November 24, 2019

by drplasticpicker

It has been well documented in the social sciences literature that many health outcomes are due to habits. And it is also been well documented in the scientific and lay literature that behaviors (good and bad) can spread within social circles. We become like the people we associate with especially is there is mutual admiration and affection.

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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.

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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

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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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