Center for Symbolic Studies

Global Regeneration Project
A Microphilanthropy Giving Project for Earth Regeneration Projects

The Global Regeneration Project was created to save the environment and education through funding the works and projects of two people who have made creating new solutions to the current global crisis their life’s work. The couple had invested all their personal funds to build and implement the projects until a medical disaster shattered their lives and destroyed their financial base stopping progress on the nearly finished projects before they could come into being—and at a critical time in our history.

For more information and to donate online go to: Microphilanthropy Donations

 

A personal letter from Robin & Stephen Larsen
September 2009

We have known Michael for at least 20 years.  Well loved and appreciated in the Woodstock-Willow-Bearsville community he and his wife Barbara and daughter Melissa have sponsored concerts musicals and plays and human-centered projects that affect not just our local community but the entire culture of our time.  Their work spans helping people who have suffered a “stroke” in their family to global curricula for American children—introducing them to the rest of the world and its wealth of cultures and traditions writing influential books musicals and plays and most recently an intense concern over the ecology and the bees who keep our agricultural bounty flowering on the North American continent.  The Schackers have often attended events at our not-for-profit Center for Symbolic Studies and other events at Stone Mountain Farm and invited us to culturally enriching and (always fun) events.

As we understand it in 2007 Michael shifted attention from his Global Curriculum and his thoroughly researched book 21^st Century Transformation A New Understanding of our Present Past and Future to begin a radical but culturally crucial study culminating in a published book within less than a year (almost unheard of):  A Spring Without Bees. More about the encyclopedic and yet crucially important first book in just a little but the “Bee Book” as it has become affectionately known took priority.  Let us explain why.

Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring the book’s ecological and philosophical predecessor documented how the corporations making DDT a widely-used pesticide in the 1950’s were causing irreversible mini-catastrophes in the ecological chain (the word ecology itself has only become widely understood and referenced in the last decade or two).  Carson’s book stopped the use of DDT and changed the world of our time in a positive direction.  Michael’s fear was that if “colony collapse disorder” were not understood and brought into check there could be widespread and catastrophic changes in American food production:  All fruits and vegetables and even meat and dairy production would be endangered (considering the impact on honeybees as well as leaf-cutter bees and wild bee pollinator species) leaving only the wind-pollinated grains.  Almost all foods pollinated by bees would be annihilated if the bees were dying—and they are in massive numbers!  The question was why?

After decisively researching the enigma Michael came up with an undeniable answer:  Pesticides used not only in agriculture on lawns parks and roadways and already outlawed in five countries in Europe were affecting the bees.   The main suspected cause—one that underlies all the many symptoms of the die-off—involves neonicotinoid chemicals a neurotoxin that harms the nervous system immune system and digestive system of bees in as little as five parts per billion.  Most disturbing is the phenomenon called “Colony Collapse Disorder” or CCD where the bees simply leave the hive and go off to die—seeming to just “disappear.” The neurotoxin disorients the bees’ navigation system and deconstructs their indispensable “waggle dance” the communication ritual that allows the bees to navigate to food sources and home.

Michael’s creative frenzy in getting this book out can only be marveled at by those who have read it see its intricate and scholarly detail and stand agog at the delivery time.  It’s almost impossible to write a book this good and this detailed in eight months.  (I can verify my assertion by the trauma I went through delivering my book The Fundamentalist Mind to the publisher in a similar amount of time.)  A few days after the final proofs were delivered to the publisher Michael began to feel unwell.  His wife Barbara and daughter Melissa twenty-one had already expressed serious concerns about his health watching him growing haggard before their eyes while he continued writing twelve and more hours a day on a project he felt might shift the world to a more positive direction.

Barbara warned by a dream and Melissa by premonitions were able to recognize the catastrophic and life-threatening event— a “major aortic tear”— when it occurred finding themselves in a high-speed race to Kingston Hospital then when the seriousness of the event was recognized a Medivac from Kingston to Albany thus saving Michael’s life.

Nonetheless the event took its toll.  Major aortic dissection or “tears” we are told are seldom survived.  A serious and delicate operation must be done under emergency conditions.  During that high-risk operation as warned Michael hemorrhaged and sustained a massive stroke to the left side of his brain.  His left hemisphere swelled killing almost all the brain tissue and even began to bleed into the right side of the brain. In order to prevent total brain death and insure his survival the doctors removed the skull bone over the left cerebral hemisphere so the brain could balloon outside the skull area and stop the brain cell death.   He survived the operation and its aftermath but now had paralysis in the right side of his body (because of the left-hemispheric stroke) and no spoken language.

On the positive side Michael’s receptive language was more intact and he remains a voracious reader and student of the news and national events. His mood lifted noticeably after the election of President Barack Obama and he follows the unfolding successes and vicissitudes of this administration with avid interest. Michael is now a year and more after the operation that saved his life—but halved his brain—still in the Northeast Center for Special Care one of New York State’s premier head trauma facilities. Barbara and Melissa are there as often as possible each week their own busy schedules working long hours to save their financial base and Michael’s prodigious works notwithstanding grateful merely to have him alive.

