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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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Entries in Murthy (2)

Thursday
May282009

Predawn motorcycle ride to Soundarya's function

DateThursday, May 28, 2009 at 8:57PM

Although I was still terribly jet-lagged as a result of the 41 hour trip to Bangalore from Alaska and did not go to bed until nearly 1:00 AM, on the morning of May 10 - Soundarya's wedding day - I arose at 3:00 AM.

There was going to be a "function" at the home of her parents and the auspicious time to do it was before dawn. It would take about an hour to get there by taxi, so Murthy had called the day before and had made an appointment for a cab to pick us up at 4:00 AM.

That cab did not show.

I did not want to miss the function, so, after about 45 minutes of waiting, Murthy fired up his motorcycle, I climbed on behind him and off we went.

We zipped past a man driving a bike with three children as passengers...

...and soon scooted past a man standing in front of a bus with his arms folded...

...we continued on past signs boasting of the Metro that is now under construction, but which one day should make a big impact for the good on Bangalore traffic...

...we shot swiftly through a tunnel...

...and passed a man walking a dog in the early hours...

...and then, just in time, before the dawn, we were in the home where Sandy had been living with her parents. She showed me the temporary wedding henna tattoos that had been painted on to her the night before.

She also wore her bangles. This function would be about bangles.

Soundarya with her dad, Ravi (left) and her Uncle Murthy, just before the function began.

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Friday
May082009

One year to the day after I drove Murthy and Vasanthi to the Arctic Circle, Melanie and I arrive in Bangalore; Soundarya - the bride-about-to-be with kittens

DateFriday, May 8, 2009 at 9:39AM

This is Soundarya Ravichandran and while I have wanted to return to India ever since I first came in August of 2007, she is the reason I came now. Tomorrow, she will become the bride of her soulmate, Anil Kumar, and Melanie and I will be there. 

I first met Sandy at the wedding of my niece, Khena, to her cousin, Vivek and there has been a strong bond between us ever since. I consider her a soul friend and I call her "Muse," because ever since I met her, whenever I am taking pictures, I try to imagine how the images might interpret my world to her.

In fact, there are many, many, many pictures in my portfolio now that I took specifically for her. She has actually seen only a very few of these images, as it would be too great of a task to either post or email, or even process them all, but I have them and she is the reason.

Not long after we met, I promised her that, if it were at all possible, I would come and take pictures at her wedding when it happened.

So here I am.

And here is she, with a kitten born to a feral cat at the house of Vivek's parents, who are hosting Melanie and me.


And here is Melanie and me, reflected off the window of the Seattle airport train that takes passengers from one one course to another.

Melanie, in the Mumbai airport.

A little girl in the Mumbai airport.

Forty-one hours passed from the time I drove away from my house to when we met Murthy and Vasanthi at the Bangalore airport. Murthy then summoned his favorite cab driver, Gulpi, and then brought us to the house, where Vasanthi made us coffee.

She makes it with milk and it is the best coffee that I have ever tasted. 

As we ate lunch, Sandy picked up my camera and turned the tables on me.

In India, it is polite to eat with your right hand, so I am exercising good manners here. Vasanthi is also a great cook. If she were to resettle in Anchorage and open her own restaurant, Wow!

Sadly for me, I love spicy food so much that I spent a few decades overdoing it and now the doctor has forbidden me to eat it, except a little bit every now and then. And when I overdo it it, I know it real soon.

But in India, the food is spicy. And so good.

One year ago, on May 8, I drove Murthy and Vasanthi up the Haul Road to the Arctic Circle and then on to Cold Foot. I had planned to take them on a whale watching cruise in Prince William Sound, but Murthy had read about some folks who had crossed the Arctic Circle on the Haul Road and then received a certificate attesting to the fact that they had done so.

He was convinced that the government had a little station there where they awarded everyone who came across with such a certificate and his highest goal was to go get one.

I knew that there would be no such station, but, along the way, I managed to find a place in Fairbanks that did issue such certificates to tour groups, and so I picked up a couple and at the circle awarded them myself.

Now Murthy has the certificates hanging on the wall for all who enter to see, along with the picture that I took of him and Vasanthi at the sign that marks the Arctic Circle.

The beautiful little girl is their granddaughter, Vaidehi, who lives with her parents in Chennai, on the coast.

Sandy and the two kittens. I will post more of the cat series on Grahamn Kracker's No Cats Allowed Kracker Cat Blog when I get the chance.

Vasanthi, Soundarya and Natarajan, their father and grandfather. 

 

AuthorWasilla, Alaska, by 300 | Comment5 Comments |
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