Sunday, August 4, 2002 noon

Thinking about selling the rights to my story...

Washington Post: Disney Buys the Rights to Coal Miners' Story:

The nine Pennsylvania coal miners who were trapped underground for 77 hours have sold the TV and book rights to their story to the Walt Disney Co. for $150,000 each, their attorney said yesterday.

For a total of $1,350,000.00. Gee, I wonder if Mr. Crawford is an entertainment lawyer. And, since it doesn't look like he worked a deal for residuals (do they even have residuals in television and books?), I wonder if he worked a deal where Disney pays his fee. I hope so. Maybe he retained the movie rights, over and above television and books, for them. Well, at least they did better than Boston Red Sox Bill "Spaceman" Lee who sold the rights to his story for a dollar.

... wondering how much I can get.

2:20 p.m.

For most of my Springfield working career, I've worked downtown. I've always been drawn to downtown. There's a kind of rush being in the heart of the business district. And, there are the people that work downtown. Their demeanor and attitude is different from people who don't work downtown — not to be confused with snobbishness. Just different. Some areas of downtown are in need of a lot of improvement. But that takes money. Big money.

Eight photos from the beauty that is downtown Springfield

A few words about the photo gallery. (1) Please forgive the amateur nature of the photos. I'm still learning how to use my digital camera and I'm not the greatest photographer. I really like the camera, and it has a lot of features, but I'm taking it slow; (2) I need to break down and save some bucks to buy either Photo Shop or Paint Shop Pro for photo editing; (3) I wanted to see if I could put the gallery together on my own. It's different from the photo projects I've done in the past. All the html was done by me, by hand.

Disclaimer: The photo essay is neither an endorsement for or against more vistas.