I, Woody Weingarten, the author of “Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer” and “Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates” and the owner/operator of VitalityPress, can’t remember a time when I couldn’t talk — or play with words.

My first poem was published when I was a high school junior. But, way back when my hormones had trumpeted that adulthood had arrived, I’d already decided I’d rather eat than create rhymes (or even blank verse).

So I switched to journalism.

And whadda ya know, I — a bearded, bespectacled fella — have used big, small and hyphenated words professionally since jumpstarting my career in New Yawk City more than 60 years ago.

Today I’m an online feature writer, blogger and publisher — in what I consider a “faux retirement.”

During my better-paid years as a wage slave, I was an executive editor and writer for daily and weekly publications in California, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York for more than six decades.

I won writing awards along the way for public service and investigative pieces, features, columns, editorials and news.

In collaboration with my wife, composer-musician Nancy Fox, who’s now free of breast cancer after two bouts, I’ve completed an original musical comedy, “Touching Up the Gray.”

It’s a revue in search of a producer.

I, whose previous spouse died when her breast cancer spread to several vital organs, also have published weekly and monthly newspapers, and written a national column for “Audio” magazine.

A graduate of Colgate University, I owned a public relations/ad agency, managed an advertising publication, served as media liaison for a psychiatric hospital, directed a congressional primary campaign, and worked as a legislative aide.

The father of two and grandfather of three, I’ve lived in San Anselmo, California, for more than 30 years.

I figure I’ll stay.

Unless, that is, “Rollercoaster…” — which I’ve previously described as showing “how a pair of very-human beings overcame their anguish in the wake of relentless medical procedures” — suddenly is resurrected and becomes a bestseller and I’m forced to leave on a global book-signing tour with my wife.

No matter what, I’m sure our story can “illustrate that physical and psychological hurdles can be cleared, that strong relationships can help kill not only mutated cells but worries that metastasize.”

I’m certain, too, that male caregivers can benefit from reading “Rollercoaster…” because, even if they mistakenly believe they require zero help and can fix anything, they, too, need support.

In the meantime, I can be befriended or followed on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — or on this weblog.

I predict that VitalityPress’ future publication about relationships will be innovative.

And sensational.

But not in the salacious sense.

Its working title is “MysteryDates®: How to find the sizzle in your relationship.”

Nancy Fox is working with me, Woody Weingarten, her husband, as my editor. Together, we’re re-creating a nonfiction volume based on more than three decades of playful, imaginative, fun dates each of us set up while our partner remained in the dark (once, however, a real blindfold turned the metaphor into a reality).

My book will spotlight anecdotes about our dates — which have ranged from an ultra-simple dinner-and-a-movie to the much more sneaky sleeper-car train ride to San Simeon to see Hearst Castle and the elephant seals that were beached and birthing near the Piedras Biancas lighthouse.

Yet “MysteryDates®” also will feature — after years of research — so much more, including experiences we have yet to (and may never) do.

Such as bunjee-jumping or skydiving, or MysteryDates way beyond our pay grade (jetting to Paris for a Friday evening supper in a hideaway bistro or rocketing to the moon).

Publication of the book unfortunately has been delayed by Covid-19’s arrival and will require a major rewrite because many of the places detailed in what has become a first draft are now closed and may remain so permanently. Still, scores of exciting sites will be left to visit as soon as travel becomes normalized again.

Meanwhile,  check out some of the chapter titles: Romance, intimacy, sex; Endless possibilities; Almost perfect; Quirky; Parades, festivals, fairs; For poorer and richer; Dress-up; One-of-a-Kind; and Discovery.

Nancy, of course, is the heroine of my first book, “Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer.”

She survived the disease twice, and is now lending her creative input to “MysteryDates®”

I’m thrilled.

 

 

The following four chapters are extracted from my upcoming VitalityPress book, “The Roving I.” They represent essay-columns I published under that title over an 11-year period.

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Parkinson’s can’t shake un-still photographer’s grit

It’s a paradox: Alan Babbitt doesn’t see well. But his vision is sharper than most.

The 61-year-old is succinct: “I was born with a whole bunch of eye problems, so I was wearing thick glasses from the age of 2 or 3. There’s no question — without contacts, I’d be legally blind.”

