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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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.