How Can We Sleep Through All This?

By: | September 15, 2025
Lunar eclipse on March 14, 2025. Credit: NASA / Jordan Cochran

How have you been sleeping lately? Me, not so great. I do fine during the days, mostly. But then I wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. worried about what’s happening in the world. Here are some strategies I use for distracting myself and getting back to sleep. Maybe they’ll be useful for you?

You have to avoid thinking about certain things if you want to sleep again, in my experience. Death. Dementia. The theocrats on the Supreme Court. Billionaire white supremacists. The sociopathic eugenicist who denies all scientific and medical reality and is preventing our loved ones (and hated ones) from getting life-saving vaccines. That sort of thing. 

It’s also best to not think about the science of sleep when you can’t sleep. Like how sleep disruption impairs memory consolidation. I would very much like to remember what happened yesterday! And how sleep disruption raises blood pressure. I would very much like to not have a heart attack tomorrow! 

I know what you’re supposed to do to sleep better: Don’t eat or drink anything near bedtime. Exercise. Enjoy absorbing hobbies. No screens or doomscrolling late at night. Read sedate books in bed, not thrillers. Keep your room cool. Nice, fluffy pillows. I do all this stuff.

But still! There’s so much to worry about in the middle of the night. Missing a flight. Bodily aches and annoyances. Propaganda stomping all over facts and humanity. The reckless, narcissistic, belligerent dictator who has control of U.S. nuclear weapon codes. 

So I try to wear out my mind like you would do with a cranky toddler. I try counting down from 100 by sevens. Or counting up by orders of two: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc., until I lose my place and briefly worry about that rather than transgender people who are just trying to be their authentic selves but are being denied basic health care by the worst bullies in the world. 

Bland, irrelevant, or quirky words can help. I often pick a category of things and then go through the alphabet thinking of examples that start with each letter. So, for animals: aardvark, bonobo, cutthroat trout, etc. FYI for when you get to the hard letters, there is a mammal called a quokka, which is adorable, and a bird called a Xantus’s murrelet, which, same.

If you play Wordle, you can go through the alphabet thinking of good starting words: audio, bayou, cause, delay, etc. Try words that start and end with the same letter: Alaska, blurb, chic, dud, etc. You can list foods: apple pie, borscht, crepes … but beware that it might make you hungry.

The categories have to be cheerful, and sometimes the category I pick is “cheerful words.” Amazing, beautiful, creative, depressing… argh, start over.

I’ve tried breathing exercises but feel like I’m hyperventilating. I’m probably doing it wrong.

Don’t test your memory with world capitals or other facts you used to know, although it may help to read Billy Collins’s wonderful poem Forgetfulness, which begins: “The name of the author is the first to go / followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion…” and describes memories like the capital of Paraguay slipping away. (It’s Asunción.) 

I try to think of things that have gotten better in our lifetimes. Bald eagles are nesting all over now! The Cuyahoga doesn’t burn, and Cleveland has a lovely rails-to-trails park network along its river. Scientists just came up with a vaccine for chlamydia in koalas. 

But if you go this route, whatever you do, don’t think about the 10 greatest public health advances of the 20th century and how the current administration, in this the 21st century, is systematically undermining every one of them.

But please do think about what we can do about <waves hands> all this. I don’t have great or big answers, just small but hopefully meaningful answers. Check in with people. Support advocacy organizations. Go to protests. Share real information on social media. Subscribe to trustworthy news sources. Support friends, especially ones who are more vulnerable. Volunteer. Mentor. Build stuff. Make bad art or bad music. Go to trivia night with friends, and lose. Tell someone you enjoyed their work. Read mysteries — it’s so satisfying that there is an answer at the end. Read SciFi to get the heck offa this planet. Laugh about how bad it is. Plant things. Cook for people. Thank people, whether you know them well or not. And please take care of yourselves as best you can. We’ve got to outlast these demagogues. 

And please share, in comments here or on social media, how you get through the night. I could use some fresh ideas! Thank you, and sweet dreams. 

The Necessity Defense

By: | September 12, 2025

My last post in July was about a court case in New York state where a judge decided a dog who had been killed by a negligent driver could be considered “immediate family” under the law, enabling the family to seek damages beyond the monetary value of the dog.

One of the things I find fascinating about cases like this is you can watch the legal system—which is inflexible by nature—grapple in real time with changing societal norms. And I’m equally fascinated by how we think about and relate to other species, and how and why that has changed over time. So matters of animal law are of particular interest. 

If these matters intrigue you as well, here are a few more recent legal cases involving our relationship with other animals.

California Court of Appeal denies the necessity defense on behalf of animals

This case gets at the question of who should decide whether animals matter under the law. In the New York case I wrote about, a judge saw it as his role to answer a legal question about when and how animals matter. The court in a recent California case saw things differently.

The case involves an animal rights activist who was charged in 2019 with trespass during protests at farms in Sonoma County, during which activists took sick chickens and ducks from the farms, got them veterinary care and brought them to live at animal sanctuaries. One of the activists charged was Wayne Hsiung, co-founder of an animal rights group called Direct Action Everywhere that has won similar cases in the past, including one that got a fair amount of press coverage involving two sick piglets rescued from a factory farm in Utah.