He refused to let the impairment get in his way, however. It certainly didn’t block his becoming a successful film and video producer, webmaster and award-winning photographer.

Alan’s online site clearly shows his skill. One portfolio spotlights the Santa Cruz boardwalk on a winter’s day. Another contains dramatic, artsy New York City street scenes. A third focuses on playful images. Showcased are unusual angles and perspectives, brilliant colors and poignant black-and-white shots.

His originality makes the scenically difficult look easy to capture. And he loves peppering his explanatory text with dubious puns and any remnants of humor that happen to be lying around. For example, he confesses that he once “joined a therapy group for photo addicts based on the ‘12-Stop program.’”

Unfortunately, Parkinson’s disease invaded his life five years ago “like a loud, uninvited house guest who won’t ever leave.” The physical shaking made him totally reexamine his life — and shelf his camera for a while.

Now, my friend and I sit in a quiet Thai restaurant enjoying the sunshine streaming through the windows. He beams, almost mischievously, like a kid about to let me in on a gigantic secret. “Parkinson’s adds to my vision,” he says. “Recognizing I could use the tremor freed me up like nothing else.”

I need no follow-up question; he’s on a roll.

“The disease is about losing control. Finding I could use it was empowering.

“When you first learn photography, they tell you over and over about crispness, about keeping the camera steady with a tripod. One evening in Las Vegas, where I was alone with a digital camera, I just started shooting. I was able to see right away what I got. Blurs. Streaks. And then people started reacting to it, liking it. That’s my style now — tremor-enhanced photography.”

His website contains portfolios dedicated to his innovative technique, “Movement Disorder” and “Shake Me Out to the Ball Game.”

He beams again as he chats about “crossing the border” and journeying to metaphoric “other lands” through his camera lens — speeding past his disability: “The tremor is only one kind of movement. I can shoot from a moving car and move the camera around as well. It’s sort of what I call ‘un-still photography.’”

He, too, is un-still.

Alan’s taught at the de Young Museum Art School in San Francisco, exhibited at galleries and studios, held shows at libraries here and there in California and Washington state. He’s planning an April exhibit of his photos at the public library in his hometown, Fairfax — to mark National Parkinson’s Month.

He’s also contacted the Michael J. Fox Foundation to see if they can work together. He’s donated prints to a Parkinson’s group in New York, his birth state, to be auctioned off, and to another foundation. And he recently participated in an Art for Recovery program in San Francisco featuring readings from letters exchanged by patients and medical students.

“One of the gratifying things is that people have seen the work and been inspired by what I’m doing,” he tells me. “It feels good getting those e-mails and letters. Some of them have been from photographers. And a 12-year-old girl wrote me the other day and asked to use me as the basis of a school report. That’s the kind of thing that inspires me to do more.”

Still, it can feel pretty heavy — until you fully grasp the positive attitude that gushes from the bearded, gray-haired guy with brown eyes.

There’s no doubt Alan cultivates his tendency to be upbeat, his affinity for the amusing, readily admitting he wants viewers to relish their “titters, snickers and snorts.”

“Soon after I got the diagnosis,” he recalls, “I thought of occupations that would be possible by using tremors: egg-scrambler, paint can-shaker, human vibrator. Sure, having Parkinson’s can be depressing, but humor can help fight that.”

His occasionally dark humor is quickly evident online, sprinkled between his straightforward photos and experimental tremor-shots that highlight bright streaks and patches, rings and blotches of light, geometric shapes. 

Spoofing a Viagra ad, he warns that “if feelings of giddiness…persist for more than four hours, just turn on the news for a few minutes.”

Do-Nothing Day — a full-fledged fiasco

My entire life, even as a tot, I’ve felt a compulsive need to be productive. But now, with my gray hair turning white, I’ve wanted to slow up.

Apparently, I haven’t learned how.

Years ago, my wife and I vacationed in Mexico. We arrived at our beachside hotel, unpacked, and I immediately started looking for recreational activities.

“See that thing,” she said. “It’s a hammock. Lie in it!”

