How to Pack Crystal and China

To Pack China and Crystal You'll need:

1. Packing Tape
2. Small and medium boxes
3. Cardboard
4. Styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap
5. Blank newsprint
6. Lots of patience

I can probably swing everything but #6.

Recipe for Green Tea Latte

1. Put 1 cup of milk (I use vanilla rice milk) in saucepan. Heat on medium-high.
2. Heat 3 ounces of water in a mug. (I use the microwave for 1 1/2 minutes).
3. Using a fork, rapidly whisk 1 teaspoon of powder into the hot water in the mug.
4. Wait until the rice milk is just about to boil (bubbles begin forming on the sides of the pot).
5. Re-whisk the tea once more and pour it into the hot rice milk, making sure the rice milk does not boil.
6. Turn off heat.
7. Stir so that everything is combined well.
8. Serve.

Note that I'm not a sugar-junky so I don't add any. But you could if you wanted to. Also, there is already vanilla flavoring in the rice milk, so there's no need to add extra vanilla (unless of course, you'd like more).
  

Erase Racism Blog Carnival

I don't know. There's something about exposing discriminatory acts right around the holidays that makes my stomach do a flip. The holidays are supposed to be a joyous time -- a time to reconnect with family and friends, a time to get away from work and rent some movies, a time to reflect as one year goes and another one comes.

Recounting the stories below about prejudice so near to the holidays reminds me of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Christmas Bells. It's an appropriate poem not only for this time of year but for this particular edition of the Erase Racism Carnival -- Wadsworth (a Northerner) wrote the following lines specifically about this country's feuding over slavery:

"There is no peace on earth," I said;
        "For hate is strong,
        And mocks the song
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

And with this note, on with the carnival!

A good place to kick-off our tour is over at with Rachel's post, More on Racism and Racists. "When most people think of racists," she says, "they think of people engaging in interpersonal racism, but I think anyone who participates in upholding racist structures or institutions is indeed racist." Rachel goes on to dissect racism and divides it into two categories, the institutional level and the interpersonal level, which leads us to the two places we're going this edition: institutions and individuals.

 

The "Man"

 

On a positive note regarding the affect large institutions -- specifically business -- has on racism and diversity, visit Murad Ali's article Diversity Brings Profits: No longer a “feel good” program. Not only does it make sense for all of us to reach out to each other regardless of color, apparently it also makes money. "Businesses that respect diversity" he says, "find that they can reduce costs and increase profits that are not obtainable in monoculture work places."

 

Now, if only Coca-Cola took a page from that book! Leon Gettler presents Coke and diversity: how to manage differences saying, "The Coca Cola Company has made significant improvements in the area of diversity, but it still has some way to go after being told by a federal judge to keep its eye on the ball."

 

Speaking of the law, go to Laura Young's blog to read the post Be Careful What You Seek about a White police officer pulling over a Black driver. Here's the juicy snippet:

“'Ok sir, I’m just going to check your license real quick and, if everything is ok, you’ll be on your way.' I like to tell people what my intentions are before I walk back to the squad. That way they aren’t all stressed out wondering what their fate is going to be.

"He hands me his license and says 'I knew this was going to happen, its all good though'. The implication is obvious. I’m a racist. I saw a carload of black people driving through my hillbilly town and couldn’t resist the urge to harass them and reinforce for them that they don’t belong here. Well, the door of prejudice swings both ways..."

What gnawed at my insides most in this category of institutionalized racism is AWB's post Black Looks about Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o, one Kenya's most celebrated authors whose literary works explore issues of Black identity globally and in the U.S. The Professor was asked to leave his own hotel's terrace when one of the hotel staffers assumed Professor Thiong'o could not have been a guest because he is Black. By the way, it's not too late to take action where this story is concerned. The hotel manager's contact information is in the post!

Black professors aren't the only academics being oppressed. According to Changeseeker, so is the student population at one of this country's most recognized educational institutions, UCLA. Her post As "The Twig" Is Bent details her perspective on why there are only 99 African Americans at UCLA in the freshman class totaling 4800.

Person to Person
 
As the child of a mixed race family who grew to become the matriarch of a mixed race family, the stories about what it's like "coloring outside the lines" are those which intrigue me most. (I've asked a few other moms who, like me, blog about race and adoption to contribute to this month's carnival.)

Shannon LC Cate, a White mom of a Black adopted daughter, writes about her anxiety about "telling Nat the kinds of things that people have done to each other throughout history not because of racial difference, but just using racial difference as an excuse to treat each other as less than human--for profit, for sport, for sheer power..." in her post I Don't Know How to Break it to You, Baby.

Dawn submitted Speaking of Hair, "an old post but it was the first time I wrote about hair on my blog. Since then I've done a lot more reading/talking/learning about it (and my now 2.5-year old daughter has adorable braids!) but this was my first blog-public step. The reactions inspired me to keep on working to do right by my daughter's curls."

But White parents of Black kids aren't only grappling with history and hair. Aaryn B., for one, deals with racism head-on in her post How A Man Becomes Ugly And Ruins My Sunday. She tells it better than I can paraphrase:

"Yesterday morning at the park, I had a conversation with a neighbor I hadn't met before. We were discussing the fact that our community, built around a college, isn't always safe and that women in particular need to be aware that there are sexual predators in the area. Which is when, as Ruby toddled away from me to the water fountain with her father, this young and relatively attractive guy offered me the following little gem:

"'And you know that it's because these African-Americans are rolling up in the neighborhood.'"

