Month: November 2019

November 22, 2019

by drplasticpicker

my internal organs were eaten

my occular sockets pecked clean

i am Platyrhinoidis triseriata and i am dead

dead on the sandy shore, where drplasticpicker wanders

dead on the shore, where a Surf Rake removes the plastic debris, but also the seaweed that shorebirds need

Marbled Godwits! Whimbrels!! Snowy Egrets!!! where are you? did the Surf Rake “clean” the kelp, “clean” it from the insects and decaying kelp that keep intact the circle of life?

what is “clean?”

will someone “clean” my dead carcass?

already the seagull took the best parts, i am the ocean’s Prometheus

there comes that drplasticpicker again, always looking for her soul and deeper meaning in the waves, and little bits of plastic

dear girl. i am Platyrhinoidis triseriata , Thornback Guitarfish and i am dead.

i return to the Pachi Mamma

Addendum: I sent my poem to Scripps Institution of Oceanography and thanked them for inspiring my original poetry. I will get to meet the communications person there, when I finally return their trawl-line plastic ball that I found one morning on the beach.

Another blog post that I was feeling more sad https://drplasticpicker.com/don-quixote-is-this-a-cautionary-tale-for-drplasticpicker/

November 20, 2019

by drplasticpicker

When I was in eighth grade English, a classmate that I admired with my whole adolescent heart was assigned to critique one of my writing pieces. I was excited for him to see my writing, as back then I thought intelligence was one of my redeeming features. He was himself a talented student. He wrote only one comment on my paper in bright red, “K.I.S.S. Keep in simple stu**d.” It broke my heart and I always remembered that.

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November 19, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Somethings are too big for me to pick up. Broken surfboards, shopping carts, broken tents that have their polyester fabric doors agape. I am sure there is a story to each one of those items. These I leave because I simply can’t carry them with only the photos I have snapped. I concentrate on the smaller pieces that fit in my grocery bags.

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November 19, 2019

by drplasticpicker

One of my patients who is now about 10 years old always amazed me. He had a set of loving parents who both worked quite a bit, and was cared for from birth to about 4 by both sets of grandparents. His grandmothers fed this child the way their family has been eating for generations, and I watched them mold an amazing human-being and also an amazing vegetable-eating. I would argue that the two are correlated! This young boy ate bittermelon as a toddler, and still eats it to this day! It has taken me 40 years to be able to eat this very healthy, yet very bitter gourd vegetable (bitter melon 1/2 cup, 1.3 g of fiber).

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November 19, 2019

An original poem by drplasticpicker

i am long legged and elegant, my bill straight like a needle pin ever slightly upward tilting and then ends in black

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November 18, 2019

by drplasticpicker

I want to introduce you to my first in a series of interviews with Pediatricians who are either “drplasticpickers” or more importantly defenders of our environment. Pediatricians are natural allies to the children fighting for the environment, as the American Academy of Pediatrics has stated children will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change.

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November 17, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Last Friday the topic of conversation in the pediatric office lunchroom was persimmons. My blogpost on Squeasy Gear https://squeasygear.com/ and the Pediatric Fiber Deficit https://drplasticpicker.com/squeasy-gear-1-tackling-the-pediatric-fiber-deficit-with-real-fruit-and-not-plastic/ led to many interesting conversations in clinic about the benefits of persimmons. Then we heard from one of our lead nurses that his sister was considering chopping down this tree that is flourishing in the middle of Long Beach, California.

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November 17, 2019

by drplasticpicker

This update post is 2 weeks late. Usually I’m able to churn out posts pretty quick (Mr. Plastic Picker thinks too quick). I think it is because I have 40+ years of writing pent up that needs to get out. This blog post took longer because it involved many people who mean a lot to me and I wanted to do this right. If you are reading this and you are part of our community, thank you for spending your precious weekend morning with drplasticpicker and Mr. Plastic Picker for our first Office Beach Clean Up. As I was planning the beach clean up https://drplasticpicker.com/how-to-plan-an-office-beach-clean-up-together/, I was not sure what would happen and how many would come. I figured worse case scenario, it would be just Mr. Plastic Picker and myself and we would at least collect two bags of ocean plastic.

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November 16, 2019

An original poem by drplasticpicker

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November 16, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Drplasticpicker, the blog and the persona, has helped me tremendously. If the blog stopped here with my 40 odd posts, 70 bags of ocean bound plastic picked up, almost 400 items salvaged, and $500 donated to environmental causes – than it will have been an endeavor well worth my efforts https://drplasticpicker.com/donation-round-up/ .

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