A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

All photos and text © Bill Hess, unless otherwise noted 
All support is appreciated
Bill Hess's other sites
Search
Navigation
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.

Blog archive
Blog arhive - page view
Saturday
Feb052011

His heart broken, the two left-footed man sets out for New York City

Doubtless, you have heard about those wild, savvy, Alaskans who have such a deep knowledge of the land and environment that to them to look at a track in the snow is just like reading a book. If one knows how to read it, each track tells stories to the knowledgeable that will completely escape the average person.

I am pleased to announce that I am such an Alaskan. And yesterday, as I walked, I read novel upon novel in the tracks that other wanderers had left behind in the snow.

For example, you have heard about the famous person who has two left feet. Yesterday, I discovered that this is not just a figure of speech to describe a clumsy person who stumbles over himself when he tries to dance.

There really is a person with two left feet and he lives right here in Wasilla. Here are the actual prints left behind by his two left feet as he set out to walk to New York City.

Clearly, as indicated by the dipthong in the upper indentation of the right left foot, he is going to New York City. To understand why, just look at the asperance right smack in the middle of the left left foot.

Two days ago, his cat left him and moved in with a neighbor. He is heartbroken. He believes that once he gets to New York City, the cat will come to her senses and join him there.

But only if he walks. If he flies, the cat won't give a damn. Only by walking all the way through cold and misery does he believe that he can demonstrate to the cat the depth of the love that he feels for her.

It's all right there - in the tracks left behind by his two left feet.

When the dog who has been loyal to the man with two left feet for the past 30 years discovered that his human had left, he set out to find him.

Unfortunately, as you can see, the dog is going in the wrong direction. Instead of New York, the dog is headed towards Hong Kong. Not only does the dog have a long walk ahead of him, but a long swim, too. Perhaps if the dog had the legendary canine sense of smell, the dog would know. But this dog lost its ability to smell - even though, by hell, the dog does smell - during an unfortunate sniffing accident that it suffered as a pup.

It is sad, because the dog will search and search and search the streets of Hong Kong and will never find his man. He will find a friendly lady who will give him refuge every night and feed him hamburgers every morning - just before he goes out to search in vain again.

As for the double-left-footed man, he will find only disappointment in New York City. His cat will never follow him there. He will spend the rest of his days living in the subway, playing his accordian as passersby drop nickels, dimes, and quarters into his upside down baseball cap - the one emblazoned with a picture of a moose and the word, "Wasilla."

Sometimes, I wish that I did not know how to read tracks so well.

Sometimes, the stories are just too heart-breaking.

I saw a boy, walking down the road, leaving his own stories to trail behind him. I moved along, without bothering to read.

Margie and I went out for a drive, but this guy made us stop.

 

This from India:

I will explain nothing, except to identitfy the location as the temple cut into stone at Mamallapuram. I will leave the larger story to your imagination.

 

View images as slides

 

Friday
Feb042011

Eagle perched in tree at dusk, just up Shrock Road from the Little Su; two kids pose for someone else

The sun had gone down, darkness was setting in and I was sipping coffee as I drove the Ford Escape down Shrock Road toward the Little Susistna River. Shoshana had served me that coffee. She always looks nice but today she looked exceptionally so and I thought that I should shoot a few more "Young Writer Studies" of her as she prepared my coffee, but I couldn't because I had forgotten my camera.

Then I came upon this bald eagle, perched in this tree.

"Damnit!" I swore. "Here I am, with no camera! I could drive back home and get my camera, but the eagle will surely be gone by the time I get back!"

But sometimes an eagle will sit still in a tree for a very long time, so I decided I would give it a try. I was somewhere between three and four miles from the house. I turned the car around, raced back and got my camera.

The eagle was still there when I got back.

There wasn't much light left.

I took the picture anyway.

"Thank you, Bill," the eagle said.

"You're welcome, Eagle," I said.

Actually, no such exchange took place.

The eagle did not care. The eagle was completely indifferent to the fact.

They say that eagles have the sharpest eyes of anybody.

Yet, this eagle will never look at this photo.

If by chance the eagle did see this photo, the eagle would not care about it at all.

