June 24, 2007 - Last week, I met a wonderful woman. As with most families, Disneyland represented some of their family's happiest family memories. When she learned of our poor, battered site, she asked me to bring the site back up to pre-attack levels and offered her help, she was the first angel that has blessed our little enterprise in a very long time.

As a result, I just met today with a team of programmers who is assisting us in returning the site to its former glory. It is nice to meet with heroes who not only want to see us get up and running, but who are willing to help prevent it from ever happening again.

I was also introduced to archive.org a website that is proving invaluable to recovering what was lost. Come and see what we once were, this represents the last glimpse of the site before the attack. I have been able to restore a half-dozen of our original Traditions columns. More will follow in coming days.

Thanks to archive.org, I am featuring a page that few have seen since the attack, a page that's pure Walt a man who was knocked down, but never out. I think his thoughts are a fitting symbol of our determination to fight our way back.

-- Tom

Happy Birthday America!
Independence Day Waltisms

You can own this beautiful portrait, just click on it to purchase

On this Independence Day, we thought we'd share some of our favorite quotes from Walt Disney:

Actually, if you could see close in my eyes, the American flag is waving in both of them and up my spine is growing this red, white and blue stripe.

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As I see it, a person's culture represents his appraisal of the things that make up his life. And a fellow becomes cultured, I believe, by selecting that which is fine and beautiful in life and throwing aside that which is mediocre or phony. Sort of a series of free, very personal choices, you might say. If this is true, then I think it follows that “freedom” is the most precious word to culture. Freedom to believe what you choose to read, think, and say and be with what you choose. In America, we are guaranteed these freedoms. It is the constitutional privilege of every American to become cultured or to grow up like Donald Duck. I believe that this spiritual and intellectual freedom which we Americans enjoy is our greatest cultural blessing. Therefore, it seems to me, that the first duty of culture is to defend freedom and resist all tyranny.

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Americans are a responsive people and the ideas, the knowledge, and the emotions that come through the television screen in our living rooms will most certainly shape the course of the future for ourselves and our children.

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Once a man has tasted freedom he will never be content to be a slave. That is why I believe that this frightfulness we see everywhere today is only temporary. Tomorrow will be better for as long as America keeps alive the ideals of freedom and a better life. All men will want to be free and share our way of life. There must be so much that I should have said, but haven't. What I will say now is just what most of us are probably thinking every day. I thank God and America for the right to live and raise my family under the flag of tolerance, democracy, and freedom.

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A Phoenix Rises

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

— Walt Disney

We've been slow to come back following our hacker attack of August 30, 2004 as all of our readers know.

Our friends deserve an explanation. Since my wife's disability, I have had to take a position that requires ten to twelve hours a day of work in front of a computer. This means that in order to be a reasonable approximation of a father and husband something had to suffer. My eyes were simply too fatigued to continue coding while everyone slept and the complexity of the server connections meant that I often made things worse instead of better on those odd nights when I was able to stay up late and try to repair the damage.

It is good to have a failure while you're young because it teaches you so much. For one thing, it makes you aware that such a thing can happen to anybody, and once you've lived through the worst, you're never quite as vulnerable afterward.

— Walt Disney

Where does it leave us? As a company, Founders Legacy is in debt and has suspended credit card processing. Our current hit rate simply will not support the fees charged by the bank and processors. Therefore, we're going back to the old drawing board and reinventing ourselves and rebuilding from the ground up. Our shopping cart, curiously never truly went down. However, in good conscience, we felt that we could not publicly display the cart while the Cast Member nominations languished. We will accept payment for pins via PayPal and personal checks only. As business rebounds, we will re-establish the online credit card processing.

Tonight, we are proud to display 217 Cast Member nominations from 2003. In true Star Wars fashion, we are beginning with the middle block of nominations. We had a similar number in pre-load status just before the attack became known, so the last third will go up within the next two weeks (not a single Cast Member nomination has been lost in any of the upheaval). Finally, the original nominations will be reformatted, converted and loaded.

After all of the nominations are caught up, the original site content will be reformatted and configured to use our databases. This will mean faster load times for all of our readers and faster turn-around on our end.

We would like to thank all of you for your prayers, e-mails, good wishes and affection.

Finally, we think that Walt said it best, fifty years ago ...