November 2006 | Mindful Living
Goddess Repair Shop
A lot of what my mother told me about life missed the mark, but when it came to baby oil and sun reflectors, mama didn’t lie. “You’re going to ruin your skin,” she’d yell as I headed for the upstairs porch to broil my face to a shade of ripe rhubarb.
Years later, struggling to remedy the results of my youthful foolishness, I slather on moisturizers instead of baby oil. But as any over-30 Hollywood starlet knows, sometimes you need a little help. For those of us philosophically opposed to going under the knife, or worried about Joan Rivers-itis, the choices are limited. What’s a girl to do?
Spa entrepreneur Anna Marie Colavito turned to the medical field for a less invasive solution: the non-surgical facelift. Micro-current electrotherapy—a treatment that sends millionths of an amp of micro-current to an affected area—had been successfully used in acute and chronic injuries for over 25 years. The Réparer instrument Colavito uses, based on the pulsed electromagnetic field therapy research of scientist Robert O. Becker, allegedly “reads bio-impedance from the cells themselves, constantly changing the form and intensity of the treatment to meet the specific needs of the individual.” Proponents claim it repairs and rejuvenates the skin from the inside out, adjusting the fragile balance needed to keep a cell healthy.
Ready to try anything that didn’t involve scalpels or chemicals, I eagerly arrived at the small Venice apartment Colavito is using as temporary homebase for her Goddess Repair Shop since closing her Malibu facility. Dressed in a comfortable smock, I reclined on the altar of beauty while Colavito hooked up ear clips intended to relax me into an alpha state that would make me more receptive to treatment, and affixed my hand on a brass plate said to interpret my cells’ bio-impedance—their ability to hold an electrical charge and exchange ions, explained Colavito. I was already drifting when she began applying transmission gel and running an instrument over my face, applying light pressure with a not-unpleasant tingle.
Over the next two hours, I periodically surfaced to new layers of gel and repeated micro-current applications—The Miracle Facial Intensive is a three-part treatment. When I finally emerged, I felt rested and renewed, but did I look any different? In fact, my face glowed and I looked well-rested, as if I’d just returned from three weeks on Kauai.
This goddess would happily spring for the two recommended follow-up treatments but at $195 a pop, I’d also look into a round-trip air ticket for the same total. Still, vacation benefits vanish quickly on re-entry, while the refreshed visage promised by this therapy could last for months.
Goddess Repair Shop, 310.822.1947, bbwa.net . —Abigail Lewis
Worth Repeating
“Why are people getting so upset about the overfeeding of ducks to make foie gras when they don’t seem to mind stuffing themselves with equally unhealthy, fat-filled foods from all the fast food companies that sit on every corner? We need to save ourselves first or there will be no one left to save the ducks.”
—Jeff Novick, Director of Nutrition for the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa.
“In the US, you’ll barely be able to afford one wife, anyway.”
—Kenyan instructor Abdullahinur Sheik Kassim to concerned US-bound Somali immigrants who said their religion permitted four wives. (LA Times, 9.12.06)
“If I can’t beat my wife, how will she know that I love her?”
—Hassan Mohammed Abrone, US-bound Somali immigrant, upon hearing that wife-beating is illegal in the US. (LA Times, 9.12.06)
“Being funny is a means of avoiding scrutiny. It’s a deeply concealing activity that invites attention while simultaneously failing to offer any detailed account of oneself. The reason humor is so popular today is that it provides the comfort of intimacy without the horror of actually being intimate.”
—Andrew Stott, English professor and author of Comedy, a book exploring the philosophy of humor, 9.19.06 on Slate.com, in an article entitled “Why Does Everyone Try to be Funny These Days?”
“There are no national boundaries. The whole globe is becoming one body. In these circumstances, I think war is outdated... Destruction of your neighbor is actually destruction of yourself.”
—Dalai Lama to teens at the PeaceJam world peace conference in Denver, 9.16.06. (LA Times, 9.17.06)
“One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.’’
