April 30, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

OMG it’s April 30th today! It’s actually the anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the mass migration of Vietnamese people overseas after the communist takeover of the south. I call it Saigon, and if you call it something else – than obviously we have an issue with eachother. I didn’t notice the date until I started blogging this morning.

No one in my household really gets how important April 30th is. I love and live in a household of Koreans. This is not by design but by chance. Usually your enemy’s enemy is your friend, and I often wonder if this is why Mr. Plastic Picker and I were destined for eachother? It’s more likely he was cute and I was cute, and we were lab partners in premed biology. I can’t explain why, but I knew Mr. Plastic Picker was the one, because he smelled a certain way. It was definitely pheremones. But I often think of the colonial ramifications of our union that transecend the premedical sciences.

It’s the last day of April, and the anniversary of the fall of Saigon. It’s been a whirld-wind month of climate projects and work. Since Saigon fell, I ended up being born in the United States of America – having been conceived enroute during my parents flight from totalitarianism and communism. And then I ended up marrying a Korean boy. And this is why my children are half Korean/half Vietnamese but don’t speak much Vietnamese but love Vietnamese food. The same drama is happening all over the world, and now again in Ukraine. Greed. Limited resources. Corruption. It leads to people being displaced and creation of new alliances.

Just random thoughts this morning that make no sense. I’m resting this weekend. Trying not to pile on too many projects as I need to do our taxes and clean our house. Still at least 1-2 climate meetings a week, but nothing major. You can rest and fight at the same time. I can rest and recuperate, but still advocate for the earth. It doesn’t have to be big events like our art show. I need to udpate the readership anyway, but here is the list of secondary net environmental positives I did on an individual level because I needed to report it to you. It moves me to address my personal carbon footprint, while also improving my own wellbeing. Living a sustainable life is truly one of the most healing things one can do.

List of Ten Things I did for the Earth because I needed to Blog About It: Secondary Net Environmental Positives (The primary net environmental positive is picking up plastic)

1. 42 showers evereted (times I skipped a shower to keep more water for our rivers)
2. 5 large aloe plants salvaged and replanted (picked it up from a pile that a neighbor was gifting)
3. 6 times I picked something organic (I don’t know that this means on my list, oh well)
4. 11 bags of HMO coffee grounds I collected to put in the composter (this is to help with our composter and also averts methane!)
5. 9 containers of compost tea cycled back to the earth. Usually I’ve deposited the compost tea in a guerilla gardening location.
6. 2 bags of hay and bunny poop cycled back to the earth in a guerilla gardening location. This is when our composter was too full, and I diverted this important organic is a secret location somewhere else where it is providing carbon and nitrogen into our collective soil.
7. 5 bags of baby clothes gifted to friends. This is better than just donating. These were really nice clothes for some reason ended up in our house. Almost new! I gave them to friends who may or may not use them. But at least there is a higher likelihood that it will prevent them from needing to buy too many baby clothes.
8. 8 aloe plants that were propogated by me but then either gifted or guerilla gardened.
9. 1 trip where we drove on a vacation instead of flew (this was the aborted Oregon trip that ended up being a road trip to San Francisco)

I guess it’s only 9 items. Wishing you well in your own environmental journey! Please take time to rest. I need to rest this weekend and start putting a dent in my tax preparations. We filed for an extension.

Here is the link to all the blogpost in this series https://drplasticpicker.com/plastic-picking-round-up/