..Sunday afternoon, March 2rd, 2003, there will be more dickering as to what Nibstar Productions will do with WALKING FREE. After weeks of talking back and forth about who was going to come and see whom,..where they were going to meet,..who would be meeting with whom and how,..I am about ready to tell both Densmorereid AND Nibstar...JUST WHAT THEY CAN DO WITH THE BOOK AND WHERE THEY CAN ALL PUT IT!!
DAMN! If I did not want so badly to have this damn movie made......!!!!!!!
..Anyway, on Sunday, March 2, the representatives of Densmoreid Publishing Company and Nibstar Productions will sit down and decide if they can both market the screen play of the book, WALKING FREE: THE NELLIE ZIMMERMAN STORY to a larger production company. Our company is going to be asking a flat fee for a year's marketing rights to the story and a percentage of any movie made. No matter what deal is made,..I get 10%. Not bad! Not bad at all!!
I have been asked to get an outside opinion on a part of the screen play..on Monday, that is the Questing Truth..(already taken care of), and it gives me a chance to send an important section of the script to a certain young lady,..that I have in mind for a certain part, on that same day an important section of script,..if I can get a fax number for her!!

We are practically into a new month and everything and nothing has changed. My cough is getting better. I really do have a form of aspiration pneumonia and I do not,.I don't want to think,..have cancer. I am going for the pneumonia. That,..at least,.curable and responds to antibiotics.
Thank the Lord, I have been catching up on my schoolwork. The sixty-five year old is against college for women as he ever was,..but he certainly does like the paychecks when I bring them home as opinions do not pay the bills!!
Everything is set for the Social Work Convention at Wright State University...and the speeches and program that we will be giving there as the Keynote Speakers...except for the time that we,..three,..meet Questing Truth and Shakespeare.
Questing Truth is a born artist and writer!! And I can vouch for the fact that she is not a "disabilities bigot!" The lady was born to solve problems and has a way of putting words on paper, that would make a saint weep!! And I ain't no saint!!
My knees are knocking at finally meeting up with Shakespeare!! Lordy,..can that woman write!! She already has one book under her belt and is working on a second!!! And she wrote the whole book,..herself!! No co-author stuff for her....yet!!
The Reverand says not to worry about the next book that I have in my head as we are marketing this one right now,..and he wants to meet the two ladies in question in person. The "fuck-off" e-mail that I got from the one bboard bird, that he was so sure would be such a great writer, has led him to be a little more cautious!! I will have to get to class soon and hope to write a little more in this later!! Here is to WALKING FREE: THE MOVIE!! I hope that Sunday....things are finally in their proper place!!

So,..my pneumonia just plain refuses to go away!! I am coughing and spewing all over the place!! I have to get rid of it by Sunday afternoon. On Sunday afternoon,..what I say and how I say it could mean the end of struggling to prove to other people that folks like Nellie and myself are not just medical diagnosis,..we are people. Of course,..if I hack up mucus all over this lady,..she might go for the medical diagnosis theory over the responsible adult theory!! Heheheheh!
I still can't believe that I am going to talk to a person, who makes movies,..and I am going to talk to a person, who wants to make a movie about an event in the life of a friend of mine,..that was also an event in my life. Having a book done about something, that I was involved in and a part of seems unreal enough, but having a movie made about it is totally almost unbelieveable.
The big thing about this movie is that no one can ever say anything bad about Nellie again. It will be the one thing that I have always wanted..a public record of just what that little old lady did with her life..what she was allowed to live of it as she wanted. People just don't seem to realize what a horrible thing happened to her....buried alive in a state hospital at the age of fifty-seven years,..abandoned by her family,..and then,..almost abandoned by Jim,..the guy, who rescued her in the first place. I really don't think that folks can understand all of the horrors, that took place in her life. To me, the worst horror, that took place in a world like ours where a Nellie Zimmerman can exist and be treated so, is the fact that less than twenty years after she lived and worked that she could be so instantly forgotten!!
Gaaaaaak! I am off on a coughing spree again!! This is getting messy. I have been sick on and off many times in my life, but this is one of those times when it just plain won't go away!! I had a very hard time breathing last night. Throat sprays, huge antibiotic pills, and cold steam mists don't seem to help. I find that my chest cavity seems to be filling up with mucus,..I guess that I will be going back to the doctor again,..whether I like it or not!! I have had throat swabs taken and there don't seem to be any specific causes as to what is making it so difficult for me to breath.
I am not a smoker,..like my sister was, but the fact that my father, mother,..and sister all had cancer and their deaths were directly or indirectly caused by cancer looms in my mind. Mom lived to be seventy-eight years old. Dad lived to be sixty-four. Marie died eighteen years after she was first diagnosed..at age fifty-six.
I am fifty-three years old, and I have never smoked and drink..maybe once a year. A certain fate seems to be lurking about me,..waiting for me to step in its' path. I will not elaborate on what that fate might be!! Whatever happens,..I can be quite sure that in a year from now,...most folks will not even remember my name and in less that two years,..no one will even know that I existed!!
The question arises: Is it really important that anyone in this life or the next remembers a person after they die? I say, "No!"
I say no because after a person dies,..what happens here will and cannot be affected by their actions..."The dead do not act!!"...on anything!!
What I do and say while I exist is important.....to myself..and those around me in my immmediate vicinity,..but that is all.
I surely hope that the lady, that I know as Insipida, gets to play the part that I have in mind for her. After working directly and indirectly, willingly or not,..for civil rights for the disabled for my entire life,..it would give me the greatest of pleasure to know that a lady with a disability would play me as I am now. The idea, that Insipida, who has,..it seems,..about the same world view,..that I have in certain ways,..would have the opportunity to work and perhaps even advance her career a little by making me come alive on a motion picture screen,...pleases me mightily.
Even after the Cleveland Plain Dealer review,..I have been informed,..there are people, who are saying that all of the things, that I have said about the book and the movie,.."just cannot possibly be true!" Miss Sippi, strutting her stuff on the silver screen,..playing the part of me in a movie,..would be the perfect stopper in the mouths of those, whose world view is so small that all they can see are the narrow confines of their own little lives or the narrow confines of their computer screens!! Next sunday will be my chance to give another person a chance,...and that is what is important!!

