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.

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.

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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.

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November 9, 2019

by drplasticpicker

It is day 72 of this ocean plastic picking journey, and I continue to find great joy and meaning in this new endeavor. As of today, I have picked up 65 bags of trash and salvaged 338 items. Yesteday, I was not able to reach the ocean because I had a full Friday clinic and things always run late, and with daylight savings by the time I got home at 615pm it was already pitch dark.

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November 7, 2019

by drplasticpicker

I have joined twitter. Why have I joined twitter? That is where the children are and the children are the ones that need to be protected and supported, and drplasticpicker is a pediatrician and a mother. I need to go protect the children. When Greta Thunberg gave her UN Speech and castigated the adults in the room, this battle-worn pediatrician had tears rolling down her eyes. What have we done? The children think of us as “Do Nothing Adults.” Indeed, it cannot be all Trump’s fault as he has only been president for 3 years. We were all here and we did nothing or did not do enough. Climate change is happening and we have 15 years to mitigate these changes. I am in my mid 40s, and I have until 60 to help.

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November 7, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Wandering along the beach is wonderful for the imagination. Children have the blank canvas of the surf and sand to create their fairytales. I then get to see the remnants of them on my walks. I make up stories in my imagination about who made these structures, and what stories and adventures occured within their walls.

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November 6, 2019

by drplasticpicker.com

To Vaping Companies,

My name is drplasticpicker and I am a real life board certified pediatrician who cares for 2000 children in Southern California. I also take regular walks along a half-mile stretch of the Pacific Ocean that borders a college student area. I pick up plastic debris before it goes into the ocean. In my over 60 walks along the beach, I find vaping pens, devices and caps every day.

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November 6, 2019

by drplasticpicker

I wanted to do a follow up post regarding the $8 I found on the beach two mornings ago. As my mother had suggested, we decided to use the found cash to buy food for the San Diego Food Bank. I told the kids I would match it with another $8. So those vague plans to donate it were filed in the back of my mind, and the cash left on the kitchen counter.

Today after school, I mentioned to my middle-school daughter that we could go ahead and see how much healthy/less plastic wrapped food we could get to help feed some needy San Diegans. She replied that she was caught up with her homework so we could go today. So off we went down Friars Road in our plug-in hybrid, off to Food4Less – bargain grocer.

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