Took the day off from work and am spending it in a cocoon filled with 22 years of memories.  Missing her more than ever...
    

On this last of the one year markers, I want to thank the people who were at Port Aransas a year ago to help me set Shannon loose into the sea she loved so much... for the flash of blue and purple light in the sky letting me know that her patron Archangel St. Michael was there to catch her on the other side... for the lone dolphin... the full moon... and the crashing waves that carried the cross from her rosary out to sea...

We did her proud and felt her there with us...


Shannon in Cape Town, South Africa

 

So... before everyone gets to NPS... I've been trying to collect up photos of folks wearing the Shannon Leigh t-shirts (both for me personally and for the lawsuit to illustrate the impact of her loss on all of us). I've been copying them over when I see them on facebook or online, but if you have any, please send them to me as email attachments to: sheilasiobhan@aol.com 

 Friends-

 

It is a Herculean task to make a positive difference in a young person’s life.  What we do for them as teenagers can make the difference between fiery aspiration and achievement and life long struggle and strife.  This Tuesday, the four teenaged girls of the Austin Under 21 Poetry Slam Team (photo below) will fly to Chicago to compete in the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival.  We are nearly $2,500 short and we still need to feed, house and transport these ladies and the angels watching over them (coach, chaperones, directors). We have done everything we know to do to raise the money needed: performance features, competitions, product sales, online cause campaigns, and pledge matches.  We have covered the airfares ($2,559) and some of the lodging ($850).  We can’t make this happen without your help.

 

The math is very simple:

 

Meals-

$10 per meal x 3 meals per day x 9 people x 6 days = $1,620

 

Ground Transport-

$25 weekly train pass x 9 people = $225

 

Remaining Lodging = $520

 

If just 125 people donated $20 a piece at our website (www.tywc.org), click donate button on any page [PayPal]), the team’s costs would be covered. Too many times we think someone else will do what needs to be done and, as a result, nothing happens.  We need each and every one of you to take the step.  It is the only way for us to make it.

 

We make this request on behalf and for the benefit of these girls.  Despite some of the very serious challenges some of them face in their lives, they all have committed to accomplish something bigger than themselves; a lesson that could propel them to success in their lives.  Please help us realize their goal and lift a child. We can’t do it alone.

 

Sheila & Ron 

 The 2009 Austin Youth Slam Team desperately needs your help getting to Chicago for Brave New Voices!!! The airfares are currently on my tab - yikes!!! Please consider making a donation today. If enough folks give just $10-20 we can make it! Or - stop by Kick Butt Coffee tomorrow afternoon, hear the team's feature performance and drop off a donation in person :) Or donate using PayPal through our website: www.txywc.org

 I wondered if I'd feel it.  That moment when she was struggling to break free and reach the surface.  A year ago Sunday the sheriff called.  The call we moms fear.  The call we warn our children about.  I used to tell her what my mom told me:  "I don't want to be that mother who didn't know where her baby was when the call came... don't make me into that woman the world looks on with disgust".  But... she was out on her own already when the call came.  I wasn't the mother in the newspaper who left her child somewhere or didn't keep a close enough watch.  The day comes when our arms can't reach far enough...  

There were close calls in her childhood when I wrapped my arms around her as tightly as I could to protect her from harm.  Walking through the streets of New York City or Milan, I would cram her growing body into a too small snugly, rather than in a stroller.  People used to tease me for it, but I was always so afraid that someone would come along and grab the stroller and her from me.  I had nightmares that her father would take her for a walk, get distracted by a conversation and not notice as someone ran off with her.  So I held her tight, straps securing her in safety.  If they tried to take her they'd have to take me with them.