Everyone has a right to privacy. My definition of privacy must,..I guess,..become a little more private.
Yet,..a snob is still a snob is still a snob. The most common thing that snobs have in common is that they don't like being called what they really are...which is what they are..."snobs." Anyone,..who does not meet their standards..is unworthy of their august company.
There are certain times,..considering some of the snobs..in real life,.that i know,..and some of the snobs,..that I have met on the net,..that I am glad ..that certain types of snobs are so self-contained. And,..they can be put in their palces.
Bill once took a course in Ornithology,..the study of birds. It was reputed to a difficult course and everyone, who had taken it before him, warned him that the course was hard and that the professor was a real "ditz!' Bill, needing the credit hours and really liking "birding," took the course anyway. The prof threw exam after exam at the students. Bill "aced'" everything that the "ditz" could dish out at him and the rest of the class.
Finally,..in preparation for the big "final" at the end of the semester,...the professor told William and the other students that they should study everything that he had given them for the whole semester as he would and could chose "anything" to test them on. Bill studied everything..bird calls,..feather patterns,..natural coloration,..migratory patterns,..even the different types of air lift that bird wings have, starting with the chicken and ostrich and working his way down to the humming bird.
Bill spent almost two weeks studying for that final. He walked into the class room on the day of the test and found fifty trays of dead birds, set out for the students to identify. The catch was that the entire bird in each tray was covered up except for the birds' legs and feet. The "ditz's" students were going to have to be able to indentify fifty birds..by knowing what their legs and feet looked like.
After the torture,..I mean the test,..was over,..Bill,..in a fit of anger,..walked up to the professor and said angrily,.."You really get off on "student torture,"..don't you? That was not a "birding" test! That was the inquisition!!"
The "ditz' sputtered at the fact that a "lowly" student would DARE to speak to him in such a fashion and spewed out angrily at Bill, "What is your name young man?"
Bill rolled up the legs of his blue jeans and took off his shoes and stockings, and grinned at the professor, and said to him, "Guess!"

I told Rosezelle about the two groups and she told me that she had warned me about trying to commuicate with "outsiders."
..When I visited the Ohio School for the Deaf last spring,...I was a heroine. When I spoke at the Home for the Deaf last April,..I had the old folks kissing my hand and saying that the things that had been done with Nellie would create a bridge between the hearing and the deaf,..that everyone's children could walk across. How can I go back again this year and tell them..in one part of my life,.at leas,t that they are wrong.
..There is such a vast gap between the hearing and the hearing impaired and the True Deaf,..that even people like Rosezelle and myself, who stand partially on both sides of the gap because we can speak and have college educations,..can bearly cross it!!
..How do I explain that concept to a people,..whose language has no words and whose concepts bearly go beyond those needed to live from day to day. These deaf people are not stupid. They are uneducated.
.. How to explain that to the average deaf kid that graduates from high school reads only on a fifth grade level and understands perhaps only half of what he or she reads?
How to explain to such people that no matter at what level they function at,..they are still viewed as idiots to be manipulated because the concepts, that they are slow to pick up on or have no comprehension of culturally, will condemn them in the eyes of the hearing. All this is getting a bit much even for me.
..I've gotten the idea now. Just stay away from certain people,...who have their own agendas. Except now,...I have my own agenda.
..Nellie,..old friend,....HOW WRONG YOU WERE!! You forgave.....too much!!

Two opposing groups, who can't get along,..and I happen to like people from both groups. Betrayal,..accusation,.and drama,..which I never wanted. All this because I wanted to make peace with one group and thought that I was at least friendly with the other group!! I think that I really belong to neither group. One group hates everyone else outside their little group. The other group only wishes to associate with it's own members....like a parking meter,..that keeps violating itself!!! I am totally convinced that I am like neither group. I don't want to be like either. What on earth goes through people's minds. I am going to let Rosezelle pick out out the other people for the movie except for the three that I already have. I am cured of thinking that I no longer need to learn...."more about human nature." Just because someone sends me an e-mail does not mean that they are any different than the people,..that I meet in my real life. I guess that I could call that a sort of "revelation." What is the word,..that I am looking for?

I am depressed. My skin is breaking out because I have eaten 3.6 pounds of chocolate in the past two days from anxiety!! I put away another pound of carmel chocolate this evening and Bill and Shawn became absolutely ill watching me!!
What's wrong?
It's my old feeling that to get the respect of my fellow human beings,...I must jump through hoops or "walk-on-water!!"
The astronauts going down did not help things,..but when a friend said in an e-mail that she thought that I should be gld that the review was in the paper at the same time that the story of the death of the astronauts and that OUR REVIEW would be read by folks looking for good news after growing tired of reading about dead astronauts.......I REALLY felt ill!!
This "friend" is of the type,..who would put the dead astronaut's helment up for sale on e-bay and charge an extra ten thousand dollars...if the head of the dead astronaut..were still in it!!
I SHOULD be very happy! I have my heart's desire: WALKING FREE has been reviewed in a major newspaper and this weekend..is the MEETING,..that will decide just how this story will be marketed and to whom!!! Lloyd is after me to get a new hearing aide and use it on our speaking tours. I see no reason to.