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Editor's note: The audio version of this story contains language some readers may find inappropriate. Sometimes the things that keep us up seem to come out of nowhere. Something we might never have given a second thought to all of a sudden, for reasons we can’t quite understand, become front and center in our life. That’s what happened to Arrington De Dionyso. He’s a painter and musician from Olympia. Back in 2010, De Dionyso was given the opportunity to paint a mural at a popular pizza place

Almost every night in the winter, there are hundreds of farmers at work along the Washington coast. The lights of their head lamps are just barely visible on the shoreline. They are shellfish farmers out harvesting clams, oysters, and geoducks. T hey are up at such late hours because of the tide. That’s when it’s lowest during the winter months. Jason Ragan is director of clam and oyster farming with Taylor Shellfish Farms. On one particularly snowy night, Ragan showed Sound Effect producer

Most of Kayoko Nakajima’s work takes place at night at the bedside of Japanese women giving birth. Nakajima, who operates out of Kenmore, is believed to be the only Japanese-speaking doula in the Seattle area. Many clients call her during the night—whether that’s 10 p.m. or 3 a.m.—and she sticks with the mothers and fathers until they meet their babies. “Labor takes as long as it takes,” Nakajima said. “Once labor starts, there’s no day or night, for me, for the doula.” At a birth, it’s

What keeps a lot of kids up a night is the fear of a monster under the bed or in the closet. The sounds an old house makes can distress even the bravest child. But what if what kept you up at night was the best thing that ever happened to you? That is what happened to Sound Effect contributor Arwen Nicks. She explores her sleepless nights in this essay: I had had a normal evening, homemade burritos with my girlfriend, talking about our days, her new students as a music teacher, something I read,

This week on Sound Effect , we hear about changes of scenery. We bring you stories of people who were exposed to a whole different part of the world, a culture they weren't familiar with, or a lifestyle they never imagined. The Logging Camp Long before tech workers flocked to the shiny new apartments of Seattle and Bellevue, the Northwest offered a different kind of workforce housing. Logging camps were ready-made towns that lumber companies built specifically for loggers and their families deep

Imagine growing up in a state to total innocence and freedom. You're a child, and you have an infinity of woods and mountains to explore. You eat fresh blackberries your mother picks in the forest. All the dangers of the modern world are miles away. Everyone in town is like an uncle, a mother, a grandmother. They dress up as Santa Claus for Christmas and stage a big egg hunt every Easter. That's how people describe growing up in Grisdale, a remote logging camp nestled for decades deep in the

One way to get a different view and to exit your comfort zone is to trade the warm and dry home you live in for a camper van that will take you around the country to meet and help the homeless. You'll also bring your nine-year-old along for this adventure. This is what Jennifer Underwood of Seattle is doing with her daughter, Rory. They are on a national tour called, “Just Say Hello.” “Just Say Hello” is also the name of a campaign that started here in Seattle by the nonprofit, Facing

I have never considered myself a musician. My father paid for more weeks of piano lessons for me than I was willing to attend and my stretch as a bassist in a high school rock band lasted just long enough for me to learn the bass line to Pink Floyd’s "Money." But for some reason, after turning 33, I decided to take up the drums. I took one lesson from a friend and felt more enchanted by music than I have, well, ever. Coming from a musical family and having seemingly no musical talent I always

Maxine Linial is a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and one of the world's leading researchers on an obscure group of microorganisms called simian foamy viruses. She’s been at the Hutch for 40 years looking through microscopes in the lab and studying swirling cells in petri dishes. However, that changed very suddenly five years ago. While Linial was going for a run, a car ran her over. She was rushed to Harborview and spent months in the hospital, only to go blind. Sound

Erika Lee Bigelow was out for St. Patrick’s Day in Portland when she saw a card advertising a contest hosted by the beer company Guinness. You had to write a 50-word essay finishing the sentence ‘The perfect pint of Guinness ...” The grand prize was a pub in Ireland. That’s right, you could win your own pub. So she wrote her essay: “The perfect pint of Guinness is simple: dark, rich, cool. A shamrock imbedded atop a creamy white pool. Guinness glides gracefully into glass, time woes, worries