a state of immobile misery with respites of dose until after 1:00 PM.

So that's it. This is all the blog I can muster today. I feel horrible, as though I am about to lose all the food that I am not eating, as though there are tiny knives in my gut, stabbing at the lining from the inside. My head aches and I feel weak. No energy. I cannot do today what I had planned to do.

The belugas have waited quite awhile to make their appearance on my blog. They will just have to wait for at least one more day.

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment6 Comments |
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Reader Comments (6)

I hope so sorry to hear you and mom are feeling miserable. Maybe its our fault, we took the kiddos home :)
Hope you are both up and well very soon.
Hugs.

June 7, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterLavina~mom of the grandsons

Hope you are all feeling better soon

June 7, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterJfH

Oh yuck!
Hoping getting -better-soon is REALLY soon for both of you.
Just yuck.

June 7, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterAlaska Pi

I do hope you feel better soon. That is a nasty bug it sounds like. At least you have the common sense to just lay down and let it run it's course. Try to keep hydrated. Sometimes I drink a cup of beef of chicken broth, the granules mixed with water, when I can't keep anything else down.

June 7, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterMikey

Mashed banana's & 7up, or Sprite. May the bug fly quickly away and leave you all healthy, wealthy & wise.

June 7, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterKat

feel better soon ♥

June 8, 2011 | Unregistered Commentertwain12

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