Let me tell you about my neighbors.On one side, in a tri-level house, are Morty and Josie, who have two kids. Josie has big blond hair and wears frosted lipstick. Morty is the life of the party, always laughing and smoking a cigar.On the other side are Jay and Shirley and their three boys. The boys play football at the side of the house. Whenever they get any spare change, they put it in a cup in the kitchen so that one day they can buy a swimming pool.
PHILADELPHIA -- And then, the coach went ballistic."I'm ticked off!" croaked Bobby Ross after his football team's latest exercise in humiliation. "I get all the damn criticism -- people hammering me! I'm a good coach! I know what the heck's supposed to be done! And I'm not going to second-guess myself one damn time!"(Let's pause here to wipe the spittle from the microphone. Also to remove all children from the room. OK ...back to the tirade....)
News media reports indicate that apathy is at an all-time high in our country, and that small percentages of the voters are actually planning to go to the booths today. Six years ago, I wrote the following poem about apathy. The Free Press reran it before the 1996 presidential election. And it still rings true today on the cusp of another election.I heard a knock upon my doorAnd opened it to seeAll the poor around the worldLooking back at meIn tattered clothes and worn-out shoesWith families to feed,They held their hands out, hopefully,
They didn't have things like Space Camp when I was a kid, but if they had, I would have gone. I was a space nut. I kept scrapbooks of every mission. I glued together plastic model rockets, always making sure the flag decal was nice and straight on the side.At summer camp in 1969, I was already awake when they woke us to watch Neil Armstrong on the moon. I saw him descend the ladder of the lunar excursion module -- or LEM as we insiders called it -- and he said, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," I was thrilled.I never asked why he was doing it.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
