File this under Paul Steven Stone’s Greatest Hits. “To You Who Are Different,” an award-winning anti-bullying video I wrote, directed and produced three years ago that features teenagers speaking to teenagers about the beauty and worth of being different. Kudos to my co-producers Sheara Seigal and Mona Rosen who put a lot of love, sweat and tears into the production.
For My Mom, Gertrude Stone Rubin
Her name was Gertrude Rubin. Most people called her Gert, a few called her Gertrude, her mother, my grandmother Sarah, called her “Gertie!” but to me she was always Mom. In her later years I would greet her with ‘Hello the Mama!’ don’t ask me why. And she would offer back happily, “Hello the Tata!”
Mom with her “Treasure Island,” my brother Bob.
Those who knew my Mom, loved my Mom. Many of you know why. She cared, she listened, she was all heart and steadfastly true to herself. She never lied. She never jumped to make judgments or spread malicious gossip. Mom was little Switzerland, at war with no one, at peace with the world. She was always ready to dance, even if she happened to be in a wheelchair. You could pin Mom’s body to earth, but never her spirit. Especially if you played the song “Y.M.C.A.,” and whisked her back to memories of her disco days. And oh those hot pants! Mom, please!
Mom was a hot ticket, always eager to laugh, sometimes surprisingly witty on her own. One time I was on the phone with Mom who was then in her late 70’s, kind of creaky and near blind. I was berating her for crossing Atlantic Avenue by foot, a dangerous 8-10 lane thoroughfare, especially after specifically telling her a number of times not to cross that dangerous and accident-prone road. Not even for a corned beef sandwich. “Why would you do that?” I questioned angrily. “It’s so dangerous. We’ve talked about this before. Why would you do it?” I pursued. “Can you tell me why?”
To which my mother answered sheepishly, “To get to the other side…?”
My mother was the one who stood up for the ugly ducklings and social outcasts. Immensely popular herself, down in her Florida retirement community, she would refuse to attend a movie, a girls’ night out or a mah jong game unless her friends, some of whom were social outcasts, were also included. “If Lillian’s not invited, then I don’t think I can go!” she’d insist. If Gert was your friend, Gert was your friend.
These last few days I’ve heard over and over that Mom was someone who listened. But listened with care and interest. My best friend Davey remembers Mom sitting with him as an eight year old when he was alone at his father’s funeral. It’s the little things we hold onto. Mom buying me presents when I was sick. Mom racing frantically to make it onto a subway train before it pulled out with me already on board. Mom also rescuing me, at age two or three, when my leg got stuck in a hot radiator. Mom always laughing when I clowned around. Mom painting my half-painted bedroom during my college days, the room left shabbily incomplete because I had lost interest in the project. Mom in her 40’s learning to cook, developing world class rigatoni that all of us still hungrily crave, not to mention a killer pot roast.
But first and foremost, Gertrude Rubin was a mother. In her final weeks, when she was mostly babbling to herself and to God, I heard her pleading with the Almighty to “keep an eye on me, her younger son, and to help me be successful…finally!”
Well maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea.
Years ago, we three siblings, Bob, Mona and I, were talking about who was Mom’s favorite. And each of us thought we were the one Mom favored over the others. Well, she might have favored us equally, but I was the one Mom worried about. I was the one, in her eyes, most at risk. Perhaps because I was the one who, as a young boy, regularly stood up to my autocratic father; perhaps because I was the one whose marriage broke up; for whatever reason, Mom could not stop worrying about me. Was I keeping my job? Was I earning enough? And what was it I did, anyway?
The only reason Mom had been able to stop smoking years ago was because she made a pact with God about my finding a job. She would stop smoking, she firmly negotiated with God-in-Heaven, “if He would help her son Paul, her weak and most vulnerable child, find himself a job.”
Then, of course, I found a job. And suddenly Mom was trapped! Trapped between her cravings to smoke again and her fear of jeopardizing my new job. Obviously God wouldn’t stand by his end of the bargain if she abandoned hers.
And so I kept my job, and my dear mother stopped smoking.
Time for me to say, “Thanks” to my dear, sweet mother, who will always be with me. And “Thanks” to whatever cosmic forces helped make this wonderful lady my Mom. If it’s true, as I’ve been told, we actually get to pick our parents before we’re born, then you have to admit I did a damn good job.
Godspeed Mom! I love you! Thanks for everything!
And stop worrying about me. I’ll be fine.
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The above eulogy was written for my mother Gertrude Stone Rubin and read at her funeral at Mt. Moriah Cemetery, on February 5th of this year.