I did — following her direction because I long ago discovered the key to a happy marriage is a submissive “Yes, dear.”

“What now?” I asked, squirming only slightly.

“Now you lie there and stare at the ocean or the clouds in the sky. That’s it.”

“Yes, dear.”

Within four minutes, I was uptight, upright, and looking for active recreational activities.

I evidently don’t do passive very well.

To overcome my innate obsessive-compulsiveness, a condition amplified by being a Jew trapped in a Calvinist work ethic, I resolved to pause — for 24 hours.

I therefore designated a recent Saturday as Do-Nothing Day, planning to completely veg out. I blueprinted it: Count tiny bumps in the ceiling while resting in bed. Listen to hours of soft, melodic, classic jazz. Watch lowbrow TV shows instead of anything on PBS. Eat gobs of comfort food instead of low-fat this and extra-lite that.

I intended to travel a familiar road, the one paved with good intentions: No exercise. No errands. No phone calls.  

But I failed. Utterly. Miserably. Swiftly.

Within four minutes of awakening, I was checking 13 bookmarked online news sites. Next up, stretching exercises, then the treadmill and recumbent bike. What followed — within half an hour — was making a phone call related to my chairmanship of the Quality of Life Committee in San Anselmo, California; cell-phoning my daughter in New York; calling a friend to wish her a happy birthday; walking Kismet, our dog, and picking up his poop; helping my wife unclog a filing cabinet drawer; hauling a box filled with heavy paper to our storage shed; writing a cover letter to a literary agent; and crafting this column. 

The rest of my day followed in kind, imitating most other days — crammed with limitless tasks with meaning for me even if nobody else gives a flying fig.

But come to a full stop? Impossible.

In fact, my Do-Nothing Day included some “deferred maintenance,” scrutinizing some 723 Post-its on my desk.

Years ago, I sold my Palm Pilot. I’ve never considered buying a Blackberry. Dinosaur-like stickies are what I stick to. My desk, my pockets, my mind — each is cluttered with them.

What do I scribble? Snippets of tidbits I’ve overhead. And sometimes my mind decides to become a giant sieve, with the best place for its drippings being those little yellow pieces of paper. 

Eventually, I do examine the squiggles, often actually able to decipher my handwriting. 

Here are some recent notations:

• Damn! Can’t lose weight. Why? With apologies to Will Rogers, I’ve never met a carb I didn’t like. 
• Little dark-haired girl about three in local park, obviously fighting off potential identity crisis: “I am not a sandcastle. I am not a sandcastle.”
• Don’t know why but the phrase “having some wiggle room” always makes me giggle.
• Woman overheard in front of a nearby musical hotspot while rubbing her wedding ring: “I fight with myself; why wouldn’t I fight with my partner?”
• Clean your desk!
• Most ill-defined, overused word of the decade — “organic.”
• Guy talking to two others in front of a market a couple of towns away: “He’s so dumb, he couldn’t fix a one-horse race.”
• “Hot news” a couple of months back — ‘Tanning salons cause cancer.’ Duh!
• Cull the Post-its on desk! Today!
• Would anybody define “voyeur” as “having a peek experience”? 
• The Art Deco interiors of my favorite local movie emporium still give me a kick each time I watch a film there.
• I’m such an optimist I think a bad start almost inevitably leads to a good finish.
• Decked out female with blonde bangs at a supermarket in town, talking about husband’s previous spouse: “He did that in another wifetime.”
• Would-be political candidate talking to would-be voter, sez, “I don’t have a ‘for sale’ sign on my back.”
• Handful of environmental purists irk me by acting as if they’re greener than thou.

But by far the most significant Post-it, which instantly got me to stop whipping myself for my Do-Nothing Day fiasco, was: Overheard on Town Hall lawn — “I took a lot of baby steps this week, most of them forward.” 

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‘Miracle baby’ walks, talks, inspires euphoria

The “miracle baby” turns one on March 9.

Abigail Sander’s first birthday will be a celebration of life — and scientific marvels.

Her family will also pay homage to those who survived the Holocaust, and those who didn’t.

Festivities will effervesce at a party in Brooklyn, where Abi lives with her mom and dad, Heidi and Jeremy, and laughs liberally. 

