November 21, 2019
by drplasticpicker
In the two and half months since I have started keeping count, I have collected 150 aluminum cans from the beach. I have dug them out half buried in the sand, climbed up the sand cliffs, tramped under the lifeguard towers, and thought about diving into poison ivy (which I did not). But that total makes me very excited. Let me explain to you why.
November 23, 2019
by drplasticpicker
“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Rules the World” was a poem written in the 1800s by American poet William Ross Wallace. Before it became a title of that god-awful scary misogynistic 1980s movie, it was a poem that glorified the power of motherhood. The second stanza,
Infancy’s the tender fountain,
Power may with beauty flow,
Mothers first to guide the streamlets,
From them souls unresting grow —
Grow on for the good or evil,
Sunshine streamed or evil hurled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world. – William Ross Wallace
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
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.
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.