Environmental Regeneration = Natural Medicine (Living the Code: Return to the Ecological Garden)

This presentation will focus on the Code: Return to the Ecological Garden, I have coined as the optimal catalytic course of action for the regeneration of human beings - families - communities - societies - planet earth; and the building of the new civilization of Ecological Communities.

A peaceful revolution to manifest the new civilization of Ecological Communities begins within each person, as we learn to identify the principles that operate in nature and apply them to our everyday life. The ancient Chinese ideogram: Food is Medicine constitutes the root(s) upon which we can develop natural health methods to regenerate ourselves and the environment in which we live. Let us identify and cultivate the fundamental daily practices to transform ourselves and our communities to optimal levels of health.

PRESENTER: Michael Clarjen-Arconada

Dr. Clarjen-Arconada came to the U.S. with a Fulbright Scholarship to research fundamental etiological factors of illness and optimal regeneration sequences. A published author, he has over thirty years of experience working on fundamental issues of Natural Biological Medicine: Self-Regeneration processes and Self-Regulation Methodologies. He has taught at Long Island University (Friends World Program) and has led workshops and seminars throughout Europe and the U.S. Recognizing the profound link between illness, toxicity and environmental degradation, he has developed global programs seeking environmental regeneration and universal healthcare. He has forged the code: Return to the Garden, as the main catalytic instrument for the regeneration of the Human Being and Society, and their transformation toward genuine Optimal Sustainable Development. More recently, Dr. Clarjen-Arconada was appointed part of an International Committee for the Development of Ecological Communities under the auspices of The European Union. 

Cultivating An Ecological Conscience (Or, A Strong Song Tows Us)

My life’s work has been involved with renewal—of soils, and of words, with an ear open to the undiscovered country to be found within each. On a level deeper than my understanding I have been led to learn the trade of seedsman, and following that, to discover the art of cultivation. Farming/ poetry, traditional/post-modern, individual/collective? I have only questions: “Not for victories I sing/ but for the breeze, the largesse of Spring…”

I am led to look back and then forward to the conceptual intelligence expressed by Aldo Leopold: “A thing is right when it tends to support the integrity, the stability, and the beauty of the biota. It is wrong when it tends otherwise…” (…in my memory). 

PRESENTER: Scott Chaskey

Scott Chaskey is a farmer, poet and an educator.   He has worked as poet-in-residence in numerous schools and museums, in the U.S. and in England, and for over twenty years he has taught poetry to children of all ages.  Employed by the Peconic Land Trust as a steward of land, he has farmed garlic, potatoes, greens (and sixty other crops) for over twenty years at Quail Hill Farm, one of the original Community Supported Agriculture farms in the country.  He is a founding Board member of the Center for Whole Communities (Vt.) and of Sylvester Manor Educational Farm (NY), and is past president of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York.  In 2004 he edited “Free Concert,” the final book of poems by his teacher, Milton Kessler, published by the Etruscan Press.  In 2005 his most recent book “This Common Ground, Seasons on an Organic Farm” was published by Viking/Penguin.   He lives in Sag Harbor, NY, with his wife Megan, and their three children.

Inside Scientology

After 8 years as NY Regional Public Relations Director for the international Church of Scientology, Ron Haugen realized that some of the organizations programming practices were abusive & dangerous. He knew he had to leave...but it would take several years before he could safely "escape" without repercussions. Now, for the first time in 26 years, he will reveal some of the hidden workings of one of the world's best-financed self-improvement/mind-control organizations. What attracted him? What changed? How did he extricate himself?  

PRESENTER: Ron Haugen

Ron has devoted most of his adult life to the pursuit of wisdom and to understanding the underlying nature of reality. Never satisfied with dogma or the current scientific consensus, his personal journey has led circuitously through many adventures and learning opportunities. Willing to endure the struggles inherent in truly thinking "outside the box," Ron has developed a deep appreciation for the gift of insight. He believes we all have a unique light that we are to share with the world. His deepest aspiration is to help others find and follow their hearts' desire. 

Clairvoyance is Our Greatest Resource

Our ability to see beyond the material world—our clairvoyance—is our greatest asset for healing and change.  What does it mean to see?  How do we tap into this great capacity that we each possess?  Join Tori Quisling, M.Ed and Clairvoyant Practitioner, for an evening of discussion, meditation and clairvoyant readings.

