November 16, 2019
An original poem by drplasticpicker
Author: Dr Plastic Picker
Dr. Plastic Picker
A Personal Plastic-Picking Blog: Fighting Ocean Plastic Pollution One Piece At a Time
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/ .
Another school shooting today, and why I wrestle with balloon ribbons.
November 15, 2019
November 15, 2019
by drplasticpicker
Today there was another school shooting in Santa Clarita, California. From the stretch of beach I take care of, one would have to walk 150 miles to reach that high school. There are children who have fired guns at children today, because we adults have not gotten our act together to pass comprehensive common sense gun control.
Thornback Guitarfish: How my hyperbole garnered attention from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography!
November 14, 2019
November 14, 2019
by drplasticpicker
It is 5am, and my body is awake and time for a bit of coffee and blogging. When the earth awakens and the sun begins to rise, I will head off on my morning walk. But before then I wanted to share with you how drplasticpicker gained attention from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography!
November 13, 2019
by drplasticpicker
I was born and raised in this town. But it has taken me 40 years to fully appreciate how lucky I am. When I applied to pediatric residency, I wrote my personal statement about “Gathering Places. ” I vaguely remember drawing parallels with a well that was in the center of my family’s ancestral village in Southeast Asia and a pediatrician’s office. I wrote of my desire of becoming a pediatrician in the community that I would live. I called both the village well and the medical office – “Gathering Places.” Now I chuckle, because even then I was drawing random connections between disparate places and experiences.
Indeed, I did become a general pediatrician and my office is a “Gathering Place” for the families I serve. And I have realized that the Pacific Coast and this stretch of beach I transverse so frequently is a “Gathering Place” for many people.
Squeasy Gear #1: Tackling the Pediatric Fiber Deficit with real fruit and not plastic!
November 12, 2019
November 12, 2019
by drplasticpicker
As you know, I had an amazingly high-yield week in New Orleans at the last American Academy of Pediatrics Meeting https://drplasticpicker.com/drplasticpicker-goes-to-the-aap-national-conference-in-new-orleans-and-tries-to-use-less-plastic/. One of the talks I attended was by Dr. Diane Barsky from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). I trained in the Northeast, and CHOP is impressive. They are like the Tesla of pediatric training programs. One of the topics she addressed was near and dear to any pediatrician’s heart, fiber.
November 11, 2019
by drplasticpicker
Brandt’s Comorants, Whimbrelshttps://drplasticpicker.com/way-of-the-whimbrel/, Long-billed Curlews, Snowy Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Black Turnstones, Western Gulls, Marbled Godwits, one Surfbird and Snowy Plovers. These are the threatened Pacific coastal birds I saw on one of my ocean plastic picking walks.
The half-mile stretch of beach I clean most mornings is the southernmost tip of the South La Jolla Marine Protected Area.
(more…)November 11, 2019
by drplasticpicker
Becoming drplasticpicker meant devoting my free “me” time to taking a quick jog to the beach, taking a walk along the shore and picking up plastic and jogging back. I had no idea that this would cause a cascade in my life to make life simple. Peaceful.
I wanted to share this with you, because it is something that is so easy to do and so powerful.
November 10, 2019
by drplasticpicker
The trip to Food4Less to maximize $8 for the San Diego Food Bank https://drplasticpicker.com/how-8-cash-found-on-the-beach-became-80-meals-and-a-daughter-mother-outing/reminded me that trying to eat seafood sustainably is hard! I love a bargain and had been shopping at Food4Less for years. But about 5 years ago, we stopped going. I had forgotten why we stopped? This week’s trip was the first time in years and it jogged my memory.
A beautiful charcoal drawing and a young man strumming on his guitar
November 9, 2019
November 9, 2019
by drplasticpicker.com
Ocean plastic picking has reminded me that time is not linear. Life is not linear. One of my favorite books growing up was Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. In this book I was first introduced to the idea of the tesserect. That the shortest distance between two points is not a line but a wrinkle in time or a tesserect. Indeed the actual mathetmatics is complicated, but the concept is an intriguing one.
As I wandered along the beach this morning, I do the opposite of tesseracting. I take a longer meandering path. Rather than taking the shortest path, I follow bright pieces of plastic up and down the beach. Going slowly from piece to piece, wandering wherever my subconscious takes me. I concentrate on those pieces of plastic, trying to find the small and large pieces thinking alternatively between the whales that might ingest the big pieces to the birds that prefer the bright small ones. Then once in a while, I look up and I find beauty.