I’ve been asked to speak about the need to elect a progressive city council. Which—to do that—requires us to replace at least three of the folks shown in the photo below, ideally from the back row. (I’ll speak later about the criteria that leads me to say that)
Three years ago, like most of you, I was totally ignorant of what was happening in our city. Totally ignorant of the city’s addiction to development, or the wheels that had been set in motion to virtually rubber-stamp any project that came before the Planning Board or our City Council.
But then I discovered a staggering fact. In the last few years, more than HALF the development projected for the next 20 years in Cambridge had either been built or permitted. Most of it without the guidance of anything I would consider real planning.
Well, that woke me up and once it did I saw we were all traveling on a runaway bus with no one at the wheel. A bus that was throwing off passengers—my neighbors and yours—as we merrily careened on our way.
Ever since I’ve been struggling, along with others, to grab the steering wheel and slow down the bus. I guess that’s why I’m here today.
If I can paraphrase from a far greater orator than myself…
Friends, neighbors, Cantabrigians, lend me your votes!
I come to shake up the city council, not to praise them.
For the deeds these councilors do will live long after they’re gone.
As will their unfortunate zoning decisions—and lack of foresight—chip away at the foundations of our beloved city.
Make no mistake, we are now drawn to an epic battle to preserve all that is most precious to us in Cambridge—our quality of life, our economic and racial diversity, our sense of community identity.
The next city council election may well decide the future of our city; and whether there’s a place for any of us in that future.
Many of us rail against the city council for their kneejerkreactions to complex issues. For the speed with which they approve almost any proposal that hides behind claims of protecting our most vulnerable citizens.
No matter that their political war chests are brimming with donations from developers…
No matter that they vote for zoning changes that award millions to developers while potentially displacing the very people they profess to care about…
No matter that they have failed to insist on thoughtful planning for our city’s growth…
Most of these councilors voted down the Carlone Petition, the one tool they could have used to protect our city from misguided mega-developments like the Sullivan courthouse.
And though they agreed to a Master planning process, they cynically placed it under the control of the very agency whose lax planning and arrogant behavior led to the outcry for a master plan in the first place.
That’s like sending a mugger out to protect his latest victim.
Over and over, they trumpet their concern for the families and poor people flushed out of Cambridge on a tsunami of development, but they never insist on an analysis of the real impacts of all this unbridled development.
And so I’m here today with two missions: first to call for right-thinking individuals to run for city council. We need candidates who will stand up to the pro-development cabal that threatens the fabric of our community. It only takes four votes to stop up–zoning and spot-zoning in its tracks. Just four votes to send proposed 19-story luxury towers back to the drawing board.
We believe we currently have three such enlightened councilorswho’ve shown they can see beyond the false arguments, who won’ttrade away our city’s future for a fast buck. (This time I direct your attention to councilors in the front row of the photo.)
Secondly, the Cambridge Residents Alliance will be endorsing a slate of candidates in the next election, and I humbly ask you to vote for that slate. Or at least not to vote for anyone in that photo who voted against the Carlone Petition, or who supports the status quo, takes money from developers, or naively claims the city is doing a good job planning for its future.
Your vote in the next City Council election may help decide who gets forced out of Cambridge, and who gets to stay.
That’s all I have to say…except I‘ll see you at the polls!
Thank you.
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A recent speech of mine. I was asked to speak about electing a progressive city council at a recent forum on affordable housing put on by the Cambridge Residents Alliance (CRA). By progressive we meant men and women who would put the interests of the citizens of our city over the interests of developers and the Chamber of Commerce. For more information about the forum itself or about the efforts the CRA is making to protect our city and to advocate for those with too little political clout or who can’t advocate for themselves go to CambridgeResidentsAlliance.org.
Was It A War Against Cancer Or A War Against The Truth?
This is a tale about the War on Cancer.
It’s also a story of two people that spans 40 years and half the planet. One of the two became a pawn of forces trying to bury scientific truth, the other found herself pitted against those forces with her very life at stake.
And both answered a challenge that would test the limits of their courage and personal strength.
A new documentary, “Second Opinion: Laetrile At Sloan-Kettering,” tells the story of Ralph W. Moss, a young science writer hired by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in the early 1970s to publicize the center’s work, especially its ongoing contribution to the War on Cancer.
