LETTER FROM MARIE
With your help, our small team raised over $4,000 for the Phoenix Flying Celebrity Skydiving benefit! Mile-Hi Skydiving Center also donated two of the celebrities' tandem jumps and comp'd the videos of all three celebs. Thank you so much for helping with this cause. We had a blast!

I have a video of our celebs that captured all the emotion and experience of the jump on my myspace page if you want to look. I know, you guys are thinking I'm not the "myspace" type. What can I say, I work in a youth-oriented organization. I guess they're rubbing off.

Skydiving is a great stress reducer. I recently severed the tendon in my right hand. Well, when you jump from the plane, nothing hurts on you and you're not worrying about any trivialities of the day or the week or the year! It's sheer joy and you have a 360 degree view of your "world" and it's quite breath-taking—figuratively and literally. At 130 mph, the wind comes at you so fast that it's hard to breath. Our drop zone boasts of the longest jumps at up to 18,000 ft. If you want to soar like a phoenix or float like a feather you get both experiences in the free fall and the parachute landing. Truly exhilarating and quite a gift to give yourself, not to mention the gift of donating to your favorite charity at the same time.

We're doing it again with the 2009 skydiving team on Saturday, September 19th, 2009. I hope you can join us next year, everyone is invited, just let me know at marie@artfromashes.org and register here. I've also left the accounts open at skydive4free so donations may be accepted at any time: CLICK HERE

I'll leave you with a Haiku that Chris Ransick wrote right after his jump:

SKYDIVE HAIKU

gravity owns me
human para-sacrifice
manleaf freefalling

"Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand—and melting like a snowflake." —Marie Beyon Ray

ART FROM ASHES JUMPERS!