A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

All photos and text © Bill Hess, unless otherwise noted 
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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 from July 1, 2011 - July 31, 2011

Monday
Jul042011

We will begin our Fourth by being among the first to eat breakfast at the brand new rerstaurant, Abby's Home Cooking

The other night, I pedaled my bike eight miles down from my house to pass by the Mahoney Ranch. "Hey Bill!" Mahoney horse Stoney shouted at me as I passed by, "what do you plan to do for breakfast on the morning of July 4?"

"Hadn't really thought about it," I shouted back. "I'll probably just cook some oatmeal, with berries and walnuts. Why? What does a horse care about what I do for breakfast July 4?"

"Bill!" Stoney  the horse shouted back. "Oats are for horses! Leave the damned oats alone! On the morning of the Fourth, you must do breakfast at Abby's Home Cooking! Corner of Church and Seldon - right where Fat Boys Fattery used to be. Abby's opens at 9:00 AM, July 4, for the first time, and I want you to be there. Take your family and order breakfast. I am not asking. I am ordering. You be there. You will be glad I demanded this of you."

"Abby's?" I said.

"Yes, Abby's!" the Mahoney horse answered.

"Okay." I said.

"Okay then," the horse neighed with approval as Mahoney horse Jake stepped into the picture. Stoney then turned his attention to the succulent grass of the Mahoney Ranch and with just one swish of his tail killed 52 mosquitoes.

This is the Abby that the horse referred to and that's her new restaurant behind her. Her name is Abby Hammond now, and she is opening the restaurant with her husband Andy, but she grew up as Abby Mahoney and that is why the horse so concerned itself about where, as soon as I post this, I will take Margie, Kalib and Jobe and eat breakfast today. 

The Mahoney horses look out for their people.

This is Abby and Jeremy. The stool was made from local, wildfire-killed spruce by Abby's nephew, Joe Mahoney. 

This wood used to be the siding of a barn into which horses could take shelter from the wind.

This is Abby's son, Justin, who made the tables for the restaurant.

This is Justin with his friends Andrew O'Brien and J.D McCullum, making a toast for success with tea, coffee and an empty flower vase.

I could write much more, but I see it is 9:00 AM right now. I am hungry. I must post this blog and get over there.

But first, late last night, thinking about Abby and her little venture, I again pedaled my bike down to the Mahoney Ranch and paid a short visit to Grotto Iona, built as a place of prayer by Paul George Mahoney, the patriarch of the Mahoney Clan, in honor and memory of his wife, Iona.

I felt quiet and peaceful there, as it always has whenever I have stopped by.

As I pedaled home from the Mahoney Ranch, I saw this guy, riding his horse down a trail upon which I used to often ski. I would just take off from my back porch and go, but now there are subdivisions in the way and I have not skied since I lost my shoulder and got a new one.

This coming winter, I must remedy that.

Now, I will exercise the freedom that we celebrate this day and will take Margie, Kalib and Jobe to breakfast at Abby's Cafe.

Happy Fourth of July, America!

 

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Sunday
Jul032011

iPadding it: with Jobe, Kalib, Margie, Chicago, Jim and Pistol

I have been wanting an iPad since they first came out - mostly, because I want to see the capabilities for online magazine and e-photo-book publishing, but until now I have not been able to justify the expense. I justify it now because I had pretty much resigned myself to the idea that I was going to have to purchase a new computer that would cost many times as much as the iPad, but now that I don't have to, then an iPad seems a good investment.

Of course, the iPad comes with a built-in camera. The resolution is low and the quality less than the iPhone, but I love any camera I can get my hands on and I worry less about technical quality than if I can use it to capture a feeling in the picture.

So, all of today's images were taken with my new iPad.

I started out with Margie and me.

Jobe and me next. He and Kalib came yesterday afternoon and will be here through today, maybe into tomorrow. I'm not sure.

Kalib, eating peanut butter and jelly.

I went to bed about midnight and, as always, when these boys overnight, Kalib slept with me and Jobe with Margie in the guest room. I spent an hour reading, Miss New India, a book that I first heard about from an Alan Cheuse review on NPR and he convinced me that I must read it. It is the first book that I will have read on an e-reader - in this case, the iPad.

It was fun, because I did not have to turn any lights on and page turning was instantaneous. At first, I thought I preferred reading a paper book, but after I had been at it for awhile I began to change my mind. I wouldn't want to read a book on an iPad while soaking in the tub, though.

In the morning, when I woke up for good sometime after 7:00 AM, I found Kalib sleeping like this, and so picked up the iPad and shot.

The light was dim in the room. This would be approximately the equivalent of shooting at ISO 10,000 or so.

Chicago had slept on the other side of my head. Here she is.

Chicago and me, in the early hours. 

My hand, before I get out of bed.

Me, still in bed. I have to wear that damn thing on my nose if I am to breathe and get any sleep at all. Looks likes its time for a haircut and beard trim again, especially since I will be heading back into the field shortly.

Jim was looking out the window.

Jim - as captured in the early morning with my iPad.

I went into the next room, which was even darker. Jobe woke up and came to greet me.

He was still tired, so he collapsed at his grandma's feet.

Soon, Jobe and I were out in the front room. Kalib slept on. Margie was coming to and would soon join us.

You did not see Pistol in the bedroom because he did not want to share the bed with Kalib, so he pouted and slept in the front room by himself.

Jobe scurries across the living room, carrying the two golf balls.

You can't see them, but this is only a second or so later, so he is still carrying the balls.

Now he is eating them.

Margie and Jobe, immediately after a diaper change.

Gramma and grandson.

 

Grandson and gramma.

Jobe gets down.

