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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Entries in Furless Jim (3)

Monday
Jun202011

A brief, incomplete, look at Father's Day just past - furry Jim and Furless Jim

My documentation of Father's Day began in the morning, as I returned home from my walk by coming in through the back, through the remnant of now-dried up marsh and woods. I found Jacob, Kalib and Muzzy in the back yard, Jacob pulling old stumps and such.

Kalib was wearing a red t-shirt that hung nearly to his ankles and gave him kind of a mischievous, sleepy-angel look and he wanted his dad to walk off into the trees with him.

His dad did not want to stop what he was doing and so told him grandpa would walk with him.

Hence, Kalib walked into the trees and I followed, taking pics as I did.

I think I captured something unique and special on that short little walk, but readers will not find it in here, at least not today. A read of yesterday's post will reveal the kind of problems that I am currently experiencing with this computer.

Once it takes a few minutes to figure out where it is and what program it is, the computer can handle word processing and basic internet tasks just fine, but when it comes to photo editing and photo processing tasks, it turns into an absolute nightmare.

As simple click that, when the computer is working as it should will result in almost instantaneous completion of the task can now result in ten minutes of doing nothing but watching the Mac colorwheel spin. It is not a bug, it is not a virus, but something has gone fundamentally wrong with this computer - maybe in the RAM.

So, it would probably take me an entire day - certainly half the day - to sort through the photos of that walk in Lightroom and then open them up in Photoshop just to complete the series that I believe is in the photos from that walk.

And I took many other pictures - Lavina barbecuing meat and veggies to all of us - and there were many of us - gathered around the backyard picnic table where we began to eat, but then it started to rain and I didn't care but everybody else did so we moved inside.

There, I took more pictures. I knew I faced an impossible editing task, so, when I took this one, I said to myself, "I will run that one and that can be it for the whole blog."

It is furry Jim sitting on the lap of Furless Jim while Muzzy sits out on the porch, wanting to get it, wanting to get at the beef and pork that Lavina had barbecued.

"Furless Jim," longtime readers will recall, is Jim Earnshaw, Charlie's dad. He and Cyndy came out and joined us. So all the kids were here (although Caleb slept through it all in preparation for his nightshift), grandkids and Charlie, who I also consider to be one of the kids these days.

Furless Jim is a genuine cat person - and dog person, too. Furry Jim knows this and took full advantage of it.

Shortly after I took the one picture that I marked for today's blog, Jobe came by to communicate with furry Jim as he rested on the lap of Furless Jim and I thought, "what the heck, these two pictures are right close together and so I will add it in, too.

So here they are, Jobe, furry Jim, and Furless Jim.

Although at this point I do not know where the money is going to come from, I have made up my mind that I am going to return to India in November for Soundarya's one-year memorial - and if the timing works out, for Sujtha's wedding as well. That will take me away at a bad time, because Sandy's death came on Lisa's birthday and it will also be Thanksgiving weekend, so I was talking to Lisa about that and she decided to come with me.

She can't afford to do that, but not being able to afford something is not always a good reason not to do it. So it looks like she will be coming with me. I hope so.

Jim and Cyndy brought some excellent potato salad and some celestial rhubard/blackberry cat; Charlie baked cookies and prepared black coffee, which we took late with the pastries.

Superb.

People began to depart a bit after 9:00 PM, with Melanie and Charlie the last to leave, shortly before 10:00 PM. Since they were the last, I figured it would not be that huge of an editing problem to go to the very end of my take and include this picture of them driving away, waving goodbye, on today's blog.

I then faced a minor writing task that I figured would probably take me until 3:00 or 4:00 AM to complete, but I needed a little exercise and some air first, so I got on my bike and pedaled off into the rain.

As I was nearing home, a little before 11:00 PM, some neighbors who are among the many who migrated to Wasilla from the former Soviet Block as it came apart and who live down the street, around the corner, down that street and around another corner, pulled up alongside me.

They matched their car pace to mine, rolled down the window and asked how I was doing.

We had not seen each other for many months, maybe over a year.

I told them I was doing good, and asked how they were doing.

They were doing good, too.

As I pedaled and we conversed, I shot a few frames, not looking through the viewfinder but just pointing my camera in their general direction.

That made this the last picture of the day, right next to Melanie and Charlie departing. So I decided to add it into the blog mix. 

I arrived home about 11:05 PM and found Margie on the couch, alternately watching Law & Order and dozing off for a few minutes. She was exhausted. So I sat down with her until the show was over.

Now I figured it would take me until 4:00 or 5:00 AM to finish off that minor writing task and I was tired.