The eagle would rather see a fish.

The eagle would rather that the eagle be the last thing that the fish was ever aware of.

Eagles have their priorities, and admiring photographs of themselves are not among those priorities.

Somebody came driving along in a pickup.

Maybe the driver saw the eagle, maybe not.

I suspect that the driver did see the eagle.

Even though it was getting dark, the eagle was kind of hard to miss.

 

And this from India:

Through the window of our taxi, I spot two kids posing for someone else as we drive by.

 

View images as slides

 

Thursday
Feb032011

Even on this birthday, Melanie remains trustworthy; cats are not wierd, they are normal

Those of us who were free gathered together to celebrate Melanie's birthday. I will not tell you what birthday it was, but I will note that when I was a young adult, we feared this birthday above all others. The belief among young people was that no matter how good a person was before they hit this birthday, once they reached it, the ways of the world would overtake them and they could not be trusted after that.

Hell.

Melanie can still be trusted.

Now I will move write along, writing very little, because I have already spent quite a bit of time editing, preparing and placing pictures and I do not have time to write much. So I won't. Because if I write words that I do not need to write, it will just eat up my time, so why should I write such words that waste time when I do not need to write them?

So I won't write much.

Just a little bit.

Not much at all.

Because it would waste time.

And I do not have time to waste.

So I will write very little today.

I will just show you the pictures.

And not worry about writing many words.

That would be a waste of time when all that you need to know is in the pictures.

Well, maybe are other things that should know, too - like how to do math, for example.

Math is a good skill for anyone to have.

Here is Lavina, making frybread.

Once must have some comprehension of math to make frybread.

Otherwise, one might make 100 frybreads, when one dozen would do.

Or use 6 teaspoons of salt when one would be just right.

Kalib entered carrying his spatula, but then laid it down. I picked it up. He did not quite know what to think about that.

Melanie prepares her Navajo/Apache taco.

The tacos were damn good.

The day before, Rex had submitted his entry for a grant to help him with a sculpture that he hopes to create and then display at Burning Man in Nevada this summer. Unfortunately, due to some computer shenanigans, much of his proposal did not get submitted. Only a piece of it.

Anyway, this is model of only a piece of what he hopes to create. In the real thing, this salmon skeleton will be five foot long and there will also be a whole salmon, concrete, five feet long and a number of other elements as well.

His sculpture will cover some significant space.

I hope he gets the damn grant. 

Melanie was presented with two birthday cakes, not one. I am not sure why. I did not ask. I know Charlie made one of the cakes. I'm not sure who made the other.

Lisa made the frosting.

We ate the cakes with vanilla ice cream and they were damn good.

Afterward, she opened gifts.

All of the gifts were damned good.

Charlie gave her a damned good book titled "Cats Are Wierd." Not withstanding the fact that it is a damned good book, I take exception to the title.

Cats are not weird. As you can see, Diamond is as normal as normal can be.

Bear Meach is not weird.

Melanie observes Bear Meach being normal as Rex and Margie wash dishes.

Kalib studies Poof. "This cat is not weird," he would have proclaimed, had the proper words come to him to thus proclaim.

Perhaps it is little boys, not cats, who are weird.

Jobe goes for Poof, who is not weird.

The Three Musketeers showed up: Carl, Charlie and Bryce. They did not bring their swords. I was disappointed. I wanted to borrow a sword to cut the cake.

As the party drew towards its wild conclusion, Kalib crawled up to see his mom.

Two of my children, paired off. Lisa came late to the party, because she is carrying such a heavy load between being a full time student and full time job, and taking on extra tasks to help pay for it all.

She must deal with stress.

And then, as always happens, the time came to say goodbye, see you later.

Always this time comes. 

What a fine thing it has been these past 30 years to have Melanie as my daughter.

An absolutely fine thing.

Oh, dear! I was not going to say, "30 years," but I did.

Even so, I trust her.

