Rip van Sleep-Deprivation

It's a sad tale of our times. Rip van Winkle can't get to sleep. This Rip van Winkle is a 37-year-old resident of Corvallis, Oregon, and he is seeking help with his insomnia. The irony couldn't be plainer if it was painted in yard-high letters. The man who shares a name with the symbol of sleep can't get any himself. The owner of the Rip Van Winkle Residential Contract and Repair firm is sleep deprived.

It says something about our sleepless times when this is the case. Such problems never afflicted the Rip van Winkle invented by the writer Washington Irving. He had a drink and fell asleep and didn't wake for 20 years. By then, there had been a revolution, his wife had died and his daughter was grown up. We've all had mornings like that.