Category: Climate Advocacy (AAP/Climate Reality/ClimateHealthNOW)

June 21, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Yesterday it was Teenage TikTok Users and Kpop fans versus Trump, and the Teenagers won! Teenagers were partially the reason why the Tulsa Trump Rally tanked. Dr. Plastic Picker, your local plastic picking pediatrician, is your biggest fan (the teenagers and not Trump). It is Sunday, June 21, 2020 and a brief newstory made it online and now I can’t find it. I did take a screenshot of the story.

It just goes to show the mainstream media is missing the cultural shifts that are happening on the ground. I mentioned to Mr. Plastic Picker last night that I thought CNN was projecting a completely different world that I see as a litter picker around the neighborhood. But the tweens and teenagers, they know what is going on. If you are a teenager, you will unlikely read this. But I wanted this seared into the blogsphere virtual pages that you have my utmost admiration and support. Most of the blog and Facebook readers are your parents, and they need to know how wonderful you all are. Teenage TikTok Users torpedoed Trump – this is the headline that CNN missed.

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It’s my last day of my week of vacation. It’s been a mentally exhausting week because a lot of important work issues crept up that needed to be completed. Today is my last day and I will enjoy the day with the kids. Mr. Plastic Picker said he will try to work from home. He usually ends up getting called into the hospital to do an emergency fluoroscopy study. But I am hopeful he will stay home for some of it and we can be together.

There were many important tasks I had to complete this week despite “vacation.” I am proud that they are done. They were big tasks that only I could complete because I care about them. Since it was vacation, the usual annoying issues of pediatricians essentially whining about this and that – I just ignored and punted to the managers that were actually on duty. One of our pediatric GI nurses used to have a sign on their door that said, “NO WHINING.” I loved that. At some point I’m sure someone from compliance or customer engagement made them take it down. This week I did not deal with the whining. I did receive messages about clinic issues that are meant for Dr. Dear Friend, who leads the clinic and is not on vacation. Another physician sent a message about a going away party for a graduating resident and a special caterer he likes which does not have anything to do with me, unless the other physician was subtly asking for department money for that party? But in this COVID-19 pandemic and the financial stresses we are facing in healthcare, there is no budget for that. I punted it to Dear Dr. Friend and told her I’d chip in my own money, but no departmental funds are available for extraneous costs that do not have to do with actual departmental business.

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June 15, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It’s funny how life works out. I was finding my thought processes getting sillier and sillier. I had finished my third flip flop trash art piece, and it made me laugh. I used an old blood pressure cuff and some vaping pens, and made a pretty large trash art piece called ‘Hypertensive Man.” I was even singing this catchy diddy I made up when I was hot-glue gunning him together. Mr. Plastic Picker and the kids laughed when I showed them. Then yesterday morning I found so many flip-flops at the beach and thought – do I really bring these all home and make more trash art people? I didn’t have enough room in my bag so I threw in the bin but did bring home 14 aluminum cans to recycle as they are the high-yield salvagable https://drplasticpicker.com/aluminum-cans-the-high-yield-salvagable/. At some point you have to make the decision of where you spend your efforts. The aluminum cans yes. More flip flops for trash art, maybe not.

And then Mr. Plastic Picker bought the movie above “2040” which I had seen advertised on Instagram. And I also had on my to-read list “Drawdown The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming” edited by Paul Hawken. I had borrowed it several months ago and had not really read it, and wanted to return it to my friend and Co-Leader for our Girl Scout Troop today. I finally had a chance to read it and then we watched 2040 during movie night. In fact much of “2040” is based on the more comprehensive “Drawdown” and Paul Hawken is featured in the movie. Both are excellent and in short my world is rocked. I felt I was very well read regarding the environment, but really reading the impact of different measures helps me focus on again the high-yield and greater impactful part of environmental advocacy. I will still pick plastic and make trash art, but these two works reinforce what I had been focused on previously.

These are the relevant powerful sections I want to keep as reminders. I am really using this post as a set of environmental notes and reminders for myself, to refocus this blog and my environmental work. This blog had always been about my panic regarding ocean plastic and my gut-wrenching fear about climate change. What I found powerful is that my place as a pediatrician in the world, a mother, a Girl-Scout leader, and a random crazy pediatrician that picks up plastic and posts on Instagram/Facebook – enables me to help the world avert climatic disaster.

I will still make the occassional trash art series, but I have been reaffirmed to keep at what is the most impactful. Below are my notes and direct quotes from Drawdown. The whole point of Drawdown is to list the actions that the world can take, and made a evidence-based judgement at how impactful they are in reversing global warming. This is a nonmonetized blog so I think they are going to be okay with this blogpost. Here is their website https://www.drawdown.org/ and I’ve signed up for their email list as well.