Hsiung, who is a lawyer, represented himself at a jury trial and asked to present a “necessity defense,” which is a doctrine excusing the breaking of a law in order to stop or prevent something worse, such as breaking a car window on a hot day to rescue a baby at risk of overheating. Hsiung pointed out that 14 states also allow citizens to break a car window to rescue a dog and argued that in his case, trespassing was necessary in order to prevent the more serious harm of animal cruelty, which represented a “significant evil” under the necessity doctrine. 

The judge denied the request, saying that the necessity defense does not apply to harm to animals. The prosecution argued that in order to apply it to animals, the necessity defense would need to be expanded, which is the purview of lawmakers, not courts. In 2023 Hsuing was convicted of two counts of misdemeanor trespass and one count of felony conspiracy to trespass and sentenced to 90 days in jail, of which he served 38. He is currently appealing his conviction in the California Court of Appeals.

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Join me in escaping from reality

By: | September 10, 2025

Dear readers: Everything is (once again?) terrible. At least in this country. It feels like a roller coaster descent into the worst parts of history. My brain spends its days vacillating between wild panic and stubborn denial. I guess what I’m saying is this: I’ve got nothing for you unless you want a funeral wail or a lesson on using reels as an unhealthy and addictive escape. Actually, do you want some short videos to brighten your day? I got you. Here are five.

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Up in Smoke

By: | September 8, 2025

Last week my family traveled to Oregon for an end-of-summer trip. We wanted to start in Bend, in the central part of the state. There we would hike and explore a bit—somewhat to her dismay, I was especially eager to take my daughter up South Sister, one of the Three Sisters volcanoes—before driving down to Ashland to see a couple of plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. After that we would head to the coast and make our way home to Seattle.

That was the plan, at any rate. Then the wildfires laughed and had their say. The day before we were to leave, one blew up a few miles north of Bend. Named the Flat Fire, it blazed over the landscape, driven by hot dry winds and abundant fuels. People who lived in its path were ordered to evacuate. Smoke poured into Bend and the surrounding communities. Air quality dots in the area went from yellow (Moderate) to red (Unhealthy), purple (Very Unhealthy), and even maroon (Hazardous).

Wildfires have been a feature of Pacific Northwest summers for a while now. Even as one whose home has never been threatened, I find the start of the burning season unsettling. The fires can have a dreadful randomness. Look at a map of the western states. Within that vast territory all it takes is a lightning strike, a branch falling on a power line, a kid throwing a fire cracker, a federal employee burning a love letter, and a tree starts to burn, and then another. Thousands of acres later, the sky looks like something out of a J.M.W. Turner painting, while the air rasps your throat on its way to your lungs.

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Grief As Ecotone and As Pantone

By: | September 5, 2025

There is not a lot that keeps me online nowadays, but one thing is color. For like, walls, in a house. I am still in a grief-triggered painting phase, just like my grandmother was once in a grief-triggered drapery phase, because changing the appearance of one’s house is a thing to do that is at least somewhat productive. So I am painting.

A wall briefly became bright blue, and I hated it when I realized it matched the painter’s tape, or maybe the plasticky royal of a Lowe’s utility bucket. Then the wall became a light barely-green, almost grayish, like a snowy morning in January. Now three other walls in my house are the same Earl Grey.

My oldest child wants her room transformed to a deep teal, and has gone back and forth among several shades with names like Blue Peacock and Slate Teal. I suggest we choose lighter, softer tones like Spring Sky or Jack Frost, with maybe a Bermuda Turquoise accent wall.

My youngest child wants green for her room, and the first one she chose was called Galway, and that is where we just were, and where my mom’s family is from, and so that is what we will be using.

The big wall in our living room was a conundrum for a while. Should it be a carefree blue, like Mediterranean Breeze? Or grayish that almost tilts toward slatey, like Aleutian? Ultimately, we decided, it needed to be a deep, azure, bold navy, but with warm undertones that will still look blue and not black once the darkness of fall evenings arrives. That huge wall is now coated in New York State of Mind, a color recommended by my best friend, who is often right about things, apparently including paint.

The big wall was finally done last week, and I am running out of other things to paint for now. I need to get back to work. Think about what else I could be creating. The wall was in transition for so long that it keeps surprising me, that deep blue that echoes the upper layers of our atmosphere. I am satisfied with how it looks, I think.

The other day I put away the tape and the canvas dropcloth. In a few weeks, when I need to mentally return to Connemara or the tropical Atlantic, the tools will come back out, and my family will look at me quietly as I start taping the baseboards.

Most of my favorite paint colors often have names of places. Maybe I should sell out and go into marketing and come up with names for paints, because Bermuda turquoise and Galway green do evoke those places, and those places are where we go to feel rested, or at home. I can think of a thousand colors to represent the feelings that come with places. There would be fanciful and thoughtful names for the in-between feelings and the in-between places. Pantone for your ecotone.