 

View images as slide show


Wednesday
Feb022011

So - just how much is that doggie in the window? Recipient of writing award wins gold medal and cash prize

It seems to me that I have written about the doggie in the window before, the one with the waggily tail. But I am too lazy to do a search and find out if I actually did or if maybe Grahamn Kracker did on his now slumbering blog or if I just wrote about that doggie somewhere else, so if I repeat myself, I repeat myself.

Anyway, the doggie that I reference was the star of song that was popular when I was a little boy, a pop song with a country tilt, sung by Patti Page*, with deep ache and longing in her voice.

"How much is that doggie in the window?" she asked so longingly.

Then the dog barked twice, "Arf! Arf!"

Patti sung on:

"The one with the waggily tail (Arf! Arf!)

"I do hope that doggie's for sale..."

Oh, did that song fill me with longing! I wanted that doggie. I would plead with my mom that we get that doggie. She would laugh and smile, and even sing the song back to me, but she would not take me to a store where there was a doggie in the window.

And then one day, she and Dad took me to the dog pound in Pendleton, Oregon, and let me pick out a puppy. I chose a white little fellow with light brown spots and, indeed, he did have a waggily tail. I named him, "Whitey" and he would come to me, his waggily tail a-wagging, smiling in that way that puppies smile. A scientist might tell you that a puppy cannot smile, that a puppy lacks the muscles required to smile, but anyone who has had a puppy or a good dog knows that, indeed, they do smile - with their eyes, their mouths, their entire countenance.

And so it was that Whitey would come to me, waggling and smiling.

Then one day, after Whitey had been with us for about two weeks, he went under the bed and would not come up. No matter what I did, I could not persuade him to come.

He had suddenly become frightened of me and I did not know why.

He had become frightened of everybody and everything. So we took him to the vet. He had distemper. So I was told that the kind thing to do would be to let the vet put him to sleep. This would put an end to his suffering, which would only grow worse if we did not. Would I agree?

I agreed. 

Grief-stricken though I was, I still had to go to school, so I did.

As it happened, my second grade teacher showed us a filmstrip that day. It was about Old Mother Hubbard.

Her own doggie was hungry. So she went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone, but when she got there, the cupboard was bare. There was no bone for the poor dog.

Thankfully, it was dark in that room. It can be a terrible thing for a second grader when his friends see him cry.

Actually, I did not intend to write the above story. I was just going to mention how, when I pulled into the parking lot, I found this particular dog behind this particular window. I was going to muse about how much time animals spend waiting all alone and lonely, not understanding why, for their humans?

What I was going to write about was "contemplating the future of this blog, part 4."

But I really don't have the time to articulate my thoughts on that right now, so I won't.

Today is the birthday of my beautiful and intelligent daughter, Melanie, so I don't think that I will be getting to part 4 tomorrow, either.

Happy birthday, Melanie! See you tonight!

On Tuesday of next week, I leave for Barrow. I have more to do between now and then than I can possibly do. Maybe I will get to part 4 before then, maybe I won't.

The fact is, though, it will be quite awhile before I can find time execute any of these ideas that I have to advance my blog and start up my electronic magazine, so I suppose it is okay.

A few of you have made some suggestions, with some helpful ideas. When I finally do part 4, I will include these ideas in the contemplation.

 

And this from India - Ramz receives a writing award:

Not so long ago, I introduced readers to my young niece Ramz, seen here at the wedding of Soundarya and Anil, and to her blog. I am pleased to announce that, yesterday, Ramz won a gold medal and a cash prize in an essay contest.

In her blog, she lets her mind travel far and back and forth through time. She visits Japan, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Einstein. I wonder where her writing of the future will take her? Far away and back home, maybe?

 

*See Patti Page sing, How Much is that Doggie in the Window? 

 

View images as slides


Tuesday
Feb012011

Sylvia Carlsson - the woman who gave me my start in Alaska; contemplating the future of this blog, part 3

Memorial services for Sylvia Carlsson were held at the Alaska Native Heritage Center and were presided over by the Alaska Native Sisterhood.

