Writer's block
I haven't written anything during the past month or so. I really haven't had the heart. On the evening of September 13, I learned that Taxpayers League board member Geri Weinberg had been found dead in her home.

Geri died in her bedroom from an injury to her head, apparently sustained in a fall. In the previous weeks, she had had a few other falls which had left her looking pretty badly beaten up. She was just recovering from a fall of about two weeks prior when she took her final, lethal stumble.

Before anyone asks it, no, there were no signs of foul play. The Venice Police Department were at the scene when her body was discovered, and by all accounts Geri died suddenly, fairly painlessly and quite accidentally.

VTL prez Herb Levine gave me the bad news. I was dumbfounded. I still am.

Geri was one of the only people I know who could get into a political argument with Herb and win. Sitting with them at various restaurant tables over the past couple of years and listening to the two of them go at it over various political ideas was always illuminating and very often hysterically funny.

Geri was the only person I know who could tell Herb, "ah, you're full of shit," and get away with it as an argument winning strategy. Part of it was the dark Judaic humor that both of them culturally shared. The main reason, though, was that Geri had a very keen intellect and was inherently honest and pragmatic in all things. Herb respected her viewpoints and her mind.

Over the past couple of years, Geri had become a very good friend to me. I usually talked with her on the phone at least once every two days. I had recently reprogrammed her computer after she had managed to get infected with a virus, and I was at her house frequently as she would encounter various computer problems in her work with the VTL and as a board member of Bird Bay condominiums. She was a good student -- she never made the same mistake twice on a computer and she was showing me some tricks in Microsoft Word that I didn't even know about.

An avid dog lover, Geri never allowed me into her house unless my dog, Amos, came along. She actually sent me back home to fetch him on one occasion.

What appears below are some selected writings from Geri. Some are from e-mails, some are from the message board where she sometimes posted as "Lady in Red."

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Geri was never one to give false flattery. I mean never, ever, ever. On January 13, 2004, City Manager George Hunt announced his resignation. Things were hectic during the next few days, but it had become apparent that then-Deputy City Manager Marty Black would be taking the position, if only temporarily. Here, Geri sends a sincere letter of congrats to Black.

01/18/04 (e-mail to then-Deputy City Manager Marty Black):
Marty:

We've been watching you perform for more than a year and we like what we see. You appear to be able to bring a balance to both scales of justice which means keeping Venice a small town for those of us who chose to live here and love it, and to provide something to the business community which keeps Venice vibrant without "giving away the farm" to special interests. This balancing act takes a special focus, integrity and lots of smarts. We hope city council will, in its infinite wisdom, select you as the man of the hour. We wish you good health and good fortune on the serpentine road to success as a city manager of a Great Little City.

For those of us who reap no special benefits or profits, we only hope and wish for an open city council, and for an honest and adept city manager who will guide the council in the achievement of better and more open governance that will benefit the taxpayers by no special deals and the wisest disbursement of our tax dollars. Get to know all your employees, department heads and only then can you establish solid backup and awareness of what is really happening in your domain.

Once again, good health and success---you deserve a chance at the brass ring!

Geri was very fond of me. That wouldn't stop her from calling me out when she thought I was wrong. In the e-mail below, Geri took me to task for what she felt were a couple of erroneous statements in a two-part guest column that I had written for the Venice Gondolier Sun:

02/25/04: (e-mail to John Patten):
Although I agree with much of your Part II column in today's Gondolier, I do take issue with several things you wrote. Herb (and the VTL) has not specifically preached to the choir of retirees. The VTL has represented all taxpayers in Venice. Since the median age of citizens in Venice is probably 68 it is natural that many of them would be represented. However, Herb has made incursions into the business community on many occasions. Most of the time business owners who had complaints about city hall asked to remain anonymous lest there be possible individual retribution. Martha Hanneman was a business owner and she witnessed much of what was negative about city hall for business owners and citizens.

When a city is managed by a person whose actions have not suffered criticism from his bosses (city council members), many deals become imposing and destructive because they are secretive and unfettered by those who are elected. The VTL is not, nor has it been, anti-business. It has had to operate in spite of a skewed framework put in place by an agenda motivated by a paranoid city manager and fostered without question by a council who was satisfied to have its homework done by someone else while it grumped about unfair pay for services rendered.