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June 13, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Blogging as Dr. Plastic Picker has helped my career. I was not looking to advance beyond Assistant Boss, but it’s amazing that being able to think aloud on the blog has helped me organize several important work projects. Above is the picture inspired by Dr. Seuss’s characters, and we finished a leadership document entitled “Thing One, Thing Two, Thing Three” about the Assistant Boss positions. The actual document was only two pages, but summed up succinctly some fundamental shifts we wanted to make in our leadership structure. Many of those ideas I pondered in three separate seemingly tangential and unrelated blogposts on leadership, “Leadership opportunities are everywhere. Don’t just go to the blue light special” https://drplasticpicker.com/leadership-opportunities-are-everywhere-dont-just-go-to-the-blue-light-special/, “Raising Leaders: Random Thoughts About Work, my Kids and my patients” https://drplasticpicker.com/raising-leaders-random-thoughts-about-work-my-kids-and-my-patients/ and “Let 2020’s Failure by a Reminder of you, You are the Leader our World Needs https://drplasticpicker.com/let-2020s-failure-be-a-reminder-for-you-you-are-a-leader-our-world-needs/. The blogs were indeed related. I’m not sure how many people read the blogposts. The blog analytics showed they were decently popular. But the best part of writing the three posts is that it helped me with several work projects. So much for running from work and picking up plastic on the beach! I’m still doing that work which is my passion, and I’m “Thing One” of the three things LOL. “Thing Two and Thing Three” are pretty amazing as well.

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February 23, 2020

by drplasticpicker

As I go on this journey, it is really my children and my little patients leading me to where I need to go. They are the ones who immediately understand the importance of their pediatrician picking up ocean plastic. They are the ones convincing their parents to “Skip the Straw” to save the sea turtles. They are the ones who contribute all the beautiful art to our blog https://drplasticpicker.com/splash-by-daniela-aged-11-wins-our-turtle-is-our-spirit-animal-drawing-contest-reusable-grocery-tote-bags-coming-soon/, and come out to our beach clean ups to physically clean the earth they will inherit https://drplasticpicker.com/feb-office-beach-clean-up-final-results/. The children are leading this movement and know how to fix the world. They were the ones that taught me about Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees https://drplasticpicker.com/ecosians-drplasticpicker-has-always-liked-alien-like-names-change-your-search-engine-to-ecosia-they-plant-trees-you-become-an-ecosian/. So one of my little kindergarten patients told me about her Reuse-It club that meets on Tuesdays at school.

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February 9, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I have been meaning to write this blogpost about 6 weeks ago, but it wasn’t quite the right time. I had just sketched out the title, and the topic has been percolating in my tension-headache-free mind https://drplasticpicker.com/tension-headaches-drplasticpicker-cures-myself/. But yesterday I saw one of my beloved families that I have cared for for over 10 years. They were one of the first families that I was their “pediatrician.” I appreciate them sticking with me because sometimes I wonder how much I knew 10 years ago when I had just finished a research year at NIH and had been mostly doing only endocrine clinical work. I had not looked at tympanic membranes in a long time. I remember thinking, gosh I would rather have a new onset type 1 diabetic patient than a rule out ear infection.

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January 23, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I listened to my body yesterday. I came home from a busy day in clinic where I missed doing a telephone appointment because I had to rush off to a pediatric quality meeting. We sat at the meeting and got much more accomplished than any other meeting group that I have been a part of, but still the mollasses that is getting big corporate groups to a goal frustrates me sometimes. It’s important to listen to each other, and to take in consideration people’s opinions. But when people’ opinions are tied to what they are getting paid for, sometimes one does not know the motivation for what their opinons are. Is it some pointless politically manuevering in a different department? Is it some kind of bonus or monetary carrot or threatened budget cut that underlies that statement? Office and corporate politics are complicated when money is involved. But at least I got everyone to agree to stop the plastic water bottles at this 10 person meeting. That is 100 less for 2020. Little wins matter.

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January 21, 2020

by drplasticpicker

The hours I have spent transversing the shore and the sandcliffs, mostly by myself, has centered my mind and reconnected me with the rhythms of the earth. I am by nature a more solitary and introverted person, which will surprise many who know me in real life. Social gatherings usually drain me, and I need to be by myself or with loved ones to feel normal again. It was the cacophany of the modern world and the spinning chaos of management that almost broke me. I have written about my bout with tension headaches that are now gone, thanks to the ocean plastic picking and the time outside. And now I am whole again, and every time I feel irritated or petty – I make sure to take a walk and pick up some plastic, and then I am drplasticpicker again and know where my path lies.

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