I WANT TO CRY!

I can't stop crying today. I woke up this morning and felt a piercing sadness. Usually crying once, I'd get over it, but I cried over 5 times, one lasting 2 hrs. What the heck is happening to me?

My very good friend called me this morning and told me that.

Although you may feel as if you are crying for "no reason," most episodes of uncontrollable emotion have some sort of underlying cause. You may be experiencing depression, anxiety, or another mental health condition such as bipolar disorder. Hormones and neurological disease are also possible culprits.

Sometimes, all you can do is cry. Holding it in won't reap any benefits.

Changes to your environment, stress level, and physical or mental health could all leave you feeling more emotional than usual. Identifying your triggers can help you be aware of situations that might prompt extra emotions. This insight can help you create a plan to manage your feelings in a healthy way.

You know when your body is insistent upon coughing, but you hold it in until you feel as if you're going to implode? Your face turns red, your chest begins to shake, you involuntarily splutter and end up drawing even more attention to yourself than you would have if you'd let yourself cough in the first place? That's no fun, and neither is suppressing your tears. If they're asking to flow, let them.

Crying is a natural release. You may feel more comfortable doing it without a bunch of people awkwardly staring or hovering over you, asking redundant questions such as “are you okay?”, so give yourself some privacy if needed. Either way, people often feel a tad less heavy after a cry. Let it out, take a breather and, if possible, continue with your day or night.

When it's hours upon hours and you feel unable to stop, you have a different situation altogether.

What's wrong with us? Well, nothing. We are human: we feel things, and sometimes those things hurt. Life is challenging, and it's natural that we'd be reduced to tears by it — hours upon hours of them.

If I find myself crying, I'll let it happen. If it persists for what I feel is too long, i.e. when it grossly interferes with my time, I will aim to do something else. I won't go into this believing that it will make me feel better, or that the crying will stop, but with the intention of changing the situation.

We can't change everything in life, but there is always a chance that we may eventually feel less terrible than we do in the present moment. The situation causing upset may be unchangeable, and we may repeatedly cry about it time and time again, but being able to at least halt hours of tears is something. Dragging ourselves further and further into a pit of misery is, well, completely miserable.

Watch something ridiculous. Cuddle your pet.

Validate yourself. It's natural that you’ll get upset about some things, and it's going to be tough pulling yourself out of a downward spiral when things feel completely hopeless. In such an all-encompassing and overwhelming state, it's a given that other things will keep setting you off. Just, whenever you can, do something else; something that won't harm you further.

What if you cry again soon after, or simply cannot stop? This too is allowed. What you're feeling at the moment is real and valid — nobody can take that away from you.

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A rare orchid survives on a few tracts of prairie, researchers want to learn its secrets

  

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The western prairie fringed orchid is seen blooming on July 3, 2024, on the Sheyenne National Grassland in North Dakota. The orchid has declined due to loss of its native prairie habitat, among other factors, and is classified as a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act. (AP)

 

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — On a remote tallgrass prairie in North Dakota, a secretive orchid pokes up from the ground. You'll only find it if you know where to look.

The striking, bright white blooms of the western prairie fringed orchid are elusive to fans who try to catch a glimpse — and as a threatened species protected by the federal Endangered Species Act, it is also a puzzle for researchers trying to learn more about the orchid's reproduction and role in its ecosystem. 

Loss of its native prairie habitat has threatened the orchid. About 60 percent of native orchids in the U.S. and Canada are rapidly disappearing due to climate change, habitat loss and pollinator declines, said Julianne McGuinness, program development coordinator for the North American Orchid Conservation Center. Those showy, flowering plants beloved for their beauty can be an early indicator of decline occurring unnoticed in its environment.
“They’re sort of like the canary in the coal mine for the rest of our ecosystems,” McGuinness said.

Graduate students from North Dakota State University in Fargo are hoping to learn more about the pollinators and reproduction of the western prairie fringed orchid. Their work includes logging the GPS coordinates of orchids at 20 various sites in Minnesota, North Dakota and Manitoba, Canada, swabbing orchids for tiny amounts of genetic material from insects, and attracting pollinating insects at night with blacklights and sheets.
Years ago, Steve Travers, an associate professor at the university's Department of Biological Sciences, was fascinated to learn about the orchid — “these big, beautiful, two-foot tall, ginormous, gorgeous things that were pollinated at night.”

“I have a hell of a hard time finding it sometimes,” he said. “And when people see it the first time, there's like almost this rapid intake of breath. I mean, it's so big and it's just spectacular.”