—Pres. Bush to Katie Couric, 9.30.06
Online Lifeline
Through Kiva.org, your $25 can help launch a worthy business on the other side of the world
When Stanford graduates Matthew and Jessica Flannery returned from Uganda—where Jessica had been doing research on poverty and Matthew had been filming village life—they had no ambition to revamp the entire process of charitable giving. They just wanted to help the struggling people they had met in their travels.
Operating on the “hand-up, not hand-out” principle, they started Kiva.org, an innovative website linking people willing to loan small amounts of money to fledgling entrepreneurs throughout the developing world. And in so doing, the Flannerys may have started a minor revolution in philanthropy.
Microfinance isn’t new, but traditionally it’s been done by banks— not average Joes and Joans with credit cards. Kiva offers an easy, direct way to link people for whom $25 is a week’s lattés with people for whom $25 is a month’s income. You could say it’s to official foreign aid what blogging is to newspapers. From an office in San Francisco’s Mission District, Kiva’s small staff oversees a microfinance operation that has facilitated $400,000 in loans to small businesses in 13 countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
It works like this: you visit Kiva.org and peruse a few entrepreneur profiles. Betty Asio might catch your eye. She’s a Ugandan who needs $500 to buy more chickens and veterinary care for her small but growing poultry concern. She’s offering to pay the money back in six to 12 months. You may loan her anywhere from $25 to the full amount, at no interest, using a credit card via PayPal. She receives the cash and later remits payback payments to a nonprofit partner of Kiva in Uganda.
In the interim, you can read updates on Betty’s progress—or that of any of the hundreds of Kiva loan recipients throughout the world. Ixel Cardenas Amado has already repaid $234 of the $700 she borrowed in April to buy a chicken fryer for her taco stand in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. Mihael and Lilliana Yordanovi haven’t repaid anything yet; the young couple just received their $1,000 loan for a new farm supply business in Bulgaria in September.
“Kiva makes it so I can connect with and lend to the poor and have a transparent view of how my money is helping someone,” says Premal Shah, who left a job at PayPal to become Kiva’s president.
And Kiva is taking off. In September, the site facilitated $5,000 in loans in a single day, a company record. Later that month, it was one of just a handful of NGOs invited to the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York. Shah describes a moment of realization about the company as he stood at the podium talking about innovative solutions to poverty.
“I looked down and there was Colin Powell,” he says. “A year and a half ago, did any of us expect this? To go in 18 months from one village in Uganda to 13 countries? It’s incredible.” —Traci Hukill
Talkin’ ’bout My Regeneration
Echo Park sprouts new eco-boutique
In a perfect world, eco-conscious shoppers could stroll into any boutique or big-box store and find nothing but sustainably produced furniture, sweatshop-free garments and organic, all natural body care products. Sadly, many of our retail options are still limited to toxic textiles and plastics assembled by Vietnamese 10-year-olds, but fortunately for Angelinos the goods are green at Regeneration in Eagle Rock.
“I thought it was odd that there weren’t more stores like this,” explains Regeneration’s entrepreneur, Kelly Witmer, whose enterprise is one of the few locations in LA offering eco-guilt-free retail therapy. Regeneration is packed with an eclectic mix of organic and recycled apparel, household wares and sundry tchotchkes (such as jewelry, accessories and handmade soaps) which are fair-trade, environmentally friendly or made by local artisans or small businesses.
In the ultimate act of local and sustainable retailing, Witmer herself is one of the green-minded artisans, updating gently used duds with creative stitching and silkscreening. “I like the idea of taking old clothes and making them into something new again,” says the Echo Park resident and former owner of Pull My Daisy, a vintage boutique in Silver Lake. She’s also partnered with One Percent for the Planet, an alliance of companies that pledge to donate one percent of their sales to the environmental cause of their choosing.
When Regeneration’s doors first opened in June, Witmer admits that people “were confused by the whole concept,” but she’s now starting to see repeat business. While products like eco-friendly cleaners and biodegradable trash bags aren’t exactly flying off the shelves just yet, “It gets people talking and thinking about it,” which is an important step on the way to thinking outside the big-box.
Regeneration, 1649 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock. 323.344.0430. shopregeneration.com. —Jessica Ridenour
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