If you’re looking for a hyperactive, dynamic foundation that’s practically “roaming” all over the place and pushing new initiatives on a frequent basis, look no further than I Can Serve. Tasked with providing information and awareness on breast cancer, and bringing hope to cancer patients, I Can Serve has steadfastly proven its weight in gold over several years now. Just recently, I Can Serve took over the Rockwell Tent for one weekend for its annual foodfest, The Pink Kitchen. It was extremely well attended, and you couldn’t find a smarter collection of chefs and food specialists all under one roof serving up a diverse selection of truly delicious stuff. It was one activity that created so much goodwill for the organization.
One eats, one savors and one is helping a worthy cause, what more can one ask for to have made a worthwhile Saturday and Sunday with family and/or friends. There have also been events held in Cebu, with the I Can Serve Chapter that calls that city its fair home.
About a month back, I Can Serve hosted a lunch at the residence of Bibeth Orteza Siguion-Reyna and unveiled the DVDs it produced with the C-Network. It’s an instructional video of breast self-exam; and there were two versions, one in English, Take Your Breast Care to Heart, presented by Lea Salonga; and a Tagalog version, Ating Dibdibin, presented by Dawn Zulueta-Lagdameo. The basic message of the videos is that early detection is the best way to prevent or properly treat breast cancer. To achieve this, the self-exam is the best method but it is one that can’t be presumed or taken lightly. There are right and wrong ways of doing this exam, and there are myths and procedures that have to be dispelled to make such efforts worthwhile. With the prevalence of cases growing here in the Philippines, what remains hopeful is the high success ratio for treating this type of cancer, as long as it is detected early enough. There are still “small mercies” out there, and thanks to the dedication of entities such as I Can Serve, the information needed to make such “mercies” a regular reality is reaching the public.
I was teased at the lunch, as I was the only member of the media “without breasts.” But given that my sister/breast cancer survivor is on the board of I Can Serve, and that my late mother had succumbed to cancer back in 1996, the mission-vision of I Can Serve, and other similar foundations, has always held a special place in my heart.
Suspension of disbelief
In these three novels, the suspension of disbelief is an absolute requirement. Whether it’s the notion of time travel, a rat that can read and write, or inexplicable behavior that no rational person would accept — they are all things we take in stride in order to enjoy these books, and have our “gullibility” so well rewarded.
The Little Book by Selden Edwards (available at National Bookstore): This is one very assured first novel, coming from the same genre that had us enthralled by The Time Traveller’s Wife. Wheeler Burden is one of Life’s charmers, a varsity star athlete, a rock star, and burdened by a family legacy that’s dense and fascinating. In 1988, at age 47, he inexplicably finds himself in 1897 Vienna, consorting with the top minds of the epoch, including a young doctor named Sigmund Freud. He also encounters his grandparents, and in an even stranger twist, his 20-something father, who had died while held by the Gestapo before the Normandy invasion. Like some Connecticut Yankee in Freud’s Vienna, the novel takes on such themes as finding oneself, the bonds of family, a love story for the ages and how genius evolves. While at times, Wheeler is too much the hero, you can’t fault the enthusiasm and brisk plotting of this book.
Firmin by Sam Savage (available at National Bookstore): Firmin is the 13th in a litter of rats. It is early 1960s Boston and born in a bookstore, forced to play 13th fiddle to his siblings in the food department, he ends up chewing on the books in the store and miraculously reads and absorbs the books, gaining higher intelligence. Wanting so badly to communicate, he extends his misplaced love on Norman Shine, the bookstore owner, and ends up with Jerry Magoon, a doomed hippie/author of science fiction.
Great in concept and characterization (Firmin hates Mickey Mouse and Stuart Little), the novel flags in the second half as it takes on themes of urban renewal, and reaches out to be an elegy/allegory for those old Boston neighborhoods where seedy, bohemian and creative lay side by side. Fortunately for us, there is the wonderfully cynical Firmin and the great love for books this book espouses. A Ratatouille for bookworms?
The Book of Murder by Guillermo Martinez (available at Fully Booked): This is an existential thriller much in the vein of the books of Paul Auster. A writer from Argentina, Martinez wrote The Oxford Murders in 2006, and this is his latest. Our narrator is a writer on the fringes, and as with most “minor” writers, he’s in awe of the great lion of literature in this book, an author named Kloster. Years ago, when he was just starting, our narrator shared a typist named Luciana with the aforementioned Kloster, and there was a frisson of sexual excitement that both authors shared with this typist. Now, Luciana reappears with a preposterous story of how after having accused Kloster of sexual harassment, Kloster is hell bent on a perverted form of revenge, methodically killing off all the people close to Luciana. The reasons for this, and whether it is Kloster or Luciana who have taken leave of his/her senses, becomes the gist of this intriguing novel.