Later she’ll be the focus of another bash — in Marin County, California, where she lived nine months in utero, in the bulging surrogate belly of Heidi’s older sister, Alaina Yoakum.

How do I fit in? The sisters insist my wife and I, friends but unrelated, are part of their extended family. So, I’ll hoist the kid onto my lap at that shindig and, for the fourth time since her birth, revel in her smiles. 

“I can lose myself in just staring at her,” Heidi said recently.

I can, too. 

I know what it took for Abi to get here.

Antecedents include Heidi’s cervical cancer four years ago at age 28, a hysterectomy, freezing her eggs after Jeremy fertilized them, psychological screenings and lab tests, a costly surrogacy and expensive legal paperwork. 

For Alaina, past-40 co-owner with husband Charles of Marin Running Company in my adopted home town, San Anselmo, it wasn’t an easy pregnancy. 

Shots to prevent premature birth. Copious mood swings. Headaches. Elevated blood pressure. 

Earlier, fear for Heidi’s life hounded her parents.

Because Ivan Silverberg, the sisters’ dad, is an oncologist, and their mom, Rita Rosenbaum, an oncology nurse, they agonized during the cancer treatments. The Mill Valley duo imagined everything that could go wrong.

Thankfully, nothing did.

Rita now reminisces about “how strong Heidi was, how resilient she was, how she handled it all.”

She lauds, too, Alaina’s lovingkindness, Jeremy’s attentiveness and Charles’ support (including, for months, giving Alaina daily injections of progesterone). 

Ivan echoes that, but grumbles about being “a two-coast family” and not seeing “Abi enough, even though Heidi’s gone out of her way to get here.”  

The Brooklynites actually expect to juggle jobs, friends and calendars to bring Abigail to Marin every other month.

That’ll help the family concentrate on what’s good — and mollify Rita’s dark memories.  

Her father was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust; her mother’s family was likewise decimated.

How many died? “Too many to count,” she tells me, explaining that for her, a child of survivors, the residue was “distrust — of the world, the government, the police, neighbors and friends. I knew no matter how good everything looked today, it could be taken away tomorrow.”

But the presence of Abigail, named after two Abrahams, Rita’s and Ivan’s dads, helps her relax — as do the Yoakum daughters, Sophie and Olivia.

That pair bolstered the cheerfulness in San Francisco’s Kaiser Permanente when Abi emerged after the C-section. 

“They were so much a part of this,” recalls Rita. “They laughed, quietly, with sheer delight.”

Delight also was the operative word when Alaina, who’s “always had this incredible bond” with Heidi despite their 10-year age difference and who chats “with her almost daily by phone and online,” asked to stand in. 

Amazingly, Charles dreamt her surrogacy the night before (though his subconscious got the kid’s gender wrong).

Only one egg had to be implanted. That leaves about a dozen should Heidi someday decide she fancies a gigantic family.

For now, she has her hands full with Abi, who already has a love-filled history that, for me, began with welcome-to-the-world merrymaking at Rita and Ivan’s place in Mill Valley (where Heidi, Alaina and their brother Michael grew up).

My eyes misted while cradling her.

At the baby-naming ritual at Congregation Kol Shofar, a morning of wonder and tenderness as mother and surrogate chanted together, my tear ducts leaked freely. 

Then, when Abi hit three months, I held her for 40 straight, glorious minutes. She cooed and clutched my finger. 

I cooed back.

In October, at the Yoakums place, I again held her. She grabbed my finger as if remembering the first time.

I kvelled. 

That’s a Yiddish word that means being elated. Euphoric.

What will Abigail call Alaina? “Neither mommy nor auntie are quite right. We’ve agreed to wait and see what nickname she comes up with,” explains Heidi.

Alaina concurs. 

Abi walks now, warbles a few words, and gets ecstatic playing peek-a-boo. “She also giggles at other babies,” Heidi reports, “and she likes to look at pictures of herself in my cellphone.”  

None of that’s unusual. But some still think everything concerning the “miracle baby” is unique. 

Heidi views it differently: “Abigail is certainly a miracle for us but we feel a little uncomfortable calling her that because any baby could be given that label.”