Jobe is ready to go. Gramma is not ready to let him go.

iPad still life: half a small cup of coffee. When Melanie and I went to India for Soundarya's wedding, Murthy gave me a set of small coffee cups. In India, they tend to keep their cups small. Drinking from a small cup helps me to not overdo it.

Plus, I like the cups.

Margie feeds Jobe some Oatmeal Squares.

iPad still life: Artificial flowers on the kitchen table, flanked by math.

But then, isn't math everywhere?

That's what my kindergarten teacher would always tell us, whenever we complained about the difficulty of the latest calculus quiz she had given us.

"Math is everywhere!" she would say. "Around and inside us - in the number of times a bird flaps its wings as it flies overhead - and how many times does your heart beat per minute... how many bites can you take out of a cookie... how many decibels in the croak of a frog...?

"It's all math, students," she would say. "Math is everywhere."

Jobe dumped the garbage on the floor, found the diaper his grandma had just taken off of him and gave it a toss. It took .9128999999999999999999 seconds for the diaper to plop onto the floor.

Sorry I can't be more precise than this. My math skills have been on the wane ever since I graduated from kindergarten and left behind the most brilliant mathematics teacher I ever had.

So ends my first experiment with iPad photography.

 

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Saturday
Jul022011

Carmen rides a little bike; frog appears; in the long but waning light of early summer, one can feel the approach of winter

Yesterday afternoon when I pulled into the Metro drive through, I saw Carmen, pedaling through the parking lot on Branson's bike. Hence, the above study:

Carmen in the Metro Parking Lot, Study, #52: Carmen transforms into a little kid.

I ate lunch in the back yard, so that Jimmy could spend a little time outside. A frog appeared - the biggest I have seen around here in a long time - the body must have been nearly three inches long - and around here, that is a huge frog.

While the frog population appears to be much smaller than it once was, one must still be careful walking in the backyard, because these guys are well-camouflaged and easy to not see and so step on.

It is an awful thing, to step on a frog.

I took this picture well after 10:00 PM, as I was riding my bike down Church Road. When I looked up and saw these clouds, I could feel the impending darkness. This may seem absurd to people in lower latitudes who have never seen the night sky look like this, but up here, many of us get this feelng the day after summer solstice:

The dark of winter, coming on.

Yesterday, I found fireweed in bloom. The blooms start with the bottom flowers and then progress upward as we move through summer. When the top flowers bloom, it is said that summer is over.

Summer is wonderful right now, and yet I can feel its end so strong.

The feeling is made all the worse by the fact that I have a great deal of production work to do this summer, and that work must all be done inside, at my computer.

I have long had this theory that I should not have any production work to do in the summer. Summers should be spent outdoors, shooting. Winters can be spent inside, producing.

Yet, somehow, I always lose a signficant portion of my summer to production.

Right now, I am producing work based primarily on images that I shot during the winter. So, except for a few fleeting moments, I am pretty much stuck inside this summer. Fish are running, animals moving and I am pretty much stuck inside, producing work built of the images of winter.

Everything is backwards of how it ought to be.

This must be the last such summer.

Next summer, I must be free to spend most of my time outdoors, shooting, living. No more of this summer production work!

An hour or so a day producing this blog would be okay, but that's it.

Next summer!

This one is already lost - mostly. I will still ride my bike most everyday that I am home. I might get in a short canoe trip, a hike, I might catch and cook a fish and next week I do plan a field trip north and at least part of that will be outdoor work.

But I should be able to be outdoors, everyday, most all the time.

Here I am, on my bike, late at night, corner of Seldon and Church. A light rain has fallen. The air smells sweet, and fresh. It is wonderfully cool against my skin.

I bike through a late night sunbeam, down by the Little Susitna River. My shadow follows.

 

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Friday
Jul012011

Outside rearview mirror - four studies of the Municipality of Anchorage: The biker and his stogie, UPS truck, unmarked cop and mark, strolling family

I had to drive into Anchorage to drop off some photos. I did not intend to shoot four serious studies involving my outside rearview mirrors, but then, as I waited for a red light to turn to green, I saw this guy behind me, smoking a stogie.

Suddenly, I knew it was time to do some serious study:

Outside Rearview Mirror Study of Anchorage, 1B: Biker smokes stogie while stopped at red light.

I wonder how it is to smoke a stogie in a motorcycle wind?

I figured one study was enough, and frankly, the creative effort involved in the biker-stogie study took just about everything that I had right out of me. So I thought I was done, but a bit thereafter, I again found myself stopped at a light, where I discovered that a UPS truck was behind me, the driver looking very serious indeed.

It was a huge challenge and required unprecedented effort, drive, and skill to shoot another serious study so quickly after the first, but I reached deep, dug up some adrenaline, rose to the challenge and shot it:

Outside Rearview Mirror Study of Anchorage, B1: the serious UPS man, the guy with the turned head, two indifferent women in a car.

Outside Rearview Mirror Study of Anchorage, 42C: unmarked police car at the scene of minor mishap.

I never imagined that I could do three studies, but I did. I thought I was okay, but as I neared Eagle River, I realized that the effort had drained me beyond belief and sapped me of all energy. I needed to refuel, so I pulled off for a Taco Bell stop. Shortly after exiting the freeway, I observed this family.

Yes, although many in Eagle River would chose to deny that they live in Anchorage, ER is within the Municipality of Anchorage, so here you go:

Outside Rearview Mirror Study of Anchorage, Z9: family strolling through Eagle River. The XXL burrito steak was really good.

For all those of you living or visiting Paris, France, please drop by the Louvre anytime from July 14 on. I expect that by then all four of these images will be on permanent display, at mural size, on Wall #9 - the most important and prestigious wall in all the Louvre.

 

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