The orchid is a unique insight into its nearly vanished ecosystem — the tallgrass prairie — as well as for understanding connectedness with pollinators and other plants, and is a good model system for studying rarity, Travers said. 

The orchid’s only known pollinators are hawkmoths, big moths that are just the right fit and size to reach the orchid's nectar, in a long spur, while also pollinating the plant.

The western prairie fringed orchid is mostly found in reserves, such as the Sheyenne National Grassland in North Dakota and the Manitoba Tall Grass Prairie Preserve. The peak of the orchid's bloom was roughly mid-July.

Populations can be as small as one plant or as large as 500 to 1,000, Travers said. Once located, the researchers log the individual orchids' GPS coordinates to within 10 centimeters (four inches) accuracy so they can return later. Finding the orchid when it isn't flowering is like looking for a brown stick in a big, green field, Travers said.

Graduate student Josie Pickar's work is focused on what affects the orchid's reproductive success, including soil nutrients and pollinator service. She's been traveling to about 20 sites, looking at subsets of orchids, to gather soil samples and moisture content, count flowers, and record plant heights and conditions, as well as monitoring the orchids via trail cameras for what might be eating them. In September, she'll go back and count the orchids' seed capsules, which are extremely hard to find.

To find the orchids, the researchers used rough coordinates from land-management agencies. They've dealt with ticks galore, crossed a beaver dam while wearing waders and seen bear tracks in the process.

“It's been pretty wild,” Pickar said. 

She's put in days of more than 12 hours, visiting about two orchid sites per day that could be up to three hours away — her team donning gear such as long pants, long-sleeve shirts, hats and sometimes mosquito-thwarting head nets. She called the orchid “almost alienlike when you see it out on the prairie.”

Graduate student Trinity Atkins, who was out from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m., is looking at the orchid's pollination networks: the pollinators that visit the orchid and what other plants they visit, too.

She swabs the orchids at all her sites, collects moths to see where they are going and uses a molecular technique called eDNA metabarcoding to see which pollinators visited the orchid, she said. Environmental DNA is genetic material left behind from, for instance, a butterfly visiting a flower. Some studies indicate daytime pollinators might be at work, she said.

Studying the orchid's pollinators requires work at all hours of the day.

In the morning, Atkins would swab orchids for eDNA before it degrades. In the afternoon, she would survey for other nearby plants that could be attracting pollinators. And at night, she would be blacklighting at prairie sites, collecting moths and taking measurements.

Travers said the research is important in terms of biodiversity, of which rare species are an integral component for their contributions to their ecosystem.
While orchids are found all over the world, the western prairie fringed orchid is specifically adapted to the tallgrass prairie, he said.

“I kind of find that really interesting that you get all this variety in the genus and then, boom, it comes here and it turns into this huge, nocturnally pollinated thing, and I'd love to know why. Why did that happen? But that's a whole other question,” Travers said. 

Mariah Carey’s mother and sister died on the same day. The singer says her ‘heart is broken’.

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

Aug 27, 2024 08:15 AM

  

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AT A GLANCE

• “My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend. Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day,” the Grammy-winning singer said in a statement.

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Mariah Carey (AP) 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mariah Carey’s mother Patricia and sister Alison both died on the same day, the singer said Monday.

“My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend. Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day,” the Grammy-winning singer said in a statement.

“I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed,” the statement continued. “I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.” 

The Times Union reported Monday that Alison, who was largely estranged from Carey, died at 63 from complications with her organ function and that she had been in hospice care.

People Magazine first reported the news of their deaths and Carey’s statement.

Patricia was a Juilliard-trained opera singer who Carey credits as an inspiration to her from a young age.

“I would sing little tunes around the house, to my mother’s delight. And she always encouraged me,” she wrote in her 2020 memoir, “The Meaning of Mariah Carey.” 

Patricia was previously married to Alfred Roy Carey, the singer’s father. The parents divorced when the “Vision of Love” singer was 3. Carey grew up in Suffolk County on Long Island and lived primarily with her mother after her parents’ divorce. Her father died of cancer in 2002 at age 72.

Carey detailed her complicated relationship with her mother and her sister in her memoir, in which she wrote that she and her mother often clashed, causing her to feel “so much pain and confusion,” and accused her sister of putting her in unsafe situations as a child.

“Like many aspects of my life, my journey with my mother has been full of contradictions and competing realities. It’s never been only black-and-white — it’s been a whole rainbow of emotions,” Carey wrote in the book. “Our relationship is a prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration and disappointment. A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother’s.”

Carey maintained contact with her mother and even recorded a duet of “O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus” for the singer’s second Christmas album in 2010.