True, but I still see Heidi being played by Natalie Portman in a short black wig, Alaina by a brunette Scarlett Johansson.

Abi, I figure, will star as the miracle kid.

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Cambodian refugee works her dream after surviving slave labor camp

Sophie Lim almost starved to death as a teenager in a slave labor camp — every day for four years in the late 1970s.

She was fed only bits of watery rice under the yoke of the murderous Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Her weight plunged to 70 pounds. 

“I was all bones and skin,” she remembers.

After being hospitalized four months, then forced to return to toiling 10 to 14 hours daily seven days a week in mud-filled rice paddies, Sophie escaped “with a delivery guy who had two oxen pulling a wagon.” 

Sighing, she tells me, “I’m lucky I survived. About 1.7 million died” — from starvation and the infamous genocidal killing fields.

We’re sitting at a table in an upscale shopping center in San Anselmo, California, soaking up sun near Sophie’s Nail Spa, a salon she owns. The Cambodian native also owns her home across the bridge in Richmond; another house in the city of Elk Grove, close to Sacramento; and two rental structures in nearby Oakland.

Regardless, the 57-year-old immigrant whose ambition, energy and hard work helped her achieve the American Dream feels compelled to work 10 to 12 hours a day. 

But that’s a long way from being awakened at 3 a.m. and made “to walk a mile or two, sometimes more” to the work fields in a country where she’d been torn from her mother and sister (her father died when she was six).

It’s also a long way from being obliged to listen nightly at 7 “to a brainwashing meeting.”

Her captors, she says, “were killing people, making them disappear, but they made it sound like they were doing good things. We knew better.”

The Khmer Rouge, Communist offshoot of the Vietnam People’s Army from North Vietnam, had galvanized a system of torture and executions that melded with widespread famine stemming from its failed attempts at agricultural reform.

The nightmare will always haunt her.

“Hundreds slept together, with only room for you and your mosquito net. You made friends with people you worked with, but mostly you didn’t trust anybody.” 

If you got sick, you first were sent to “a clinic where there was no doctor. They just gave you an IV, putting young coconut juice into your veins.”

Nowadays Sophie tries not thinking about everyone stealing food to survive — even though “if you stole and they found out, they killed you.”

Nor does she often ponder doing without: “No shoes, no toothbrush, nothing.”

But the memories spur her to give back by donating money to help Cambodia’s poor.

Often.

Sophie initially returned to Cambodia in 1999 and has visited half a dozen times since.

“I helped build a Buddhist temple, after collecting money from the Cambodian community and adding some of my own,” she tells me.

She also raised funds “to dig wells for two villages.”

Not all memories of her native land are negative. One bright spot was meeting her husband “in the street” shortly after her escape.  

A year later, they wed. 

A year after that, they came to Oakland despite neither speaking a word of English. “We learned by watching a lot of ‘Sesame Street.’” 

In 1983, at age 24, she found an assembly line job she kept for a year — until the company went bankrupt.

Three years later, she gave birth to her second son (she also has a daughter) and started cleaning houses. She did that for a decade.

Sophie and her husband had also adopted a Cambodian orphan, bringing him with them when they emigrated. 

Eventually she bought what’s now Sophie’s Nail Spa — 19 years ago.

Her life wasn’t trouble-free during that tenure, however.

Her daughter, now living in housing under the auspices of a mental-health program, was “diagnosed at age 18 with schizophrenia” in 2002. Sophie’s carpenter husband “quit his job to take care of her.” 

But he died seven years later from liver cancer — after a $300,000 transplant. Sophie carried his ashes back to Cambodia, where she built a shrine.

Today she loves it here, living and working her dream. “I’m happy a lot, laughing all the time. I’m not a grumpy person no matter what happens.”

When I ask about the government’s current anti-refugee stances, she replies, “I don’t like [it]. People should be able to come here and help people back home. There’s no place like America.”

She says it’s crucial to give refugees hope — something she’d lost repeatedly in the slave labor camp.

