Here’s something boring. I slept about three hours last night. Now it’s 3:00 p.m. And I’m drooping. I don’t even want to know the statistics—especially for women of a euphemistically so-called certain age. And it comes in different kinds—the can’t go to sleep, the can’t stay asleep. And there are about as many “cures” for it as Carter has little liver pills, as my grandma used to say. I’m not going to recommend any of them—neither the non-invasive old chestnuts such as drink a glass of warm milk, go to bed at the same time, avoid spicy foods—nor the made-for-TV butterflies and ask your doctor about other pills solution. I’m sure all these suggestions are suggestions because they work for some of the people at least some of the time.


So, okay, no suggestions for how to get to sleep or stay asleep, but I would like to draw your attention to Sandra Kornblatt’s new book, Restful Insomnia. Restful? Insomnia? Really? Really. Say you’ve given up the idea of going to sleep or back to sleep. What could you do instead?

Not start to work! Not get up and make coffee or tea! This book is full of ideas—and, yes, you’ve probably heard some of them before. But a lot you haven’t. And the very best thing is having them all in one place, a bedside book.

The idea that is appealing to me these days is to “focus on your spiritual center.” Getting back to basics.