January 15, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Thank you for joining me with this weekly blog post, which has come to mean so much to me. There has a recent article on BBC.COM regarding the power of hope and the fallacy of optimism. Indeed I am not optimistic but I am hopeful. The BBC article really captured this difference. “Scrolling through social media showing other people’s efforts on climate breakdown can give a false sense of optimism . . . [but] Real, good, useful hope has nothing to do with positive news. Instead, it is profoundly linked with action: both ours and that of others alongside us . . . There’s only one way to earn hope, and that’s rolling up our sleeves.” https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200109-is-it-wrong-to-be-hopeful-about-climate-change

The picture above was my 12th bag for January, and the new decade, and the 127th since I started. I had not realized that I had captured a fellow beach-goer doing a wheely on his bicycle until I finished my picture. I’ve been reinstated onto Instagram as @drplasticpicker without much fanfare and have figured out how to let that platform be part of this mission without letting it take over my life. I am at my 236th follower, and those numbers are every day growing. But I’ve come to realize the quantity is not important rather than the quality of interactions. Despite the almost 20 million acres of Australian acres burning and the poor poor almost one billion animals that have died, I have hope because every day I can look back on this blog and know I have done something. And @drplasticpicker and my friends we have wonderful plans that are percolating now. And I know many of you will join us.

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January 12, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I want to introduce you to Dr. Rachel Guest who is the fifth in this series of interviews with Pediatricians who are either “drplasticpickers” or more importantly defenders of our environment. She is the fifth but certainly I would say honestly one of our fiercest pediatricians who are environmental defenders. 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.

I have known Dr. Rachel Guest for almost 10 years. There are a handful of colleagues I trust enough to see my own children, and indeed she saw our daughter just yesterday afternoon. Dr. Plastic Picker is ever honest, and Dr. Rachel Guest is known in our department as a fierce and passionate person. I have been in many work meetings with her, and she has a very clear sense of who she is, the state of the world and what is right and what is wrong. I honestly have always enjoyed working with her. I like colleagues who push me to be better, and she drives those all around her to excel. It makes sense to me that she has always wanted to care for our sickest children. She has always worked in the more acute care settings: Pediatric Emergency Room, as a Pediatric Hospitalist and is one of the lead phyisicans in our Pediatric After Hour Clinics.

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January 11, 2020

Original Poem by Mr. Plastic Picker

This is Mr. Plastic Picker’s response to seeing some of the destruction that tourism causes on the mountains and the Aspen trees. Also after the perilous drive from Snow Bird to Park City in one of the worst snowstorms he has ever driven through.

To enjoy me

You have to destroy me

I am your Pachamama

Not your plaything

January 11, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It’s difficult to be a child especially a teenager right now. I am trying to do everything we need to do as parents to ensure our kids’ future, and bring this decade’s work of rewilding the world with joy. Parents especially mothers have been mobilized because our children became activist. I have always been environmentally aware, but seeing the young including my own children strike for the climate – awoke me. But as they have been awoken, they are anxious. We actually don’t talk about the climate too much but they know why we are making the changes that we are making, and the donations Mr. Plastic Picker and I do for their sakes.

Our high-school son told me about the above figure EarthChan who is an anime-style anthropomorphic representation of planet Earth. She is a young girl and when you look at her from above, her hair is blue and green and covered with clouds and resembles the planet Earth. Initially when our son told us about Earth Chan and that many youngsters were being activated to help the earth due to her, I was dismissive. But then, I began to realize that just like the ancient Inca civilization and the present day Quechuan speak of the Pachamama – Earth Chan may be the current generation’s planet Earth – their Pachamama.

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January 10, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Today was one of those days that was beautiful. Today was like that day in December when our meeting was cancelled and I wandered around the hospital talking about plastic and my blogging and got my Fit-Mask test done with one of the most powerful physicians in our group https://drplasticpicker.com/a-meeting-was-cancelled-and-drplastipicker-meanders-around-the-hospital-convincing-the-1/. I had so many adventures that day, and I made tentative plans to have a plastic picking meet-up with said physician and her family. She wants to teach her children responsibility for the earth as well. Well today, our middle management meeting was not cancelled but I still had a wonderful day.

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January 9, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It has been four months of this journey. And this journey will last 10-12 years. That is about how long we have to avert catastrophic climate change. I have boasted before that I am determined and hyper-focused, but yesterday I admit to feeling somewhat lost. I am on my 122nd bag of ocean bound plastic and 540th salvaged item recovered from the half-mile stretch of beach I clean – and I wonder, is it enough? The ocean plastic picking has been incorporated into my life. The brisk evening wind yesterday and the clean packed sand I now need as much as I need my cup of coffee at 5am. So for that I will forever be grateful for this journey, because going to the beach and cleaning let me regain my wellness back.

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January 8, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I am writing this post actually Janaury 7, 2020. Even though it is Tuesday, and this blogpost is a Wednesday series – I will publish today because it will be wonderful to have our blog’s 100th blogpost be a Hopeful Post. Again, this continues to be a joyful blog-post series and such an uplifting part of my week. This marks the 100th blogpost and that is something to be super hopeful about. Usually I get 200-300 pageviews a day, so that is 200-300 plastic picking posts people are reading a day. Who is reading? I am not really sure but folks are reading. And that might encourage someone to remember their reusable water bottle, refuse a plastic fork, donate to the Rainforest Trust or pick up a few pieces of plastic when they go to the beach. So this week, we have Eight Reasons to be Hopeful.

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January 6, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It is Monday, January 6, 2020. It is the first full work day back after the 2-week stretch of the holiday break. The holiday break is when staffing is the most difficult at work, as nurses and pediatricians want and need to be off with their families. This year the 2-week holiday break went on a crash-course with influenzae season. Trying to predict how well the influenzae vaccine will work and how bad or not so bad the influenzae season will be is impossible until April of each year.

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January 6, 2020

An Original Poem by drplasticpicker

I walk from the Pier to the Protected Beach

The Protected Beach where the Surfer’s go

And beyond that Protected Beach and the Parking Lot, I travel further

until I reach the soaring cliffs of beauty and life

Sand cliffs that may crumble at any moment

Posted signs warn “Unstable Cliffs, Stay Back.”

But there are Marbled Godwits there, a flock of friends feeding

There is a black shoe sole, alone and abandoned

There is a bag of mammalian waste with an aluminum can wedged inside

There is a jagged rigid piece of white plastic, there is a small rectangle of blue

I bend over to pick up the pieces, unafraid of the cliffs

I am cleaning the cliffs, picking up bits and pieces

The cliffs may crumble. The house above may collapse. Milliions of human dollars may be lost.

But the earth will warm. Our eco-system will collapse, and generations of birds will die – if I don’t pick up the plastic.

The Marbled Godwits will eat the plastic

So I am fearless and I clean the sand

A handsome man, so handsome with a leashed mannerly dog asks, “What are you doing?”

I think of Mr. Plastic Picker, and I smile openly and say, “I am picking up Plastic for my trash art. I love the blues.”

The handsome man says, “You are doing two good things, cleaning the earth and making art?” He smiles.

I think of Mr. Plastic Picker and I smile with openness and love for the earth, my husband and this fellow human being. “It makes me happy. There are Marbled Godwits over there.” I point to the North Shore. “They are endangered shore birds with sharp needle-point black beaks.”

The man smiles kindly and walks with his leashed handsome dog to the North.

An unleashed Pekginese walks by. I think, please don’t chase the Godwits. Those Marbled Godwits are my friends.

I walk within the soaring sand cliffs, the cliffs of beauty and I walk with life.