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Now we come to the crucial piece: Michael like many of us felt that America was in crisis—and that was the subject of his laboriously researched book: 21st Century Transformation. Michael points out how the powerful and ubiquitous corporations of our modern world are often soulless and destructive agents—while purporting to make our lives better. IMD (Imidacloprid) and other neonicotinoid pesticides are the main suspected cause of CCD and also a factor in other forms of honeybee pollinator and aquatic life die-off are a case in point.

Amazingly the recitation of public (and private) wrongdoings does not stop Michael from an optimistic and life-affirmative tone in 21^st Century Transformation.  His thoroughly researched treatise is hopeful about the future of humanity and the human potential.  Looking at such battles as materialism versus spirituality mechanistic versus holistic approaches in vital professions and industries Michael sees humanity probably very much as we are—errant brilliant ADD oppositional-defiant—and yet withal full of promise.  This is an astounding and important book and one that should and will be published in the coming year.

With his disabled status Michael’s family is likely to become an example of the casualties of our time:  The family had no medical coverage and had dwindled resources as they supported Michael’s time off from wage earning for writing; while Medicaid is limited in its scope of treatment and rehabilitation.

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Coincidentally Barbara has spent her entire adult life helping families with speech and stroke recovery.  She was able to get her father to talk again nine years post stroke—he was diagnosed an “untreatable” global aphasic—by discovering a way to make new pathways for speech in the other side of the brain. She had designed the first talking software for aphasia treatment in the late 1980’s and the first talking Internet software and Whole Speech Practice Kit for aphasia and apraxia founding Pathways Publishing and StrokeFamily.org while serving as (a mostly unpaid) office manager and bookkeeper in Michael’s consulting business as well as creating web sites and computer graphics.

Now she has focused on Michael’s speech recovery as well as building a whole new life under very different conditions. Although he was diagnosed by the Albany Med Center neurological team as incapable of speech recovery she has made huge progress with him using the method she discovered with her father and developed over the years. Michael with his fierce determination and positive attitude is now talking in short sentences sporadically and saying new words and sentences each day. Though there is now hope it is unknown however what the eventual outcome will be. Barbara has been unable to spend the time it took before to run and promote the Stroke Family website and with the recession seniors and disabled have been unable to afford her services and materials. Her income from the web is in the process of slowly reviving; but speech-language pathologists and others who have benefited from Barbara’s innovative work and know her story are urging her to hold on to it and keep it alive. At present many in the professional community and across the country follow Michael’s amazing speech recovery story with interest. One top speech pathologist has even donated his time and expertise to help Barbara enhance Michael’s speech treatment to go beyond the limited and usually inadequate amount of speech therapy paid for by Medicaid and to coach her in the extraordinarily complex kinds of speech disorders Michael has.

Their combined expenses—with increased medical costs while also losing more than 75% of their income after expenses—have destroyed the financial structure of their lives. They now face foreclosure unless the situation can be turned around in time. The Schacker family thus has without intending—they were busy contributing to the culture in other ways thank you—become an example of what can happen to almost anyone in our time. People who have always met their obligations paid their taxes and substantially participated in community well-being are being rendered paupers by the medical system and by the banks stripped of the property they have lovingly cared for and maintained all this time.

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This then is our micro-philanthropy plea: Could you help us help the Schackers and all their deserving endeavors? They are worthy beautiful and highly lovable and contributive people. Our not-for-profit the Center for Symbolic Studies has established a fund to make your contribution to the Schacker’s cause tax deductible. This is because our mission is to support the work of seminal artists “cultural creatives” as well as projects for “Global Regeneration”. Barbara is a talented administrator writer researcher and artist whose work unfortunately is offered to a disabled and handicapped economy. The Schacker family’s worthy projects—helping stroke- surviving families (see: www.strokefamily.org); helping to inform the public of the truth about Colony Collapse Disorder (so that countless Americans don’t starve in the hard times that may be coming (see www.planbeecentral.com) is at this time not enough to keep this family and the projects going. Nearly finished projects like the book 21st century Transformation The Global Curriculum (www.globalcurriculum.com) online courseware and regeneration of the planet (GlobalRegen.net and GlobalRegen.com)—though nearly ready to launch need funding to come to fruition. For more information about these projects please visit the web sites.

Barbara is a person who will make the most of any gift of money. She and Michael need substantial financial help to restructure their financial foundation so they can rebuild their shattered lives save their home support Michael’s full potential for recovery and make sure that all their good works are not lost. But your donation is not just to pay bills and maintain the status quo: Barbara intends to—-in fact she must—create a whole new financial base livelihood and future. At present she is and she will continue to consult with many knowledgeable and professional people about how to go about this task and find resources so that she is not just relying on her own considerable abilities and experience to do this but will work with other community resources and connected people with expertise.

Please join us in this important effort to prevent the contributions of Barbara and Michael Schacker from fading from a world that desperately needs them. If they receive this help the Schackers can go on to be more powerful free and autonomous in negotiating the crippling and traumatic times that are threatening them. Please think of giving freely—and to a significant cause. Look at our growing Global Regeneration Project section under GlobalRegen.net and Special Projects at www.symbolicstudies.org. And remember your contributions are tax-deductible.

Sincerely

Robin Larsen Director
Stephen Larsen President Emeritus
Center for Symbolic Studies Inc.
501(c)(3) institution supported by funds from the general public