An Abundant Life - Holistic Cures

A few years ago when I was walking through an outdoor fair on a pier in Hoboken, I stopped by a table where they were selling a product called "Tick Tock Naturals". It looked lovely, and when I saw that it was an organic insect repellant I decided to try it. My mother still lives in the house I grew up in, and although it's in a suburb that has long become less rural, the house sits on three acres of land that is at heart swamp land and is an oasis for wildlife and bugs of all kinds. It's one of my mother's and my pleasures to sit on the porch and enjoy the warmer weather - the house is not air conditioned and in summer the porch is a haven in the evenings. But year after year, no matter what we try, at a certain hour the mosquitoes descend and make porch sitting impossible. Neither one of us likes the more toxic bug repellants, and so we try to sit and swat for a while, but eventually have to give up and go indoors. When I saw the lovely packaging of Tick Tock Naturals and told the lovely woman selling it about my very buggy history, she offered to let me smell it and I was hooked. There is nothing toxic or harmful or even slightly unpleasant about the ingredients - everything has been chosen and combined in a way that is healthy and healthful and pleasant. The base of it is grape seed oil, so it keeps your skin feeling soft instead of sticky, and the scent is based in lemon grass, in the family of citronella but a much more soothing sibling. The owner Dr. Susan Eisen who created it, had a bout and battle with a lyme tick, and ever after wanted to make sure there was something on the market to help people avoid her experience with a product they could actually enjoy. She is a holistic chiropractor and a sustainable product warrior - someone who cares about health with a passion that you can trust.

Dr. Susan Eisen of Tick Tock Naturals
Keeping Us Healthy Inside And Out
Sharing Her Story Over A Lovely Lunch
At Lackawanna Coffee, Grove Street, Jersey City
www.lackawannacoffee.com
www.ticktocknaturals.com
Facebook/ticktocknaturals

An Artist Emerges

I met Christopher Lettiere through Instagram - we have no idea what the initial connection was, but when I started looking at his posts and saw his beautiful work and then realized he was in Hoboken, I asked if I could visit him in his studio and do a post. He graciously invited me to his home and shared some of his story with me. The name he has given to his photographic work is "Unsigned Photos," and in a way that I think many of us can understand, it grew out of the end of a relationship that went terribly wrong, leading him to a place and time in his life when he needed to go underground. That was a difficult thing to do once upon a time, even for those of us who remember a time without Facebook, but in these days of social media it's nearly impossible. He had to close down all of his accounts and find a way to continue to follow his creative life's work as a street photographer, so a new identity as Unsigned Photos was born. One of the qualities about Christopher that I admire the most is his ability to create an environment around his subjects that makes them seem entirely alone. He captures the people and places he photographs in private moments - not as a voyeur or an eavesdropper, but as a celebrator of their inherent beauty. In a wonderful way, his own journey has informed his work - his deep understanding and respect for protecting personal space creates deeply meaningful and personal works of art.

Christopher Lettiere
In His Studio
unsignedphotos.com

Blessings,

Jannie Susan