One of Moss’ first assignments was to write a profile on Dr. Kanematsu Sugiura, a research scientist at Sloan-Kettering for over 60 years and one of its leading lights. Interestingly enough, Sugiura was also an original co-inventor of chemotherapy. Sugiura had been tasked by Sloan-Kettering with testing an unconventional therapy called “Laetrile” in an effort to dispel the public’s rising interest in this allegedly “quack” therapy. Far from disproving Laetrile’s effectiveness, Sugiura’s extensive testing showed unexpectedly positive results in laboratory mice*, even when compared against chemotherapy.
Reporting back to his superiors at Sloan-Kettering, Moss was shocked and disturbed to find them almost unanimously determined to deny and stonewall the results of Sugiura’s lab experiments. One can only guess at their reasons for disowning the work of one of their most prestigious research-scientists, but between the FDA and the big pharmaceutical companies, Sloan-Kettering was under tremendous pressure to refute or obscure Sugiura’s findings.
This, of course, was Ralph W. Moss’ moment of truth. As a family man, the father of two young children, Moss couldn’t blithely walk away from a well-paying job that might easily prove to be the keystone of his entire career. 
Fifteen years later…on the other side of the world, a young woman named Prudence Sinclair would be facing her own moment of truth. In 1990, Australian doctors diagnosed Prudence with stage 4 cancer—malignant melanoma—and told her she had six months to live.
After several surgeries, Prudence made a courageous decision to listen to her inner voice rather than the dictates of conventional medicine. With a death sentence hanging over her head she dove headlong into researching so-called “alternative therapies” rather than allow her body to be injected with chemotherapy’s toxic chemicals.
Australia, following the lead of America, had banned the use of Laetrile. So when Prudence’s research started to focus on Laetrile as a most likely way to arrest her cancer, she was forced to fly to Mexico where she received treatments with Laetrile, as well as other supplements that would boost her immune system.
As she told me in a letter, “I was a frightened young woman in my early 20’s who, against the wishes of my husband, family and doctors, flew halfway around the world to save my life.”
Back in Australia she had been warned by two oncologists that Laetrile treatments were not approved by the FDA and were dangerously toxic. In a touch of macabre irony, Prudence points out, “I am here today, and very much alive, while both my oncologists died of cancer.”
“Laetrile is not a magic bullet,” Prudence explains, “But it can stop metastatic cancer and give your body the time it needs to start the healing process.”
After four years of flying back and forth to Mexico, Prudence’s cancer was in remission.
Meanwhile, back in the mid-70’s, Ralph W. Moss was facing a crisis of conscience. Unable to suppress his moral revulsion at Sloan-Kettering’s caving in to external pressures, he repeatedly tried to get his employers to publicize the truth about Sugiura’s findings. Finally, with every attempt rebuffed, he and fellow employees began anonymously leaking Sugiura’s test findings to the American public through an underground organization they named, “Second Opinion.”
There’s no way of knowing whether Ralph W. Moss’ decision to champion the truth about Laetrile—at the cost of his job, his family’s security and incalculable damage to his reputation—was directly responsible for Prudence Sinclair seeking out the laetrile treatments that saved her life.
But there’s no doubt that Prudence and countless others would have never known about Laetrile, or been given the chance to survive their cancer, if people like Ralph W. Moss hadn’t had the courage and conscience to speak out, and to stand up to the crushing power of modern medicine’s profit machine.
Laetrile, as any pharmaceutical executive could tell you, was derived from a natural substance and consequently could not be patented. And thus, more importantly, could not be exorbitantly priced.
As one high level executive at the FDA said back in the 1970’s, “Nobody is going to pay $70,000 for a new cancer drug if they can buy Laetrile for 75 cents.”
In the end, this was a tale about corporate greed, government complicity and human failings laid bare in the War on Cancer.
But also a story about two courageous individuals who refused to become casualties of that war.
And that’s the Truth.
* Sugiura’s findings repeatedly showed Laetrile effective in containing and preventing cancer in laboratory mice. Contrary to popular myth, Laetrile was never proven to cure cancer in lab mice.
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• Ralph W. Moss consults on cancer treatments, both conventional and alternative, through Cancer Decisions.com, The Moss Report, which offers targeted treatment information for different types of cancer, and his monthly Advances in Cancer Treatment newsletter.
• Prudence Sinclair works as an integrative health strategist on Boston’s North Shore. Through her LoveYourMedicine foundation she raises awareness and funds for people to make informed decisions about scientifically-proven cancer methodologies. For more information, go to: www.PrudenceSinclair.com
• “Second Opinion: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering” can be purchased on Amazon.com, and is now showing in selected cities across America.