Not content with bashing me privately, she then sent a nearly identical version of the above letter to the Gondo, which they published. I took it all in stride, mainly because this was typical of the private ideological arguments that went on within the VTL, and it was just as well that the public get a chance to sift through the various viewpoints. Besides, Geri wasn't attacking me, she was attacking a couple of my ideas, and it all made for fairly lively discourse on an otherwise mundane subject.

In July, Geri went to see Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 9/11. She walked away with mixed feelings.

07/06/04 (e-mail to various friends):
I broke one of my rules about seeing movies at home on DVDs and went to see Fahrenheit 9/11. It is created from bits and pieces of snippets from the media and put together cleverly by Michael Moore. Enmeshed in the propaganda are many facts concerning the Saudi relationships, the war machine (military-industrial complex), and Bush's opinions on a variety of subjects.

The characters have been given screen personas of braying donkeys but once again a kernel of truth has been elicted on important issues, i.e., Iraq, troop levels, poor planning after the pre-emption, bringing freedom to a country of clashing cultural identities and the fact that Saddam was killing and burying Iraqis not Americans, and we know was no real threat to the U.S. or our freedoms.

Iraq had no madrassas and a high number of the population was educated and had health care. Michael Moore suggests (and I've read it many times before) that a long-term plan of a pipeline for Caspian oil to run through Afghanistan and Iraq was in the cards sometime earlier.

He makes a number of other implications which may or may not be true. He is a good propaganda machine and this film brought laughs, gaffes and pure baloney about what is going on in the background of our government.

It didn't make me feel warmer towards the Democrats, but they are the only salvation to Geo W. Bush for another four years. Specifically, this cinema puts a spotlight on Paul Wolfowitz, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, and Dr. Death Cheney. When Cheney recently told Senator Patrick Leahy (Vermont) the floor of the Senate, "F*** yourself," after Leahy criticized the War in Iraq, I got a glimpse of the real Dick (physiologically correct) Cheney.

It is a must-see film for everyone who votes and has an interest in government or politics or has opinions on the War in Iraq.

As "Lady in Red," Geri would often toss off one-liners on the message board of this site. Here, she comments on a variety of topics in the middle of various online discussion threads, including an aside about one of Herb Levine's favorite Yiddish phrases that I had quoted Herb using in an article critical of the Boone law firm:

07/01/04 (message board post):
Your Yiddish is delish...and [it] certainly looks like somebody got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

07/09/04 (message board post):
This web site offered a thumbnail sketch of city council's approval of Geo Hunt's management style in le affaire d'waste water. Mayor Calamaras and two other council members went along with Hunt's actions concerning the whistle blowers in a skewed attempt to keep things quiet. If George Hunt is applying for a job in another city and a member of their city commission reads this web site they will get a complete picture of treachery, obfuscation and a disregard for public service. Them that screws around gets screwed in the end.

07/13/04 (message board post):
Please note that the past council members who did due diligence FOR taxpayers were all women: Dorothy Korwek, Cheryl Battey, Janice McDermott and Martha Hanneman! Diana Mier is now a candidate and she chairs the Code Enforcement Appeals Commission. Take a look at her during the candidate forums.

07/13/04 (message board post):
I've been reading "Longtime Resident" on this message board for awhile and I think I am in love with that intelligent & perceptive person (whomever he/she is). I wish he/she was a candidate for city council.

 

There wasn't any room in Geri's heart for outright hatred, but she came as close to it as she could get when it came to former city manager George Hunt. She absolutely despised Hunt for unethical and illegal practices that she felt that Hunt engaged in while he was city manager.

On July 16 of this year, I published a story that was a summary of several St. Pete Times articles about Hunt. According to the Times, Hunt was strongly in the running for the position of city manager of Treasure Island, Florida. Things were looking good right up until the town's mayor put Hunt's name into a Google search box. It all went downhill from there.

The day that the story was published, Geri commented in a post:

07/16/04 (message board post):
Phew -- the stench of Geo Hunt fouls him up. Hunt's management skills or lack thereof have finally caught up with him. It took the mayor of Treasure Island to do a web search and she discovered the real skinny. Maybe he should apply for the job of dog catcher somewhere. A gun-toting dog catcher?

