Feed the Lions or you might be labeled a nazi

I was stopped at the light at Ashlan and Cedar in the left turn lane turning left onto Ashlan this morning and there was a homeless man standing in the center divider. He was holding a sign which I was unable to read and he had a lion stuffed animal on the ground next to him. I was the second car back and he approached the first car and said something to him while motioning towards the stuffed lion. The man in the vehicle in front of me appeared not to react and the man started walking to my door.

The man approaches my window and I can't hear understand him at first because he is mumbling and I am trying to pretend I don't see him. I really hate ignoring people like this because I got yelled at by a homeless dude once for doing this and I felt really bad. The previous homeless guy went off on how he was a person too just like me and didn't deserve to be ignored. Ever since then I try to at least acknowledge these individuals because the homeless dude had a good point. The only time I don't do this though is if I feel the individual is unstable, which was the impression I was getting from him.

So he is standing less than a foot from my window and I can see him in the corner of my eye raise one arm up in the air while he is holding his other arm in a fist to his chest. He then shouts "My lion is hungry, can you spare some money so I can feed him!?". To be honest, I chuckled inside. This was certainly a new way to ask for money. But I continued to look straight ahead because he is now inches from my window and acting very bizarrely. He shouts the request again and I am really uncomfortable now so I turn to him and shake my head and mouth "sorry". Thats when things got interesting.

He then picks up the lion and puts it up to the window and says "I just wanted to feed my lion, you nazi". He doesn't sound particularly angry when he is saying this, it was more like he was making a statement, much like you would say "these pretzels are making me thirsty". Perhaps the lion was Jewish, I really don't know why not giving money to a stuffed lion makes you a nazi and didn't stick around to find out. The light turned green at about the same time and I drove off.

So I guess the moral of the story is, feed the lion or you risk being called a nazi and we should have better mental health treatment for the homeless.

Screwed! And not the enjoyable kind...

On occasion I receive emails from The National Communication Association (NCA) regarding conferences and papers and publications etc that I used to be involved in when I was in grad school. Usually I delete the emails and don't look too closely at them, but today one caught my eye. It was for the annual NCA convention that is coming up and the topics that will be presented. One presentation that I found to be particularly interesting was Increasing Participation through Identification: A case study of the American Red Cross of Central Texas. Why does that sound interesting you may be asking, because I was in the group that conducted the research and wrote that paper. As I scrolled down to see who the authors were indeed everyone in my group was listed, except me. I may not be in school anymore but I conducted and transcribed 25 interviews with Red Cross volunteers and wrote a good portion of the lit review and did just as much work as everyone else. When we presented our findings to our professor I remember she was impressed and very pleased with our work and suggested that we get it published and/or present it at NCA. I am sure they did some revisions, I read the abstract though and it discussed the same results that we found so fundamentally nothing changed. I suppose they didn't think I would come across it anyway so it was a non issue but I sacrificed sleep and mental health getting that paper done, I think I deserve a little credit! Eh, oh well, it is not like it is going to help me out in my current career.

UPDATE: I received an email a few moments ago from one of my group members (without any prompting either which was weird) saying that the actual paper has all authors on it, including me (I was the only one left off the NCA panel listing for whatever reason). I was also informed that the paper has been submitted to be published in the Journal of Applied Communication Research. I could be a published author in an obscure academic journal that no one has ever heard of! It was actually an interesting paper because we were able to interview people who volunteered at Red Cross shelters after Hurricane Katrina. Their stories and experiences were incredible and we were able to offer some concrete suggestions to the Red Cross on how they could improve communication and improve their volunteer coordination in the event of a crisis like a major Hurricane. No word on if they took any of the advice, but I really liked that this project was centered less in the academic realm and more in the practical realm where I always feel research should be.