Dear Paul Steven Stone:
I have been reading with great interest your articles on how to train rocks, and especially enjoyed your insights into the complexities of our inner workings (yes, I am a rock myself). Unfortunately, most of what you say is very silly and far from true. More like supermarket tabloid trash than hard rock reality.
Paul Steven, I don’t believe you could recognize a real rock if you tripped over one in your kitchen.
In any case, the time for sitting back in stoic silence has passed. As a tribal elder, I have been asked to write and clarify a few basic truths about rocks.
And, yes, to offer you a friendly warning.
For millions of years we rocks have lived our lives in quiet harmony with nature and its creatures, with the exception of one particularly troublesome species. I refer, of course, to you humans who can’t seem to live in harmony with anyone or anything except your own hubris and unquenchable appetites.
Many centuries ago, it was decided by the Council of Rock Elders that we rocks would conceal our highly evolved spiritual and intellectual development from your species until such time as you were able to relate to us as equals. Since it will take at least another millennium before human beings can evolve to even the lowest of rock levels, and since you persist in writing about us as if we were semi-conscious, emotionally volatile household pets, the time has come for rocks – humbly represented by myself – to step out of the closet.
To begin with, and forgive me if I appear immodest, but rocks are actually the most consciously and spiritually advanced creatures in the universe. I’m sure even you, Paul Steven, must have heard about The Big Bang; that cosmic explosion some billions of years ago that hurled matter in all directions and created the universe? But did you ever ask yourself what it was that actually exploded on that momentous day?
(With my extra-sensory perception I sense an answer already forming in your mind.)
Yes, Paul Steven, it was a rock! One giant, inconceivably humungous rock. The first inhabitant of our universe and Great Great Granddaddy to the entire worldwide family of present-day rocks.
Interestingly enough, that first colossal rock was originally called “God” until your species took up the term and used it as an excuse for heaping indignities and abuse upon each other. You can be certain rocks never kill each other, or fan the fires of hatred and intolerance, in service to our God. Occasionally, no doubt, someone gets hit in the head by a rock, but that’s usually a function of the natural laws governing moving bodies rather than messianic fervor or religious intolerance.
If I were your God and saw the way everyone behaved in My name, I’d sue you all for defamation of character.
As for all your innuendoes about our being dense and dumb, suffice it to say we rocks are deeply connected to our inner selves, which is why we sometimes appear heavy or immovable or, perhaps even “stuck” to imperceptive mutton heads such as yourself. No matter how we appear, however, the truth is you do not know us. You do not know what gentle, kind spirits we can be, even though time and again we have proven our innate rigidity and toughness. You do not know that we live our lives without envy, greed or acquisitiveness. Or that riches bore us as much as fancy attire or faddish styles.
You also don’t realize that once we were the rulers of this beautiful and fragile planet, but in our humility stepped back to allow others their chance at the wheel.
Paul Steven, I am a rock. Unadorned and unashamed. As we used to say back in the quarry, take me as I am or toss me at a ham.
And another thing . . . you write that rocks are quiet creatures, often silent because we have little or nothing to say. Another patently false assumption based on your species’ inability to hear the high-pitched frequency at which rocks normally speak. Once again, it is your failings that cause you to infer our deficiencies. Were you able to hear rocks speak, you would not believe the high level of our discourse.
From time to time, when we wish to purposely inject elevating rock influences into the human zeitgeist – say through philosophy or literature — we employ human savants, secretly tutored by rocks, as vehicles for our messages.
With whom did you think Plato was actually conducting his dialogues? And the Immortal Bard? The truth is, without the assistance of his Rock Muses, Shakespeare wouldn’t have been able to come up with a rhyme for spoon in the month of June!
But now we are traveling through worrisome times, Paul Steven, both rocks and humans together. Evil energies have been set loose by the collective madness of your pitiful race and if they are not soon put in check they will destroy all that we rocks have striven to create and preserve.
That is why I have been asked to write this letter. As a friendly warning that we rocks will once again resume management of Earth’s planetary affairs if you humans aren’t up to the task.
This is not a threat by some hostile alien force, Paul Steven.
This is a promise from the rocks of the world.
Either clean up your act, or take the next train out of town.
Don’t make us play hardball, Paul Steven.
You could get hit by a rock.
Sincerely yours,
Graystone Of The Back Garden
This was the third in my rock trilogy of essays detailing “How To Train A Rock,” which coincidentally is also the name of my story and essay collection. To read the first essay in the trilogy, go to here; you’ll find the second essay here.. For more information about “How To Train A Rock,” go to Amazon or my web site.