Japan Earthquake

Aftershocks touch this Evanston resident in a unique way.

It’s been a long winter, and the recent weeks of pure gray skies have hit me hard. Like many people these days, I’ve frequently felt overwhelmed and over-scheduled; looking further back, it’s actually been a tumultuous fall and winter.   Since September, I’ve been grieving the deaths of three family members, and I know several friends going through extremely difficult times.     Folks of my grandparents’ generation would no doubt warn me that it's nobody’s business, but I’m here to say: I’m one of the 18 million Americans who suffer from depression.  I can be one of those “hypersensitive” types who often takes things too personally, worries about far more than I should, and occasionally hibernates when the world feels too raw.  So, as the …

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Tom Fischl

6:00 am on Monday, March 14, 2011

There were some protesters outside the base, but they were calm. I was actually interviewed by a tv station about whether or not my ship (the USS Carl Vinson) had nuclear weapons onboard. I answered that I could not confirm or deny the presence of such weapons, but that we are there to protect them and we are friends. How ironic that a few weeks prior, I was taking pictures of the USS Arizona …   more ›

About Town

Keeping Perspective

When life starts to "squeeze" you just a little too hard.

Whether you’ve lived in the Midwest your whole life or – like many of you attending Northwestern – just for a brief flash of your life, you quickly learn that mid-January is when “the squeeze” hits. What’s “the squeeze”? In my book, it’s defined by feelings such as these: The snow was picturesque at first, and now it’s getting to be a pain. It’s such a hassle putting on all these layers. Did I REALLY spend that much over the holidays? Why does it feel so cold in here? Might as well finish this bag of chips … my pants are already feeling tight. Now I know why bears sleep all winter. Is it just me, or does everyone seem a little irritable? When does it stop getting dark so early? Was there a reason I felt the extra holiday decorations were a…

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Christine Wolf

2:32 am on Thursday, January 20, 2011

One resource, right here in town, is the Northwestern University Family Institute. http://family-institute.org/counseling-and-psychotherapy/clinical-staff   more ›

Can't Stop Yawning? Decreased Daylight Could Be the Culprit

As winter approaches, decreasing daylight hours leave some feeling less energy, and difficulty sleeping.

Now that the clocks have "fallen back an hour," thanks to daylight savings time, and winter is quickly approaching, many people may find their sleep patterns a little out of whack. When it comes to daylight savings time, your internal body clock doesn't usually change despite the external clocks moving back an hour. It's usually easy for most people to make the adjustment to the new time by staying aware an hour earlier and awakening an hour later to re-sync their internal body clock. This occasionally poses difficulty for the elderly and morning people who have more difficulty pushing their internal body clock later. Bright light in the evening can help with this, according to Dr. Cathy Goldstein, M.D., a sleep medicine physician with the…

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