Of sound mind and body shop

Dame Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, may have passed away a year ago this month, but the values and principles upon which the retail marvel were built on, survive and prosper through the efforts of such entities as The Body Shop Foundation. If you recall, Roddick’s crusade was to produce and retail beauty products while shaping ethical consumerism. The Body Shop ethos prohibited the use of ingredients that had been tested on animals, and encouraged fair trade with Third World countries and partners. To further these objectives, the foundation supports innovative and global projects that are involved in the area of civil and human rights, and environmental and animal protection. TBS Philippines scoured the country for NGOs and projects that espoused these very ideals, and TBS Foundation Asia-Pacific Grants Programme identified two projects from the Philippines as awardees for 2008.

Just last month, at a simple affair held at The Body Shop Glorietta store, the two awardees received the grants that will go a long way in furthering their efforts and hopefully, bring recognition to the kind of social entrepreneurship that exemplifies how the bottom line can co-exist with conscience. Rags2Riches Inc. is a livelihood project situated in Payatas. Headed by Reese Fernandez and Bro. Xavier Fernandez, it recruited designer Rajo Laurel for creative input, and literally recycles the rags and “retasos” that can be found in the area, turning them into bags and fashion accessories. It’s been something of a woman empowerment project as it has given previously unemployed housewives a chance to significantly contribute to the household income. The other awardee, Earth Day Network Phils. Inc., had a really novel idea. Executive director Voltaire Alferez would approach the various multinationals and heavy hitters in outdoor advertising, and he would ask for their discarded materials, such as, but not limited to tarpaulins. He would bring these back to the community and these would be cut up to make bags, knapsacks and utility cases. I saw some samples of their output, and it was actually fun trying to identify or figure out what the original tarp material had advertised, if I had actually seen the original billboard on EDSA.

Said grants were in English pounds and hence the unusual amount in the checks. More than anything, the fact that these kinds of ventures could attract the notice and approval of TBS Foundation, meant that the foundation would always be on the lookout for something “real,” ongoing, sustainable and of direct impact to the community. One can’t save the world in one fell swoop, superhero style; it’s the great, little ideas that need a boost here and there that truly count — just like the idea hatched by one Anita Roddick in 1976 when she opened her first The Body Shop in Brighton, with only 15 products on the shelves. There’s even the story about how this first shop opened next door to an undertaker, and he complained to the local council about the name of Roddick’s store.

Light and brain-y

These novels are all sterling examples of how humor can add spice to most any genre. Lisa Lutz brings us the second installment of her hilarious detective series, while Chris Ayres puts his idiosyncratic spin on non-fiction writing, this time out, from the trenches of Hollywood. Nick Harkaway’s debut novel is a post-apocalyptic story that dishes out humor and action in equal doses. Light reading, and yet all extremely fun.

Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz (available at National Bookstore): After the success of The Spellman Files, you knew it was only a matter of time before our dysfunctional “Nancy Drew 10 years on” character, Izzy Spellman, would be back with a new adventure. Elder sister in a family of detectives and lawyers, Izzy has her hands full with a neighbor who she suspects may be responsible for the disappearance of some women. She also has her younger sister, Rae, stalking good friend Inspector Henry Stone, a copycat vandal destroying the holiday lawn tableaus of a neighbor, and a retired 80-year-old lawyer, Morty, handling her latest arrest. This is the detective genre given a humorous spin, with a family who uses blackmail as a regular form of negotiation, and utilizes code words for describing things as simple as a vacation. An enjoyable ride that should make that third novel a certainty.

Death By Leisure by Chris Ayres (available at Fully Booked): Author of War Reporting for Cowards, a chronicle of his time as an “embed” during the American invasion of Iraq, London Times journalist Chris Ayres is back with his sights set on Los Angeles as La-La Land. This is the Holly-weird of driving obscenely expensive cars, dating supermodels, trying to impress a girl by taking her to Michael Jackson’s Neverland and picking a fight with Mike Tyson, picking up girls and wives-to-be by selling second-hand furniture on the Net, and covering such disasters as Hurricane Katrina. The second half of the book shifts tone and we get a cautionary tale about home mortgages and high finance — something stolen from today’s headlines as IndyMac, the home mortgage bank Chris gets a loan from, actually went under earlier this year. This is genre-bending, self-deprecating work, very droll and British, and exquisite fun.

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway (available at Fully Booked): Bleak in vision, yet humor-filled, The Gone-Away World is a wonderful “future-world” created by Harkaway. Imagine a post-Apocalypse scenario, where our worst nightmares about the nuclear holocaust have come true, and what the world would be like as the survivors pick up the pieces and create a new world order. This is the premise behind Harkaway’s novel, and it’s populated by larger-than-life characters, ninjas, a Big Brother type corporation that runs the remnants of this new world, nether regions where androids, abominations and un-beings rule. When the book delves in flashbacks of our main protagonists, there’s a very strong David Mitchell of Black Swan Green feel to the writing and that is a compliment. Other moments feel like MASH and Catch-22 updated for this age of martial arts geeks and computer nerds. Can’t wait for his next novel.