The following is a chunk of the foreword to my upcoming VitalityPress book, “MysteryDates®,” which is subtitled “How to find the sizzle in your relationship.” The volume, which is requiring an extensive rewrite because so many places referred to in the draft were closed permanently by the pandemic, will contain hundreds of tips on what to do, how to do it and where to go — locally, nationally, globally.

A MysteryDate® doesn’t typically entail a cloak ‘n’ dagger or a scruffy private eye who can’t afford to shower regularly.

Nor is it likely to involve finding out what’s growing in the back of your refrigerator, or whether we’ve been invaded by aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy.

What is a MysteryDate then?

An activity you arrange without your partner knowing where she or he is going until you get there.

Or vice versa — that is, one arranged with you in the dark.

The result can keep, resuscitate or refresh the sizzle and joy that flared when sparks first sparked between you.

As well as the fun that followed.

MysteryDates can also clobber the myth that long-term relationships are inevitably doomed to become unexciting, monotonous or drab.

If yours has lost even a smidgeon of its oomph, this book might help you find the sizzle again.

Without strain.

MysteryDates, you see, can be simple or complicated, a one-shot or a series. They’ll most often involve only you and your partner. But a third person or second couple might join in on occasion. Or even, conceivably, a larger group of friends, relatives, co-workers.

I — Woody Weingarten, author of this book — am confident, in fact, that MysteryDates can work for nearly everyone.

Yes, some novices may find their partners naturally resistant. But that initial foot-dragging is likely to dissipate, replaced by anticipation and excitement once the practice has been habituated.

Not incidentally, I refer throughout this volume to he and she because that’s what Nancy Fox, my wife, and I are. If, however, your partnership consists of a he and a he, a she and a she or a threesome of any configuration, simply substitute your words or lifestyle for mine.

Nance and I have been happily married for more than three decades and have been concocting MysteryDates virtually from the git-go. We even scheduled them, albeit less frequently, when she was undergoing treatments for breast cancer. The pandemic created our only gap, but we’re fully back into them again.

Along the way, we’ve imposed but one guideline: The originator must firmly believe the event will exhilarate, amuse or (at worst) please the other.

A caveat: This book probably won’t help much if you’re on the brink of a split-up or if one of you just gave the other an STD. It can, conversely, be of inordinate assistance if your prime currency is trust and you’re seeking a new path to a good time.

Demonstrably, doing a pleasure-filled MysteryDate is as obvious and easy as ABC:

A. Decide on something you’re at least 93.4 percent sure your partner will relish.

B. Figure out, specifically, how to make it happen.

C. Do it.

I can almost guarantee success — except for those who insist they’ve no time to plan a MysteryDate yet have gobs of time to gripe about not having enough time.

 

RESUME OF WOODY WEINGARTEN

(aka SHERWOOD)

 

LIFETIME GOAL:

To be of the upmost service to family, friends, co-workers, and the public.

 

HIGHLIGHTS:

Author

Wrote MysteryDates, a look at how to find and keep the sizzle in your relationship, and The Roving I, a compilation of 70 columns penned for newspapers over a 12-year period. With granddaughter Hannah Schifrin, co-wrote a fantasy children’s book, Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates. Authored a non-fiction book, Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer, and am working on its second edition. Publisher of all: VitalityPress.

Feature writer

Wrote — and am writing — “Inspire Me” section stories, historical articles and entertainment pieces for Local News Matters website.

 

Lyricist 

With wife Nancy Fox, co-wrote a musical revue about middle age, “Touching Up the Gray.”

 

Officer

Chair (elected) since 1995, weekly Marin Man-to-Man support group for San Francisco Bay Area guys whose partners have, or had, breast cancer or other life-threatening diseases.

President (elected) since 2018, Fernwood Drive Homeowners Association in San Anselmo, California. Earlier, was secretary (elected).

Commissioner (appointed by Marin County Board of Supervisors), Marin County Commission on Aging, 2018 to 2021. Was elected chair of its Nominating Committee and was on its Editorial Board, its Equity, Outreach and Advocacy Committee (and that panel’s subcommittee) as well as its Housing and Transportation Committee.

Chair (elected), San Anselmo Quality of Life Commission, for six years. Member, 10 years (appointed and reappointed by San Anselmo Town Council).