I said to hell with it, I've put in too many all-nighters in my life and that probably has a lot to do with why I live in an almost perpetual state of brain-fried exhaustion.

I decided just to go to bed and do the writing task today. That means I cannot take my computer into the shop until tomorrow.

Oh, well.

Everything will get done and we will survive - perhaps not in grand fashion; maybe we will have to sell the house and move into a small RV and live on the road, but we will survive.

And I got to sleep a little bit.

I still feel tired, though. Brain-fried and exhausted.

 

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Wednesday
Apr282010

On their way to the grotto to pray; Rowdy and Oscar; an iPhone look back at New York - young couple on subway, man down on sidewalk

I had stopped to visit Ron Mancil when Patrick Mahoney, owner of the ranch where Ron works, came out from the back on his motorcycle with Mary Angela Wassillie, who lives near Metro Cafe. Mary's mother was ill and in the hospital. "We're on our way to the grotto to pray," Patrick told me.

I pulled out onto the road and they pulled out behind me.

I drove at turtle speed, so that I could take this snap as they passed me.

They then turned off into the grotto - Grotto Iona - to make their prayers. I thought about stopping, too, to visit a little more there, perhaps take a few more pictures. As I related last summer, on that day that I pedaled my bike past the topless lady and then wound up on my knees before the graves of Patrick's parents, I have given myself the assignment to learn about this grotto and the couple who built it and now lie in it.

But I had just met Patrick and Mary. So I drove on and left them to pray alone. There will be time in the future. 

 

That was two weeks ago, this is yesterday:

I had gone to town for a business meeting and on my way back, I pulled off in Eagle River. Charlie's mom had sent me a Facebook message, asking me to stop sometime when I was passing by. So I stopped in the parking lot by Jitter's coffee shop to call and find out where Jim and Cyndy lived.

As I called, this old car and this young man riding a bike passed by in front of me.

This is Rowdy, ten years old, and those are the hands of Cyndy, Charlie's mom. Rowdy literally smiled at me when we were introduced. I am not kidding. It was a genuine smile. He smiled a few more times and I got my camera out and tried to photograph it, but Rowdy is not named Rowdy for nothing.

He was continually in motion and then he apparently decided that we had known each other long enough and now he didn't need to smile all the time.

So now I have another assignment - to catch Rowdy's smile.

And this is Oscar, their sixteen-year old cat. Not so long ago, Oscar was down to skin and bones and the pigment was gone from his nose. Cyndy and Jim believe it is the homemade food that they began feeding him that has restored him.

That is why they asked me to stop by - Jim had made another batch of food for Royce.

 

Three leftover iPhone images from New York:

This is from what was supposed to be my final night, before I got stranded at JFK. I had just left Chie Sakakibara and my camera battery was dead. I could not resist this couple riding the subway with me, however, so I used my iPhone.

After the couple got up, these people sat down where they had been.

When I came up the stairs that lead from the subway to the street, I found this scene. I was not exactly certain what was happening nor how I should react. I asked if everything was okay. The man who has a grip on the wrist of the one down on sidewalk said it was. He gave me the impression that he was a police officer, said that he had everything under control. He did not try to stop me from taking a picture, which I figured that someone who was up to no good would do.

I walked away. But now I wonder - what if he was not a cop?

Maybe I should have called 911.

Tuesday
Mar232010

Thanks to Furless Jim, Royce eats raw meat

This morning, I put Royce through the usual routine. I rubbed his thyroid medicine into his ear, then prepared a mix of Friskie's Salmon Senior Blend and Metamucil. Royce dug in.

Shortly afterward, I received an email from Jim Earnshaw, Charlie's dad - now better known to the world as Furless Jim.

He informed me that he had prepared some homemade, raw-meat cat food just for Royce and asked if we were going to be home.

I wrote back to tell him that we would be home, but suggested that rather than drive all the way out here, Margie could pick up the cat food Wednesday morning, after she drops me off at the airport.

About 45 minutes later, I was sitting here, in my office, working at this computer, when I heard Margie knock upon my wall. This is her signal for me to come into the house, so I did and this is what I found.

Royce was wolfing... cougaring... down the homemade raw meat cat food like a ravenous lion. I had never saw him go at food with such tremendous enthusiasm, yet he has always been an enthusiastic eater.

It will be interesting to see if he gains any weight while I am gone.

Even if he doesn't, Furless Jim said, he will enjoy himself and will experience improved quality of life.

Royce and his benefactors, Furless Jim and Charlie. Thank you both.