Paint is a way to escape. I suppose that is why I am painting.

..

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Orb Weaver

By: | September 3, 2025
Image from “American spiders and their spinning work. A natural history of the orbweaving spiders of the United States, with special regard to their industry and habits” (1889)

Happy spider mating season! I keep finding baby spiders in my shoes, and every morning there are new cobwebs in my car’s steering wheel. Maybe you’re seeing more spiders, too? Our own LWONian Betsy Mason wrote about the noble art of counting spiders for Knowable Magazine last year. And this little post first ran in September 2023.

My garden has a guardian, an enormous black-and-yellow orb spider. I look for her every morning when I enter the enclosure we built last spring to keep the deer out and make a spot for Calliope to bask in the sun and chase lizards.

She’s mostly blind, this spider. But she can sense me coming. I used to barge into the garden without thinking, swinging open the gate before I realized she’d used it as an anchor. She never fell or swung loose. By the time I spotted her or the remnants of her web, now in tatters, she’d usually retreated to a high spot on the fence.

We know spiders are capable of learning, planning, surprise. Do they also feel resentment?

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It’s Roasted Tomato Season, Motherfuckers

By: | September 1, 2025

This is an annual post, with apologies to Colin Nissan.

I don’t know about you, but I have been waiting all year to wrap my hands around some tasty, tender tomatoes and arrange them in colorful patterns on my kitchen counter. 

That shit is going to look like the embodiment of late summer. I’m dusting off my harvesting baskets and steel bowls, jamming them with juicy, just-off-the-vine tomatoes of every color. 

When my guests come over, it’s like, BLAMMO! Check out my overflowing bounty of luscious, juicy tomatoes, assholes. Guess what season it is — fucking harvest season! There’s a feeling of ripeness in the air and my house is full of tender fucking tomatoes.

And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to throw some multi-colored tomatoes into a roasting pan, and I’m going to drizzle them with some genuine California olive oil and then I’m going to slow-roast them until their scrumptious flavors have bubbled up into a taste explosion. 

And when people come over and smell the aroma of roasting tomatoes in my kitchen, they’re going to be like, “Aren’t those tomatoes smelling up your house?” And I’m going to spread another perfected roasted purple Cherokee onto a slice of homemade sourdough and quietly reply, “It’s harvest season, fuckfaces. You’re either ready to reap this tasty bounty or you’re not.”

Roasting purple, yellow, orange and red tomatoes sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. There is no more ideal food than a perfectly roasted tomato, and I am going to roast tomatoes until there are no more tomatoes to roast.

Why? Because it’s not that long stretch when the garden is growing but nothing is ripe, and it’s not spring or winter or the post-frost fall yet. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it’s harvest season, fuckers.

For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a t-shirt, some light overalls and a floppy fucking hat and kneel down in my garden and keep picking this near-endless stream of ripe tomatoes for the next six weeks, or until the first frost. The first skunk that tries to sneak in and steal my ripe tomatoes is going to get his stinky ass bitch-slapped all the way back to the long days of early summer, when the plants are green but so are the tomatoes. 

Welcome to harvest season, fuckheads!

PLEASE NOTE: Today’s parody post is based on this McSweeney’s classic by Colin Nissan.

A List from the Past

By: | August 29, 2025

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the past lately. As I get my parents’ house ready for sale, I’ve been looking at decades of memorabilia. A dozen or so boxes of my own memories lived in the attic, and the above picture is one of them: a list of things that surprised me when I visited the U.S. from Japan.

Things that surprised me:

  • bathroom stall doors are high
  • hot water in public bathrooms
  • drinking fountains
  • squirrel!
  • .com billboards
  • shoes in the house
  • speaking volume (sound level + amount)
  • professor didn’t apologize for his locked truck

This list is a time capsule from the dot-com boom. I read it today and I remember riding into Chicago from the airport at night, seeing billboard after billboard for companies that hadn’t existed a few years before, hearing “…Baby One More Time” for the first time on my friend’s car radio, and feeling very jetlagged and confused.

And it’s a time capsule of me. My late-90s handwriting. And my late-90s ability to write in Japanese. I like how I wrote the observation about the professor’s truck in Japanese, then crossed it out and rewrote it in English. I don’t remember what happened, but I can imagine the zing of culture shock when someone caused a mild inconvenience, then failed to apologize for it profusely.

I like how much you can extrapolate about my life in Japan from this list. About apologies, and shoes, and particularly about public restrooms, which had cold water only, were mostly squat toilets (so you really needed the door to go all the way down to the floor), and were not associated with drinking fountains.

What I love the most about this is, I assume, why I wrote the list: the memory of that reverse culture shock. That feeling where you’ve been gone long enough that you come back and think, oh my goodness, I forgot we do it like that! Home is so weird!

I can’t remember when I last had that feeling. It might be time for me to get out of the country again. If you’re immersed enough and pay attention enough, you realize that people have completely different ways of doing things – the little things and the big things – that your way is not the only way, and that it’s a wonderful, weird, wild, wide world.

Photo: Helen Fields, obviously