While Aaryn tells the story of two Whites with divergent views on race, Jeanette Ponder tells the story of two Blacks with divergent view on race in her post Too bad, so sad...giving the smackdown 2: The Race Police. Here Jeanette defends herself after receiving the following comment on MySpace: "I looked through your profile and theres no other sisters or brothers...all your friends are white.dont take it the wrong way im not racest."

Looking at someone who shares your same skin color whose views on race don't match your own can rock you to your core. On the other hand, seeing a positive reflection in someone who looks like you or whose family looks like yours can be uplifting. In her post, James Kim: A Real Hero and Man, Carmen Van Kerckhove shares her perspective on the disappearance and ultimate passing of James Kim, CNET's senior editor of digital audio.

"Race was never discussed in the media coverage of the Kim family’s disappearance, but the pictures spoke loud and clear. And to those of us from mixed families, it was a powerful affirmation to see a reflection of our own families in the Kims.

"It was also a powerful affirmation to hear about James’s heroism. We live in a country where the media frequently portrays Asian men as weak, asexual and emasculated. These stereotypes dehumanize Asians, and that dehumanization has consequences in real life.

"When Asians don’t seem like real human beings with real feelings and needs and dreams, it makes it seem okay when Rosie O’Donnell cracks “ching chong” jokes on TV as she did last week."

Speaking of Rosie's remarks, Jenn opens up a dialogue about this very incident in her post Racism Abounds Following Rosie. "This story really started hitting home not with Rosie’s “ching-chong”-ery," she says, "but by the response. On the Internet, readers started rushing to Rosie’s defense. Hundreds of readers around the blogosphere weighed in, incapable of or unwilling to equate Rosie’s joke with racism."

Elsewhere in cyberspace, Justin Lowery discusses racial slurs in his post I am tired of the “N” Word!. He says, "By trying to convince the black community to stop using it and making it more taboo, you are giving it more power! You are telling the racist community that it is now so bad that everyone should stop the use of it. This in turn changes it from the “N” bomb to the “N” A-bomb. Forget Korea and Iran, now ignorant racists have nuclear arms!"

After reading the two above pieces with differing views on the use of racial slurs, you may think the answer would be to just start being more "P.C." Well, think again. In Kai Chang's post The Greatest Cliché: The Unexamined Propaganda of "Political Correctness" he details how P.C. lingo can be used to mask underlying discrimination:

"'PC' is a deliberately imprecise expression (just try finding or writing a terse, precise definition) because its objective isn't to communicate a substantive idea, but simply to sneer and snivel about the linguistic and cultural burdens of treating all people with the respect and sensitivity with which they wish to be treated. Thus, the Herculean effort required to call me "Asian American" rather than "chink" is seen as a concession to "the PC police", an unsettling infringement on the free-wheeling conversation of, I suppose, 'non-chinks'."

So what of all this? Here we are -- a time of merriment and cheer, eleven days away from a new year with a few religious and pagan holidays stuffed in between -- and yet, even on this eve of a brand new year have we come to better understand each other? From the above accounts, it seems not. What can we do but don the attitude of Mr. Longfellow and think of the progress we've made since his time. We're nowhere near perfect, but we're farther than where we started.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
    "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
        The Wrong shall fail,
        The Right prevail,
    With peace on earth, good-will to men."

And with this attitude of hope for the future, I'd like to close this month's edition of the Erase Racism Carnival with a very special remembrance of holidays past. Please be sure to visit Chello's post about her father, My First Father's Day Without Mine.

----- 

That concludes this edition of the Erase Racism Carnival. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Erase Racism Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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How to Make a Weighted Vest

Some children with Sensory Processing Disorder need to wear a weighted vest in order to help them better perceive their environment. My child is one of them. I combed the internet for weighted vests and saw that they cost like $60, not including shipping. Plus they were mostly pretty ugly. The internet does not understand the fact that my son grows an inch a week, making Wardrobe Turnover something of a regular occurrence here at the Shavers. Bottom line, I ain't spending sixty bucks on a vest that is kind of dorky-looking that he's going to wear for three months before he's too big for it.

Enter some very crucial elements to this "pattern" of sorts:

• sister who majored in fashion design (thank you CY for helping me figure out how to put all this together),
  
• Oshkosh Cargo Vest from Target for all of $11.99,
  
• two pounds worth of modeling clay which cost me five dollars and change,
  
• some poly pellets from Create for Less,
  
• an old duvet cover no longer in use (or any scrap material, a pillow-case would work -- I happen to be using a duvet since I'm also making a weighted blanket),
• and two ziploc bags.

To make the weighted vest, cut a slit at the top of the inside back lining of the cargo vest and insert a bean-bag of poly pellets that you've deftly created. (I put some channels in mine so the poly pellets wouldn't all congregate at the bottom. See Weighted Blankets and Lap Pads for a pattern for making channels.) Put molding clay in two ziploc bags and shove them in the front pockets for added weight at the front. And voila! Weighted vest that's cute too.

My sister and I were able to do this in an hour and a half this morning, which also included trying on some of her dresses for a wedding I'm attending this weekend and also futzing with her bobbin which needed winding but was stuck in the case. Not bad.

Evan is supposed to wear his vest for half an hour to an hour and then remove it for two hours. He's going to wear it at school during "work time" (Montessori). Hopefully it will make him less fidgety. At least that's the goal. His Occupational Therapist recommended using 5 percent of his body weight for the vest. I'm hopeful this will help him! I'll report back.