After the first of Geri's serious falls, Geri was visited by Diana Mier (a candidate running for council as of this writing). The two were just beginning a friendship.

07/25/04 (e-mail to various friends):
Diana Mier and her husband dropped by my house and left a beautiful gift in a package hung from my doorknob yesterday with a warm and thoughtful note for my recuperation. They were on their way to do errands when they stopped by. My association with Diana shows me that she is honest and perhaps naive, but willing to learn and do the right thing by the people. She has steadfastly attended meetings besides the council ones. She attends the ARB meetings, etc. to learn as much as she can. She is earnest about serving the community well. She has no personal agenda and is willing to listen.

When City Manager Marty Black privatized the management of the city's utilities, many residents were up in arms. Even I wrote that I wasn't too thrilled with part of the outcome. As cynical as Geri usually was, she had developed an inherent trust for Black and his decisions. In response to a number of posts on the message board of this site that attacked Black, Geri responded with:

08/02/04 (message board post):
Watch the Venice City Manager closely and you will see the method to his "madness." He is a smart fellow who thinks ahead and critically. Just you wait and see about privatization and other changes he makes in the future.

I had posted a joke that Venice Florida! dot com was interested in bidding on the airport development project and linked to what I envisioned as the future of airport development. Geri phoned me, laughing deeply, and later posted this:

08/04/04 (message board post):
You really mooooved me on this one.

On seeing another photo of my dog, whom she once threatened to kidnap and keep:

09/01/04 (message board post):
A fabulous pix of Famous Amos today. Put a suit and a tie on him and he could be mayor of Venice.

 

Geri often surfed the web like teenagers do -- looking for oddball animations and such, and she was usually ahead of the curve in finding weird stuff. She would invariably e-mail the links out. For example, she was the first to e-mail me with a link to the Kerry/Bush "This Land Is Your Land" spoof.

Approximately one week before her death, she found this animation. I don't know where it came from or what to make of it (and I don't think Geri did, either), but it was typical of the strange stuff Geri would find on the web:

09/06/04 (e-mail to various friends):
A little video with more questions ...
http://www.muchosucko.com/flash/pentagonlies.html 

The last e-mail I ever received from her was a forward of an e-mail that she sent to the Herald-Tribune. It regarded Gary Anderson and a piece written about him in the Herald-Tribune. I never did find the original article that Geri was referring to, but it apparently really got under her skin. Here, she gives Herald-Trib writer Julian Pecquet a bit of a handslap, this on the day before she died:

09/11/04 (e-mail to the Herald-Tribune's Julian Pecquet):
For longer than the past decade I have attended Venice City Council meetings faithfully and watched Mayor Calamaras when he was a member of council (9 years) as well as sitting as mayor (six years). The mayor looks good in a suit and tie but has been woefully inept as our representative. He's been caught with his little finger in the Mainstreet till once for using a postal "contribution" during his last campaign. And he should have known better (it was illegal). He gave George Hunt free rein with city contracts on airport property without a whimper. As the leader he allowed mismanagement by the past city manager and never questioned what was awry in the water/waste water department or other departments. It has been like watching Mortimer Snerd make the agenda and act folksy.

Have you read Gary Anderson's web site and article about plans the city has if a hurricane hits? Have you peeked into questionable arithmetic by the mayor for past fireworks displays on July 4th? Fortunately we have four council members who can think for themselves and an era of welcome public input. The Herald-Tribune needs to do some investigative digging before recommending the mayor for reelection. Compare his education with Gary Anderson's. They shouldn't sell Gary Anderson short.

Maybe Venice needs a manager of a neighborhood restaurant who will bring a new vision and honesty to Venice, and hey---working is an honest living. And he probably won't leave a mess like Venice is in presently. The Herald-Tribune ought to take a closer look before it recommends candidates.

And now, she's gone.

Laurie Anderson once wrote of her father's death in a way that perfectly describes how I feel about the death of Geri Weinberg: "It was like a whole library had burned down." *

Shalom, Geri, and farewell. You were a true friend, and I shall miss you deeply.

* Laurie Anderson, text from the one-woman performance script of The Nerve Bible

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.