Proof of his new book elates writer-reviewer Woody Weingarten. Photo by Nancy Fox.

The pink ribbon has become as much a symbol of merchandizing as of breast cancer awareness — illustrated by 49ers cap, available for merely $37.95 online.

December is not National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Neither was November.

October was.

So that means we needn’t think about it for the next 10 or 11 months, right?

Certainly every American woman who’s had the disease — all 250,000 diagnosed annually, all 2 million living with it — can relax ‘cause it’ll automatically go into remission until October 2015.

No?

Maybe that’s why I’m angry.

Despite claims that October’s pink ribbon barrage will fill research coffers, I don’t think awareness should be limited to one month-long streak of sentience a year.

I live on a San Anselmo hill with a fabulous woman who contracted breast cancer 20 years ago.

Yes, she’s survived the disease, the treatments, the trauma and the aftermath. But her survival doesn’t for a minute mean she won’t shudder the next time she goes for a mammogram. Or every time she feels a twang in her right breast.

Or the other one.

Or, indeed, each time she gets any kind of ache anywhere.

I’m outraged because I know breast cancer is chronic and can recur anytime and therefore I must spread hope 365 days a year (while some folks revel in making supportive noises one-twelfth of a calendar year).

The truth is, breast cancer hasn’t quite cornered the U.S. market on October awareness.

That month also has been abducted by advocates of sudden infant death and Down’s syndromes, infertility, pizza and liver and popcorn, domestic violence, dental hygiene, LGBT history, blindness, cyber security, mental illness, Hispanics and Americans with German, Filipino, Italian and Polish backgrounds.

Not to mention dwarfism.

All of which seems to spread awareness a little thin, I contend.

I’m livid that pink ribbons — whose main goal initially was to fund research for a cure — have become a marketing tool for all sorts of merchandise that have little to do with breast cancer and a lot to do with profit.

Do I worry about potential repercussions of making my resentments public?

No, especially since I’ve just published a book with a VitalityPress imprint that not only chronicles the downs but the many, many ups of my being a caregiver for my wife.

I’m hoping it will appropriately distribute awareness.

“Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer” is available at www.Amazon.com. The ebook sells for $9.99, the paperback for slightly less than the $18.18 that I initially established as a salute to the Hebrew word chai, which stands for both the numeral and the word “life.”

It’s a bargain if you want to learn what you might go through as caregiver or patient, what advances has occurred in breast cancer research or meds, or where to get help.

My book’s aimed at men.

You know about us — most believe we can fix anything. We can’t.

Most loathe being vulnerable. But we must be.

And most despise surrendering control. Yet sometimes we’re given no choice — like when our partners get a life-threatening disease.

For 19 years I’ve been running Marin Man to Man, a weekly support group where drop-in members often decode what physicians and other healers say (or don’t).

Along the way I’ve picked up a few to-do’s. I share them in “Rollercoaster.”

• The physical and mental health of a male caregiver is as urgent as the patient’s.

• It feels good to let go of anger at doctors for not having instant answers; at pharmaceutical companies for manufacturing life-extending but not necessarily life-saving drugs; at yourself for not having a magic wand.

• It’s crucial to remember each person is an individual, not a statistic (and that breast cancer couldn’t care less about race, creed, sexual orientation or politics, that it’s the most common cancer among Israelis and Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank).

• Downloading or renting comedies, taking walks, reading or listening to whatever brings you pleasure, encircling yourselves with folks who evoke positive feelings — all may boost your spirits (and your partner’s).

• Living one day at a time is good medicine, but best of all might be doing today what you’ve postponed forever.

Having absorbed those things, I can now sit here in my cozy Ross Valley home and pass along the verbal talisman my sainted Jewish grandmother blessed me with so often:

“Go in good health.”

Check out Woody Weingarten’s new blog at www.vitalitypress.com/ or contact him at voodee@sbcglobal.net.

[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]

Kathleen Turner portrays a syndicated newspaper columnist in “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins.” Photo courtesy of kevinberne.com.

Molly Ivins spent her entire life at war.