 

Prize-winner

Am only person to win two Healing Partner Awards from Marin Breast Cancer Watch, one as individual, one as 10-year chair/facilitator for Marin Man-to-Man weekly support group.

Won seven statewide writing awards (including three first places) for news writing, investigative reporting, public service, columns, features and editorials while City Editor of The Neighbor weekly newspaper in Tampa, Florida.

Won 2021 writing award in San Francisco Press Club competition.

 

Volunteer

Phone-calling companion for elderly shut-ins for Marin Villages organization.

Pen-pal for young teen through Children4Change agency in Marin County.

Member, 2018 to 2021, Marin County Age-Friendly network.

Member, 2018 to 2021, San Anselmo Age-Friendly task force.

Member, Marin County Civil Grand Jury (appointed position), 2008-09. Pro Tem and secretary of its Health & Human Services Committee.

 

Journalist

For eight years, while purportedly retired, wrote San Francisco Bay Area arts and entertainment criticism for forallevents.com website.

For more than 11 years, also in retirement, penned reviews and general features for six Marinscope weeklies. For nine of those years, composed a regular monthly column, “The Roving I.”

For five years, wrote a monthly column for “Audio” magazine, a 70,000-circulation national publication.

For almost 24 years, as Managing Editor, directed day-to-day operations of j., the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California (and its predecessor, the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California), an 18,000-circulation weekly newspaper in San Francisco. Fashioned the paper’s content, layout and design. Developed, assigned and edited news and features by staff writers and freelancers (55 local scribes, 28 non-local, nine book reviewers, eight photographers and seven cartoonists). Also assigned and cropped photos. Acted as a troubleshooter with all levels of the public.

For four years, as Editor and Publisher, administered all facets of two newspapers in Clearwater, Florida — “the people’s paper,” a broad-based weekly, and “Sr.,” a specialized monthly for senior citizens.

As City Editor at The Neighbor, in Tampa, Florida, assigned and edited material of staff and freelance writers for the 175,000-circulation weekly, the state’s largest.

As a journalism teacher at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette, California, instructed Jewish and non-Jewish non-journalists in how newspapers work, how non-professionals can gain access to editors, and how to write effective press releases.

As Suburban Editor of the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, supervised 14 reporters, an assistant editor and seven pool photographers in news and feature coverage of 100 southern New Jersey municipalities for the 122,000-circulation Gannett daily newspaper. During seven-year tenure, also did stints as Magazine Editor, Acting City Editor, Swing Man (filling in for News, City, Wire and Makeup Editors), Acting Telegraph Editor, Bureau Chief and Book Review Editor.

As Assistant City Editor of the Daily Item in Port Chester, New York, substituted for two years for on-leave boss of 15,000-circulation daily in Westchester-Rockland group. As Reporter, covered special assignments and regular beats in four communities. As Night Editor for group’s County News Bureau in White Plains, New York, edited national, state and county copy for nine dailies.

 

Other occupations

As President of Sherlu Enterprises in Willingboro, New Jersey, conceived and produced advertising, public relations and marketing campaigns for organizations and business clientele.

As liaison with the media for Horizon Hospital in Clearwater, Florida, improved the psychiatric facility’s image by setting up TV and radio shows and for newspaper articles. Created in-house newsletter.

As General Manager of the Del-Val Pennysaver in Medford, New Jersey, organized and steered all departments (including production and sales) of 100,000-circulation weekly advertising shopper, giving frequent seminars for staff.

 

Political involvement

As Legislative Aide to Assemblyman Charles B. Yates in Trenton, the New Jersey state capital, acted as press secretary and advised him on all bills.

Steered Congressional primary election campaign in Willingboro, New Jersey.

 

Affiliations

Member, Bay Area Independent Publishers Association, 2013 to present.

Member, Mensa International.

 

EDUCATION:

Bachelor’s degree in English, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York.

 

PERSONAL:

Born Sept. 25, 1937 in New Rochelle, New York. After 30 moves, now lives in San Anselmo, California. Married for more than three decades to composer/musician Nancy Fox. Father of two — Mark Weingarten and Janis Brown; grandfather of three, Drew Brown, Zach Weingarten and Hannah Schifrin.