Rubber duckies = $30K

We're on sports overload this time of year: football, MLB play-offs, the NASCAR chase, Hurricanes opener and...

The Great American Tobacco Duck Race!

The duck race is an annual feature of the Fox 50 Family Fest on the American Tobacco campus.

Duck sponsorships totaled $30,000 for three of our favorite non-profits: Durham Literacy Center, Durham Bulls Explorer Post 50 and the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. The event was October 1st.

The Bulls' Explorer Post 50 raised $7500 for its scholarship fund at the Triangle Community Foundation.

Post 50 advisors: Ken Bland of SAS and post alumnae Charlotte Claypoole are loyal volunteers. Charlotte is a video tech for the Durham Public Schools. We appreciate your commitment to Post 50...and schlepping all those ducks!

Facebook: "You Got to Have Friends"

We're cutting a check for $2,000 to the Durham Literacy Center. The DLC helped us grow our Facebook fan base. We offered a bounty (a donation to the Center) for each new Fan of the Bulls' Facebook page.

We added over 800 fans in the run-up to Christmas. That pushed the Bulls to almost 10,500 Facebook fans, and it puts us in the Top Ten of Minor League ball clubs.

Charity or bribery? I'm calling it a contribution!

Read more about the Durham Literacy Center, and visit the Bulls on Facebook.

A Tale of Two Cities - Brainpower & Illiteracy

A recent study rated Durham as the fourth "brainiest" metro in America! Portfolio.com and the Business Journal publications ranked brainpower by MSA. Our metro includes Chapel Hill so we get credit for all the advanced degrees at UNC, Duke, NCCU and the local high techies. Here's the Top Ten:

Boulder, Colo; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Washington, D.C.; Durham, N.C.; Fort Collins, Colo.; Bridgeport-Stamford, Conn.; San Jose, Calif.; Boston; Madison, Wis.; and San Francisco-Oakland.

On the other hand, illiteracy in Durham has been pegged as high as 27%. Those are folks who have difficulty with reading, writing and basic math.

My personal contributions to local brainpower are severely limited, but I have persuaded the Durham Bulls and our beloved mascot to promote literacy, and in particular, the Durham Literacy Center.

The DLC turned 25 this year and is launching a $2.5 million capital campaign to improve/expand its services. The DLC is a United Way Agency of Excellence...well run operation...by Executive Director Reggie Hodges with a deeply committed cadre of volunteers. (www.durhamliteracy.org) Durhamite and Bull Durham producer Thom Mount is a DLC booster...in Hollywood. His late Mother was a long-time volunteer.

Confession: Our READ poster is a knock-off, albiet a clever one. (After all, the E in Wool E. Bull stands for education.) President Obama was ahead of us. He posed for this one as a US Senator for the Skokie IL public library.

You can jump on the bandwagon by jumping on our Facebook page. The Bulls will donate a buck to the Durham Literacy Center for every new Facebook fan that we nab during December.

Yes, we're buying our friends...but its for a very good cause.