With her father. With Republicans. With breast cancer and with herself.

She lost them all.

Along the way, however, the acid-tongued writer made readers of almost 400 newspapers that carried her syndicated material laugh.

And reflect what lay underneath the jokes.

For four decades.

Ivins, in fact, caps my personal pantheon of columnists.

Alongside Maureen Dowd and Jimmy Breslin, other wordsmith-provocateurs armed with stylized, barbed wit.

So I was pre-programmed to watch a gravel-throated Kathleen Turner shine in the Berkeley Rep’s one-woman show, “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins”

And she did.

In nearly every snippet of the 70-minute monologue that whizzes by.

It didn’t hurt that I’d twice before enjoyed her — in the title role of “Tallulah” in 2001 and as Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 2007, both on San Francisco stages.

And that didn’t count films in which she truly sizzled, “Body Heat,” “Romancing the Stone” and “Peggy Sue Got Married.”

Turner captures Ivins’ outrage, as well as her battle to corral her emotions.

Ivins, a liberal Lone Star State lone wolf surrounded by a drove of politically conservative Texas sheep, had it tough from the git-go.

Her privileged mom — perhaps referencing Molly’s red hair, tallness and intelligence — labeled her “a Saint Bernard among Greyhounds.” Her right-wing father (“General Jim”) gave her no quarter, no love, but plenty of time at the dinner table to hone her skills at arguing.

But her brains and one-liners boosted her to success in a male-dominated industry.

I first considered not quoting her lines, but decided they bettered anything I could cook up. She admits loving Texas, for instance, but calls the sensation “a harmless perversion.”

While at The New York Times for six years, she declares, “I was miserable — at five times my previous salary.”

And she hopes “my legacy will be to be a pain in the ass to those in power.”

Turner proficiently captures the essence of Ivins, or at least the essence of her wisecracks. But the show, written by twin journalistically involved sisters, Margaret and Allison Engel, is skeletal at best.

Ivins’ siblings, the stuffed armored armadillo on her desk, her involvement with the ACLU and her compassion for African Americans, her cigarette smoking — all get bare-bones mentions, or none at all. Her troubles with the bottle are but fleetingly addressed (and dismissed as par for the newsroom course). Her love affairs (one man died in a motorcycle accident, another in Vietnam) also get short shrift.

And her daddy issues never get resolved (despite a struggle to write a tribute column).

The set is likewise skimpy.

It consists mainly of three castoff desks in the rear, her desk in the foreground (which allows Turner to pound on an antique typewriter), and an Associated Press machine that spits out old columns the character can cite.

Helpful is a large screen onto which black-and-white images are projected from the past: A newspaper library (“the morgue”). A rare female co-worker. A string of Texas politicos.

It’s as if I get to thumb through a fading family album.

The problem is, the photos of the real Ivins, who died in 2007, clash with Turner’s non-matching face.

The shots do depict many of the people she targeted, however, including George W. Bush, whom she knew in high school and subsequently dubbed “Shrub.”

She was not his biggest fan.

Indeed, she wrote, “Instead of 1,000 points of light, we got one dim bulb.”

Turner, who’d starred in the 2010 debut of “Red Hot Patriot,” has obviously gained poundage since her Tinseltown sexpot days. Partly due to drugs to fight years of rheumatoid arthritis, partly to the alcohol she’s consumed to quell pain.

Director David Esbjornson has done what he can to turn the monologue into a play — having her sit on the stage’s edge and its floor.

He even utilizes a silent male stooge as a copy boy, a device he might blue-pencil without loss.

But the brightest element won’t disappear: Turner’s mouth.

All in all, “Red Hot Patriot” is lightweight and fun — unless, I suppose, you’re a card-carrying member of the Tea Party.

And with Jeb Bush being touted as the leading GOP candidate for president in 2016, this lingers: “The next time I tell you someone named Bush should not be president, please pay attention.”

“Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins” plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St. (off Shattuck), Berkeley, through Jan. 4. Night performances, Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m. Matinees, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $14.50 to $113, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.