In the final years of her life, Sylvia Carlsson became well known for her letters to the Editor of the Anchorage Daily News, which appeared on a regular basis. This is her final letter, published January 21, 2011 - just two days before she died unexpectedly at the age of 76:

Anybody can destroy; ability to create valued

Following the State of the Union address, some Republican and tea party members of Congress will fall into full assault mode and will begin battering the health care legislation signed into law in 2010. They've dubbed it "Obamacare" and labels not fit to mention. The legislation is actually entitled the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act or Public Law 111-148, but it is rarely referred to by its proper title in any of the media offerings -- "Obamacare" is more sensational maybe?

A few of the newly minted members of Congress seem to view themselves as foot soldiers specifically elected to wreak havoc on anything with President Obama's name on it, especially the PPAHCA. At least that's the impression I'm getting from interviews on the tube and in print.

Is there anything in the PPAHCA that could have helped the deranged shooter in Tucson? That question has yet to be asked.

When We the People begin electing members to Congress to destroy rather than create law, are we in trouble? Answer that question for yourself.

-- Sylvia Carlsson


I knew Sylvia for a different reason. I was a homeless person when I met her, and I had a homeless family. But I also had a dream - to make a life in Alaska for my family and me, to move out of the two tiny tents in which we endured the almost constant rain of the summer of 1981 into a house or apartment and to get to know something about this place they call Alaska.

It was Sylvia Carlsson, then President and Publisher of the Tundra Times who made it possible for me to begin to live that dream. She gave me my first and only non-freelance job in Alaska when, working in conjunction with Linda Lord-Jenkins, she hired me to come on as a reporter and photographer.

I worked there for 3.5 years and in that time, thanks largely to connections that enabled Sylvia to oversee agreements with the airline companies to provide me free transportation in exchange for ad space, I was able to do work in every region of Alaska, from the rain forests of Southeast, the wind-blasted volcanic islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Southwest Y-K delta, the Interior and, of course, the Arctic.

It was great fun and a big learning adventure. At times along the way, Sylvia backed me up against powerful individuals and organizations within her own Native community. Other times, we disagreed, and strongly so.

None of what I have done would have happened had Sylvia not hired me - not only my work for Tundra Times, but there would have been no Uiñiq magazine, no Alaska's Village Voices as I once shaped it - so many things.

So, when her niece and my good friend Diane Benson informed me that Sylvia, Tlingit, of the Raven Clan, had passed away, I made certain to attend her memorial service at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. There, I found her ashes on a small table alongside her picture.

I paid her my respects and gave her a Gunalchéesh, "thank you" in Tlingit, for hiring me and for giving me this great opportunity.

As Margie walks into one of the many campsites that we stayed in during the two months between the day we arrived in Alaska and when I was hired on at the Tundra Times, Caleb plays in the dirt. Melanie and Jacob visit in the master tent. Summer, 1981.

By June of 1981, it had become clear to me that if I was ever to realize my dream of making a life in what I knew to be my spiritual home - Alaska - I could wait no longer. I could not sit around until someone in Alaska gave me a job, I could not wait until a pile of money sufficient to finance the move and transition from Arizona to Alaska fell upon me. I had to go to Alaska and I had to go right then. I had dreamt long enough. It was time to take action - time to go.

So Margie and I held a yard sale, sold most all that we owned and then packed what was left on top of and into our Volkswagen Rabbit along with two tiny tents and our children, who then numbered four, and hit the road north.

Among those who loved us, many gave me good and loving council - "don't go!" You are not a kid anymore - you are a man with a wife and four children - a baby daughter, for hell's sake! Put your childish dreams behind you and be a man - be responsible, don't go!

Alaska is a harsh place. You're not prepared. Alaska will be cruel to you. Alaska will show you no mercy.

When we reached Salt Lake City, we stopped to visit my folks for a week or so. Rex Jr, my oldest brother, said he had shown my National Geographic work to a friend of his at the Salt Lake Tribune and she had a job there, waiting for me. He gave me her number and told me to call her.

I did not call. I loaded the family back into the car and pointed the Rabbit north, once again. "You'll turn around and come back before you reach the Canadian border," Dad told me just before we pulled out of his driveway. I called him from Canada. "You'll turn around and come back before you ever get to Alaska," he predicted.

Next, I called him from Tok, Alaska, just on this side of border from the Yukon Territory. "You'll be back within a year," he said.