There was the 1989 San Francisco quake.  Two years old, she was playing with her rocking horse when the building began rocking back and forth again and again.  Rocking strong enough to slosh water out of the toilet onto the floor, drapes swinging from side to side.  It was a hot day with no a/c and I was cooking dinner in my slip.  I raced over to grab her and sat with her under the door jam waiting for it to stop while her dad listened to instructions over the intercom.  They said "stay in your apartments".    Shannon said "naughty, naughty house" as she grabbed my chest.  When the quake stopped we got dressed and went outside to the park.  Seventeen stories up in a high rise apartment building felt too precarious.  I didn't trust her father's arms to carry her down the stairwell.  I clutched her to my chest and carried her every step of the way out into the street.  My legs ached for days.  We found an open area and sat there for a long time.  At least on the ground we thought we could run to safety.  We returned to the apartment as darkness set in.  There were looters in the streets and fires from gas mains breaking out.  I didn't sleep that night.  I lay watching the ceiling and a crack that was slowly working its way across the paint.  I prayed hard that we wouldn't find ourselves tumbling down seventeen stories and tried to strategize how I would block her fall with my body.  Supermom fantasies...

A few years later we were on an airplane that hit severe wind sheer.  The plane bounced back and forth... up and down a thousand feet at a time.  Turbulence so strong that EMS met us at the gate to help a man with heart problems.  Another woman was carried away with a back injury.  I braced my leg against the bulk head, fighting gravity to wrap my arms around her and shield her from whatever came next.  In cold weather I still feel the pain in my knee from the hits it took with each lurch in altitude.  A younger girl behind us was screaming and crying.  Her mom had gone to sit with a friend in another part of the plane before the wind sheer began and couldn't get back to her.  Shannon turned and said "don't worry, it'll be alright".  We finally cleared the turbulence and made it to the gate... safe again on the ground.

I was in Walmart last Sunday when it hit me.  Picking up some stuff for the house and not paying attention to the time.  First there was dizzyness and shortness of breath.  Then the sense of panic.  It was 1:53.  Ron took one look at me, got me out of there and home where I curled up on the floor with the two dogs while he brought me water and xanax.  My heart pounding... the shaking, and the sobbing wouldn't stop.  An hour later I was able to get up on the bed, while my mom sat next to me, reassuring me that I was living through an agony Shannon probably never felt.  She and Ron kept repeating that she must have blacked out before the mouthpiece escaped her lips.  I've always been afraid of drowning.  I love the sea from the safety of the shore or on a boat within sight of land.  I'll never know what her thoughts were in those moments and it kills me either way.  I may never know if that was the exact time.  But, if I back track from the sheriff's call, to the helicopter's departure, to the man who left her there to die resurfacing at the end of his dive, to the rescue and resuscitation... it had to be close...  

She always called me at the end of a long drive to let me know she'd arrived safely.  Her last voicemail to me said "Don't worry mom.  I'm diving with Jim so you know I'll be safe"...

I was always so worried about catching her from falling... I never thought to shield her from the depths...

 I

I think she'd like the idea of her Austin area gang gathering to celebrate her spirit...  
Please join us if you can.

So... I have to admit that I had yet to get my tattoo.  There was talk of a group of us going in on the day of the Memorial at Sea, but we couldn't get info on a good place.  Matthew and I actually went around to places when he was in town, but everyone was too busy and we really should have just made an appointment in advance.  My plan now is to get mine done on the anniversary of her accident, June 14th.  I've gone back and forth on where to get it - not the shop - but physically.  I'd been thinking about each ankle, but my vanity is starting to question that since I don't want my legs to look shorter than they already are.  My latest thoughts have been to get one line around each wrist. 

My drifting ship, I still believe in anchors
My heart, I still believe in God - Shannon

But, I'm still not sure whether to just get the text, or whether to try to get some sort of design made out of it.  So... for any of you who already have these lines (Karen), and those of you who have more experience than me (which would be zero!)... please send me your thoughts and suggestions...  I don't think I can handle getting anything big, but I really have no clue how to go about coming up with an idea.

Hugs

Here they are!   Team Austin 2009!


