IDITAROD DIARY, CHAPTER 11:In which we learn absolutely nothing, except that someone night be dead out there. NOME, Alaska -- And the winner is . . . Nobody?"Have you heard anything?" someone asked in the confused race headquarters on Front Street, where this grueling Iditarod dogsled race was supposed to have ended already -- and I was supposed to be heading back to Planet Earth. "What's the latest?"
Maybe you are lucky enough not to live in the low end of the city, and so the idea of being some place where drugs are used, or sold, or both, still seems shocking. It isn't. It happens all the time in Detroit. So it is really no jolt that Jalen Rose, a city kid, a Detroit kid, was in a house where drugs were found last October. This does not make him an addict. Or a user. Or a dealer. He is none of those things. He is a city kid who has friends, old friends, from way before he wore that maize and blue uniform, and some of those friends are involved with drugs.
Mike Peplowski deserved better than this. He had the scars, and he put in the years. No way a Spartan like him should have to exit the greatest rivalry of his college career on the short end, while two young Wolverine players, Ray Jackson and Chris Webber, danced on the scorer's table, shaking their hips and leading the crowd in a wave. Peplowski looked down. He kept walking.
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.