That was almost 30 years ago.

When I drove across the border from the Yukon Territory on July 14 - my 31st birthday - and looked out at Alaska, at big, wild, country that I had never before seen, country in which I knew no one - hard, cold, country where no job awaited me, I felt this warm feeling of exquisite peace. I felt that finally, after having spent 31 years wandering in that wilderness called the Lower 48, I had come home.

It has long been my contention that although I was born in the city of Ogden, Utah, I have been an Alaskan since birth - it's just that I was born into exile.

I wondered why it took me exactly 31 years to get here, but it was better to have arrived late than not at all.

Rex, doing his art at the picnic table that serves as a tie down stake for the tent he sleeps in. Summer, 1981.

When I first got into the internet, and when I first saw blogs, I had this feeling that both had been made and created just for me. Basically, I had made a career of creating publications that I wrote, photographed and designed on contract, and I had longed to create my own publication.

I even tried it once, but the effort went nowhere. Even though I have spent 29 years of my 35 year career in business for myself, I am not a business man. I always put what I want to do ahead of money, and so tend to often wind up short. The expense of keeping a high-quality paper publication going while I figured out how to fund it was beyond my resource. I published one issue and then the thing died.

But with the internet - with a blog - the expense of producing and distributing a publication with a potential worldwide audience would be nominal. 

Yet, I hestitated for over a decade. I feared that if I put my photos on the internet, people would steal them, put them to unauthorized use. In fact, people had already done so, but I feared that on the internet, the problem could prove severe.

So, as badly as I wanted to launch an internet publication, I didn't.

Too bad. If I had have done so, perhaps I could have figured it out long before now. Perhaps by now, I would have a self-sustaining publication going. There are a good number of these out there, you - many produced by individuals, most of whom seem to have jumped in and built there readership and found their support before there were a billion blogs to compete with.

I don't think "a billion blogs" is much of an exaggeration at all. 

But because of this fear of theft, I waited until it became clear to me that the entire photographic world was moving online, anyway. Not just the young up and comers, but even the greatest known works by the greatest masters were coming online.

So a bit of theft and appropriation would just have to be tolerated. If something major were to happen, there are always the courts.

To all my Facebook friends - be assured, none of this applies to you. It gives me pleasure when you place my pictures on your wall, or use them as your profile pic - so long as my copyright mark remains and credit is given. I liken this to when I step into people's houses and find my pictures, clipped from magazines and newspapers, hanging on the wall.

Rex visits Melanie in the master tent. The summer of 1981 was the wettest on record to that time. It rained almost every day, sometimes all day and all night, too.

Well, damnit. I have again surpassed my alloted blogging time today and once again have done so much rambling that I have not gotten down to the main point of this "Contemplating the future of this blog" thing.

So I will have to do a part 4.

From comments that I receive, both here and in Facebook, I see that some of my readers still fear that one of the things that I am contemplating is to shut down the blog entirely.

No - no, not all.

I see this blog, and the electronic magazine that I plan to add to it, just like I saw Alaska after I drove across the border on the Al-Can with my family. I was looking at my future - Alaska. My past was literally behind me. I would still make short returns back into that past. The places and people who had been important to my life down south would continue to be so. From time to time, I would go down there and we would get together and do things.

Sometimes, I would go to places outside Alaska where I had never been - but my spirtual home was now my physical home and would remain so. I had almost no money, no home, but I had desire. I did not know where the money would come from. I knew that  it would come and it did - never enough to make it easy, but enough somehow to always carry on.

Now, this blog, and electronic publishing - this is what is before me. This is my future. I will still make my visits back into paper, but this world of electronic publishing is where I am and I am only going deeper. Once again, I lack all but marginal resources and I do not know where sufficient resources are going to come from. The resources will come, though, I know it. 

And you readers - you have encouraged, by coming and by your support.

Tomorrow, I will see if I can do what I was going to do today so that I can close out this series.

Two Ravens, in honor of Sylvia Carlsson of the Raven Clan. Thank you again, Sylvia, for the many good things that you made possible in my life.

 

View images as slides