Left to right:  Cora Lee, Margaret Olson, Shamika "Perception" Hicks, Shay Harris (3 Time Team Champion)

This season and last night's Slam Off was dedicated to Shannon.  And, it's so fitting that we got this particular team!  Both Cora and Margaret were making their third attempt at a spot on the team and showed great determination and strength last night, Perception is Faylita's sister (Faylita competed in her first slam against Shannon in 2004 but was just past the BNV age limit so we couldn't include her on the team), and Shay has been mentoring and encouraging the other ladies all season long.  The competition was fierce!  These ladies will be bringing passion, power, creativity, determination and hunger to this summer's BNV!  I can't wait to see the results of their teamwork!

PLEASE COME JOIN US AND HELP US KEEP THE LEGACY ALIVE!

*****************************************************

AUSTIN UNDER 21 POETRY SLAM OFF!
Presented by The Texas Youth Word Collective
 

 

The time has arrived spoken word mavens.  The Seventh Annual Austin Youth Poetry Slam Off is finally here!!! Teenagers throughout the Austin area have endured a season of spoken word challenges to meet one last time in a battle for four coveted spots on the Austin Youth Slam Team.  The prize, you ask?  A return to where it all started for the Austin youth spoken word movement, where the first Austin Youth Slam Team cut their teeth; the City of Broad Shoulders, the home of the original Deep Dish Pizza, the first African American President of the United States and  . . . . Da Bears: Chicago , Illinois , for the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival.  

 

Austin youth, spilling their hearts, souls, and minds on the stage with original writing and performance,  will vie for an opportunity to compete against some of THE finest young spoken word artists in the country.  And if you are saying to yourself, “Aww, they’re pullin’ my leg!” or "Are they serious?", go to http://www.hbo.com/bravenewvoices/ (see the first episode online) or watch the series every Sunday night and you will see what we mean.  In its six years of competing at Brave New Voices, Austin has placed Fifth once and Sixth once out of the 45 cities that send teams to this annual international event.  Britain ’s Got Talent (the U.K. ’s version of American Idol)? Shooooot, AUSTIN has talent!  And on Saturday night, May 2, the proof will be presented for all to see.  As the immortal Vanilla Ice would say, "Word to ya mother!"

 

In addition to some of the hottest spoken word anywhere, YOU, as the audience will be an essential part of the action. It will be your job to cheer or jeer the judges who will ultimately choose the next youth poetry slam team to represent Austin on the international stage.  Oh, and there's more.  In addition to spoken word, you'll get to enjoy the stylings of our perennial resident dj, DJ F.Scott, a musicologist of the highest order as well as our fabulous host, nationally reknowned slam phenom poetess, Kim Taylor (aka Knowtorious 13).  So, bring your family, bring your friends . . . heck... bring complete and total strangers off the street, if you like.  But whatever you do . . .  BE THERE!

 

Finalists in this year’s Slam Off include: Shay Harris (Reagan H.S.), Cora Lee (Reagan H.S.), De’Vonte Sanders (Reagan H.S.), Margaret Olson (Cedar Park H.S.), Sheenika Medard (Hutto H.S.), Kynneth Anderson (Ellison H.S., Killeen), Kevin Garica (Manor H.S.), Jonathan Fisher (Sam Houston State), shamika Hicks (Austin Community College), Micah Witty and Frank Banner.

 

The 2008-2009 City Wide Youth Poetry Slam season is dedicated to the memory of Shannon Leigh, co-founder of the Texas Youth Word Collective and Austin City Wide Youth Poetry Slam, who died on June 30th, 2008 at the age of twenty.  Shannon was Team Champion in 2003 and 2004, as well as a team member on the 2005 team.  In 2007, she took third place in the Individual Finals of the National Poetry Slam, performing for a sold-out crowd at the Paramount Theater.  She was featured on the HBO Series, "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry" and completed two novels, numerous poetry anthologies, and a hip-hop CD entitled "Sanctuary".  Last year's Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival was dedicated to Shannon's memory, and an annual college scholarship was established in her name to be awarded to one of the festival participants.  This year's Austin City-Wide Youth Poetry Slam Off will include a tribute to this amazing young woman who touched so many in this community and beyond.
 

This event is sponsored in part by a grant from the City of Austin and the Texas Arts Commission (and you know they don't play when it comes to art!).