The Buddha's Last Instruction by Mary Oliver
"Make of yourself a light" said the Buddha, before he died. I think of this every morning as the east begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness, to send up the first signal - a white fan streaked with pink and violet, even green. An old man, he lay down between two sala trees, and he might have said anything, knowing it was his final hour. The light burns upward, it thickens and settles over the fields. Around him, the villagers gathered and stretched forward to listen. Even before the sun itself hangs, disattached, in the blue air, I am touched everywhere by its ocean of yellow waves. No doubt he thought of everything that had happened in his difficult life. And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire- clearly I'm not needed yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. Slowly, beneath the branches, he raised his head. He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
If you're frustrated by the lag-time of the Obama store, you can always make your own buttons (or buy someone else's) at cafepress.com. This is what I did. You can see them here:
http://www.cafepress.com/petuniablue
YES WE CAN!
During the past couple of weeks, in New Hampshire, and here in Massachusetts, I've seen how great it is to have your dog with you when you are campaigning. My friend made an Obama dog coat for my dog and when I have him with me while I'm handing out leaflets or holding a sign for Barack Obama, people will come up and talk to me, instead of avoiding eye contact for dear life. it's a great way to engage with people and get a conversation going about supporting Barack Obama. My friend has sent me the following instructions to post here, in case any one else has a dog ready to Stand up for Change on four legs.
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I use SIMPLICITY PATTERN #9520 and I make the middle coat (it's supposed to have florescent stripes on it but I put the OBAMA transfers and/or felt letters on instead). It's basically two pieces of fabric, with 4 straps attached to the bottom (with velcro at the ends of the straps to attach under the dog). This is all explained in the pattern. You make the dog coat with cotton fabric then do one of the following: 1. You get white felt (8 x 11 sheets sold at craft/sewing or woolworth-type stores), cut letters out of the felt and sew them on one by one. You can get the WHITE felt to put on a DARKER coat or get BLACK or DARK BLUE felt to put on a WHITE or lighter coat. (You can also buy IRON-ON felt, then cut out the letters and IRON them on one by one) 2. You go the OBAMA site, pick an image you like, put the jpeg on your desktop, open the image in PHOTOSHOP or another photo editor. FLIP the image horizontally (so it looks like a mirror image or the image you want), then print the image on a T-SHIRT transfer sheet, and IRON the image onto the dog coat (I would recommend you do this on WHITE fabric unless you know about these transfers. If you want a color coat, then IRON the transfer onto the WHITE fabric, then SEW the white fabric image onto the coat--like you would a patch) An example of the TRANSFER coat is on the standard poodle
http://www.flickr.com/photos/green_eggs/2226447775/ I also found this web site which has a free dog vest pattern (I haven't used it myself but it looks right): http://www.sewing.circleofcrafters.com/freepetvestpattern.html Also, you can buy the TRANSFERS already made on Ebay. There is quite a selection rtight now. Here's just one: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280195556260 To see them all put the three words: OBAMA IRON ON in the Ebay search window.
Once you have the coat, you go out and get this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/green_eggs/2220834962/
Happy Canine Campaigning!
FIRED UP!
These are designed to be printed and then xeroxed back-to-back. Then use a paper cutter or scissors to cut into three.
I didn't really know how to do this, so they're very rough and ad lib. PLEASE let me know if I've got anything wrong or you can't access them!
I'm handing them out when I do visibility in my town tomorrow so they're sort of Massachusetts centered with the primary date and Sen. Kerry's quote. But maybe others will find them useful.
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mstanley/Vote%20Obama-pg1.pdf
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mstanley/obamaMA2.pdf
