Hey! Look at me! I am somebody!

Not long ago I received an email from an organization I had never heard of (VDGOOD Professional Association) that informed me I somehow was going to receive recognition at their 4th International Scientist Awards on Engineering, Science, and Medicine to be held in Chennai, India in February 2020.

That email is shown above. Of course, I will not be attending what presumably was an annual event. But when I looked on their Research Awards web page, I found they had listed four other sets of awards in September and November of 2019, and both January and April of 2020. They seem to be handing them out almost as fast as an Indian restaurant can cook up dosas.

I don’t know how they came up with VDGOOD for their organization name. VD is the older English acronym for a venereal disease. More recently it is called a sexually transmitted disease or STD, but either an STD or VD is not good – it is terrible.

About four decades ago I got a letter from a royally-named book publisher inviting me to apply for inclusion in a hardback book of biographies of notable people in the region, titled something like You Are Who in the Midwest. I sent them my bio, and they told me I would be included. Then they sold me a copy of the book. Later on, at a coffee break where I worked, I asked others if they were invited too. We deduced the book publisher must have acquired a copy of the directory for TMS (currently The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society) - and sent an invitation to every member.  

It turned out there were other regional editions of You are Who for the Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, and Southwest. Then they told me I could be in a more expensive book titled You Are Who in the United States (which I did not buy). If I had, I suppose I also would have been told that I could be in an even more expensive book, You are Who in the World.

An image by Carol Highsmith of Felix de Weldon’s Waving Girl statue came from the Library of Congress.