"No longer did they take each day for granted."

What is fable? Legend? Must it have a moral?

Do we complain because we have the time to do so?

I'm not sure that the women of this title don't learn as much from themselves and each other as they have to teach to their own people. This book was recommended to me by someone i work with, and you know i had to read it as soon as i read the cover as it is a tale of my homeland and the people of the foster-sister i spent much of my childhood with.

It is a nice little tale that can be read of an evening, and it does have the nice, somewhat moralistic tone to it that many fables/legends do, but it isn't really spoonfed to one.

When i go in and read all the reviews on amazon i feel like i maybe i missed something though. Perhaps it just goes to show that different people find different things in what they read (and see, and hear). I know that i have gotten different things from books i read at different times. I think i also believe that some of those reviewers might have missed out on something as well. My answers weren't quite as pat, or even as heart-warming.

Obviously old-people, learned people, wise people do have something to offer, this legend is about how they came to be revered in some Eskimo cultures (though, of necessity, for most of the history of that culture they needed to be abandoned~also a part of the story). But the more intrinsic part of the tale for me was that people need to discover their own worth before they can share it with others. I wrote i poem once, when i was in ninth grade, about some old people who had never really learned how to live, and why they were afraid to die in such a case. I don't know that i could possibly have known at so young, and maybe i didnt, maybe really, but i think maybe really can't be afraid to die until you know how to live (or shouldn't be, at least.)

This is indeed a story that needs to be shared with others~for so many reasons~so that everyone can come up with their own interpretation, and so that we may keep the old stories and traditions alive.