My Travels    NYC Trip    The Windows	Alaska Pictures of the Day #8 Mrs. Wright - After we stopped by the Schoolhouse construction site(location of the new B&B) Johnny mentioned he wanted to stop in to check on a friend who was living alone. We pulled up and Johnny headed for the door. "I really don't need to knock, but I want to make sure she knows I'm bringing someone along." I a few moments we were inside Mrs. Wright's house where I was introduced to Frances and her dog, Lady. From what I could tell, her duaghter brought her groceries from town once a week and she lived out here alone for most of the year. Part of the winter she stays back in Nome. After I took a seat Johnny had her tell a few stories. For a moment I was reminded of the look Miss(Mocelyn) Larkin had on her face when she would tell Ballet Russe stories to members of the company in Tulsa. These were even older and the stare was deeper as she looked back into time. After reminding me again of how fond she was of Lady, she started to talk about the imortance of not being mean to animals. "We have to take them for food, but we should never hurt them." She told me a tale about an woman her family knew who have maimed a bird. The neighbor had been drying a piece of fur for a sleeve and a bird that was feeding off of it poked holes in the skin and the fur became useless. The unhappy neighbor netted the bird and broke both of its legs before turning it lose. The moral of the story came when I was told the woman broke both of her legs in an accident on the river a few days later. Then she told about how they borrow from the animals. "I take some masu (a root also known as tundra turnip) from the mice, but I always trade them. They pick the sweetest and when they store it it's always cut to the same length." Johnny nodded in concurrence. "Johnny, what do you leave them? I always leave them dried fish." Johnny agreed again. The relationships on the tundra started to become very clear to me. Wright House - They are a bit hard to see, but there are some white crosses behind Mrs. Wright's house. Almost all of the grave markers in the area are simple white crosses. If they stand up to the wind, the cold weather keeps them looking new for ages. Not far from the graves is an old church, the scene of another of Mrs. Wright's tales, this one a bit more current. It seems there was a small black cat that was living around the church. "It was hard to believe it had survived a on the tundra. It was in pretty bad shape and it's ears had froze off. A couple of the boys were ready to shoot it. They found it on the steps of the church. Then they thought about killing a black cat on the steps of a church and the changed their minds. I decided to try to take it in. It took me three weeks to get him to come inside. He lives in here now. I call him Tuffy, Tough Guy." Frances tried for a while to coax him out, but he was going to stay away from the stranger today. Out House - I was thinking of Charlotte Town when I took this photo. Charlotte sat next to me on my flight into Anchorage. She was quite the character/artist/writer. She offered to show me around Anchorage, but I didn't have enought time to take her up on her offer. I will have to next adventure! She claimed she was working on a book about Alaskan outhouses called "Outhouses From the Inside Out." Maybe this one will make it... NEXT