In these days of drives for disaster victims, and companies jostling to exhibit Corporate Social Responsibility, it can still bring a smile to this face (and many others) that a company like Guess? can make the effort to do something for the “little people” who are born with physical problems that drastically impact on their lives. Joining hands with Operation Smile, Philippines, Guess? has embarked on a program that lends valuable support and publicity to the work of this private, non-profit organization composed of volunteers, who repair cleft palettes and facial deformities of children and young adults from indigent families. If you think about it, while this may seem minor in the face of the wanton and wholesale destruction that natural disasters and typhoons wreaked on our country over the last two months, for those who are afflicted, the “curse” may be a lifetime sentence, affecting their confidence to face life, and causing constant teasing — as we all know children can be very mean. So for these individuals, their physical affliction is their own “lifetime disaster.”
In time for the holiday season, Guess? is kicking off this campaign by sponsoring 50 operations. And by buying its products, for every purchase within its store in the Philippines, part of the proceeds will be donated to the Operation Smile partnership. On the day of the lunchtime launch at Madison, Greenbelt 5, a young teenage songstress gamely took to the makeshift stage, and literally belted out a number of songs. Visibly impressed, some wondered who this precocious young singer was; and she introduced herself (Chadleen Lacdo-o) as coming from Cebu, and being one of the recipients of Operation Smile’s bounty, having been operated on a couple of years ago. To watch this young girl brimming with confidence, and off to compete in an Asian singing competition, really brought home how the seemingly simple work that Operation Smile does can change the outlook of the young children it treats, how it opens new vistas in their lives.
For the Guess? people present at the event, the brand has always been synonymous with Passion; and they were more than happy to talk about how this Passion has found newfound energy through this brand new partnership.
Soaring flights of fancy
Whether imagining and conjuring future worlds, or recreating, with panache and humor, bygone eras; the authors featured today excel in providing us heady entertainment. Thomas Pynchon needs no introduction, while Robert Charles Smith has been a noted fantasy/science fiction writer. Katherine Howe debuts with her novel, and while the device of a double helix narrative may be “old hat,” she brings new life to the device with her story of the Salem witch trials.
Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Smith (available at National Bookstore): We’re thrust into the 22nd century in this novel, and it’s a strange 2172, where the separation between Church and State has been muddied to the point where fundamental Christian values of the 19th century rules, and technology has taken a giant step backwards in the name of peace and stability. Our narrator, Adam Hazzard, is witness to the rise of Julian, nephew to President Deklan, and the scenes depicting life in this “backwards” future is vividly imagined. At times reading like a mature Mark Twain novel, society becomes demarcated, with aristos, the leasing class and indentured laborers as major groupings. Family, treason and war take centerstage in this sprawling story.
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (available at National Bookstore): This ode to the late 1960s follows the thought of “If you do remember, then you really weren’t there” and it’s Thomas Pynchon playing pied piper with a crime novel that’s like no other. Eschewing graphic violence, this seminal author of such classics as Gravity’s Rainbow and V, has groovy and psychedelic Doc Sporello as the center of his novel. Ostensibly a homage to Raymond Chandler’s LA novels, this one reads like Sam Spade on drugs and mind-altering substances. A woman (there’s always one, isn’t there?) named Shasta is the muse, and the fleeting impression we get of her, reflects back on how this epoch is as substantial as a cloud! It’s Pynchon having fun with his memories.
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe (available at National Bookstore): A double helix narrative at the core of this first novel, one strand concerns 1991 History grad student Connie Goodwin, and her coming upon a fragment of a parchment in a 17th century Bible that she finds in the creepy ancestral home of her grandmother in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The name found on the parchment is Deliverance Dane; and this is the second strand of the novel, Dane’s life during the nearby Salem witch trials, and how Dane dealt in spells, incantations and remedies. Goodwin’s supervisor, Chilton, is hell-bent on his search for the philosopher’s stone, and believing alchemy is a real science and means to power. A good, engrossing read.