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

Entries in Riana (1)

Tuesday
Mar092010

A blustery, burnout kind of day; Kalib - just for Riana

It was a blustery, total-burnout kind of day. I couldn't work. I couldn't even take a walk. I could hardly make myself do anything. In fact, I photographed only two scenes today: this one, blowing snow seen through the windshield of our car as I drove Margie past Wasilla Lake on our way to Eagle River.

There would have been more choices in Anchorage, but Anchorage was too far. I did not want to drive all the way to Anchorage. So we chose Valley River 6 Cinema in Eagle River and drove there.

Although Gift of the Whale is out of print, I still get quarterly royalty checks and last week one came in for $79.22 - not enough to pay any bills but enough to go to a movie and buy some popcorn, so that's what we did.

Shutter Island, with Leonard DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley is what we saw and it was just the break I needed.

At first, Margie did not want to see it, because she thought it was a horror flick and she hates horror flicks. It did not look like a horror flick to me, but a 1950's cop drama and they can be fun. She decided I was probably right and it was playing at the right time so we chose it.

As it turned out it was neither a horror flick or a 1950's cop drama, but a pyschological thriller that involved a 1950's cop and a taste of horrific horror.

I won't say anymore about it than that, because I don't want to give anything away to anybody who hasn't yet seen it but still might.

Above is the second scene that I photographed today: the highway as we passed by Wasilla Lake on our return home. You can see the snow is still blowing, but more lightly than it had been three hours earlier.

These are left-overs from Friday. I am including them in here just for Riana - my ten-year old reader who keeps me from swearing all the time.

This is pretty hard on me, because I like to swear, damnit.

But for Riana, I have been cutting back.

She left a message today. She typed the word, "hell" and told me that I was busted for typing it first. She said she missed Kalib, who had been absent from this blog for a full day. 

So, Riana, here is Kalib. This is what was happening:

"Where's grandma?" Grandma asked.

Kalib pointed his butter knife at Grandma.

"Where is Grandpa?" Grandma asked. Kalib pointed the butter knife and me and actually touched me with it.

"Where is Momma?" Grandma asked. Kalib pointed his knife at Momma and touched her, just like he touched me.

I don't feel as burned out as I did this morning, but I still feel burned out.

No telling what will happen tomorrow, but, like I wrote last night, I could blog lightly all week long. Then again, something dramatic might happen.

Riana, I've got a couple of really good leftover picture stories of Kalib and his cousin Gracie that I still want to post. They both will require some editing time, but now that I know you are there and that you miss Kalib when he does not appear, it is more likely that I will actually get around to posting them before everybody grows too much older.