The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

The NFL's image has been significantly marred in recent weeks due to a number of cases surrounding domestic violence. While the league's commissioner Roger Goodell has attempted to take a few steps in the right direction on this front, the league still has a long way to go. Fortunately for Roger Goodell, whose image has gone from bad to downright sickening during this time, he has stand-up players like Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson to aid him on the matter. While I'm fairly neutral when it comes to teams in the NFL, or any sport for that matter, it's difficult not to like and pull for Russell Wilson, who came into this league as an undersized quarterback, wasn't given much of a chance to be an elite-caliber quarterback in this league, has led his team to a Super Bowl victory in his short time there, and continues to showcase that he's a good, decent human being away from the field as well. Wilson continued that do-good trend when he recently in...

The Charles Koch Foundation doesn't appear to be very good with numbers, which is kind of odd considering Charles Koch is estimated to be worth $34 billion. In a recent ad by Koch's conservative non-profit group, it asserts that if you make $34,000 or more, you're in the top 1% of earners (worldwide). In the United States, where Mr. Koch resides last I heard, one must earn approximately $352,000 annually in order to be among the top 1%. $34,000, $352,000 - those numbers are so similar, I may have to re-watch the film Twins to make certain Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are not identical. In actuality, $34,000 is just 9.7% of what it takes to make it into the top 1% of earners in this country. Making matters even worse for the Charles Koch Foundation and their odd math is the fact that the top 1% of earners in this country earn an average of $1.12 million. The $34,000 mentioned in the ad is just 3.0% of $1.12 million. How far off are the numbers presented in...

This poem can be found on pages 24-26 of "Seasons Come, People Grow: A Poetic Journey". All so similar, Yet all so different, Innate characteristics, Held against us, Color of one's skin, Sexual preference, Gender, Geographic location, All components of the whole, Working with one another, Life is incomplete, Without each other, Each component is needed, For the earth to rotate properly, Without each essential part, We would have nothing, We are each one of the whole, No one superior to another, Innate traits are irrelevant, Even sexual preference, gender or skin color, We are a circle of friends, Hands held with smiles gleaming across our face, Each is a component to the whole, We are one, the human race.