Tori will guide us through a meditation allowing us to:

• Release negative energy
• open ourselves up to our own seeing abilities
• Call back our own creative life force energy
• Find amusement and neutrality in our life
• Get energized and relaxed at the same time

PRESENTER: Tori Quisling

Trained at the Berkeley Psychic Institute, Tori Quisling has over 20 years experience as a clairvoyant and teacher in New Orleans and New York.  Tori has been a featured expert for the NY Daily News, the Huffington Post, and the Long Island Society for Paranormal Research, and she spoke on clairvoyance in 2010 at the UN to the Society for Enlightenment and Transformation (S.E.A.T.). 

Masks of Africa

Masking is a complex, mysterious and profound tradition in which participants transcend the physical world and enter the spiritual realm.  In her vibrant images, Galembo exposes an ornate code of political, artistic, theatrical, social, and religious symbolism and commentary. In these arresting portraits, Galembo investigate the dualities in masquerade: man/god, good/evil, power/oppression, past/future.  Okeke-Ogulu discusses masking in Galembo’s photographs as a political function rooted in a deep distrust of the post-colonial state combined with memory tokens of African subcultures on the fringe.

“Galembo’s images are both portraits and documents, but their combination of dignity, conviction and formal power - especially their vibrant colors and often extraordinary altars - gives them a votive aspect similar to European paintings of saints or kings.”                                  - Roberta Smith, New York Times

“Africa is a world of blazing signs and Phyllis Galembo knows how to capture all of them in personal technicolor. When images are dark and deliberately morally intimidating, as in an upper Cross River skinhead janus headdress, she knows how to accentuate with appropriate economy. When two men roar with coded signs of the leopard spirit, every color, every ideograph, whams into her camera. You could write a book about the world of Phyllis Galembo, a woman who knows how to pack respect, vision, and, above all, beauty in her lens. I am proud to observe her fearless peregrinations across the face of Mother Africa.”                 - Robert Farris Thompson, Col. John Trumbull Professor, History of Art, Yale University

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“[Her] photographer’s instinct…unites history, experience, formal apprehension, cultural knowledge, a grasp of metaphor and, beyond all of that, a conviction about what defines human beings.”                                                                                                                                  - Lyle Rexer, Photograph Magazine

Galembo has exhibited extensively in museum exhibitions.  Most recently Call and Response, was Galembo’s collaboration with Nick Cave at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in conjunction with Spoleto Festival USA. Galembo’s exhibition West African Masquerade was at the Tang Museum in 2007 and the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in 2008. Many of her prints were included in Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou at the American Museum of Natural History in 1998-99.  Her exhibition Manifestations of the Spirit was at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in 2001-2.  Only recently have art and photography curators begun to champion her work.  

Galembo is also the author of Divine Inspiration from Benin to Bahia, Vodou: Visions and Voices of Haiti, and Dressed for Thrills: 100 Years of Halloween and Masquerade Costumes.  Her work is included in numerous public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and New York Public Library. Phyllis Galembo was born in New York and lives in New York City.  

PRESENTER: Phyllis Galembo

Phyllis Galembo was born in New York and lives in New York City.  She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1977 and has been a` professor in the Fine Arts Department of SUNY Albany since 1978. Solo exhibitions include the Steven Kasher Gallery in New York City, The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., F.I.T. Museum in New York City, and the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, the Tang Museum at Skidmore College and the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY. She is one of four photographers featured in the exhibition Interplay curated by Dan Cameron at the New Orleans Center for Contemporary Art running through October 24, 2010 and her African Masquerade series was exhibited in Call and Response: Africa to America: The Art of Nick Cave and Phyllis Galembo at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, South Carolina in 2010. 

A new monograph MASKE (London, Chris Boot Ltd. 2010) was published in the fall of 2010. Galembo is also the author of Divine Inspiration from Benin to Bahia, Vodou: Visions and Voices of Haiti, and Dressed for Thrills: 100 Years of Halloween and Masquerade Costumes.  Her work is included in numerous public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, and the Polaroid Corporation.  Galembo has appeared on CNN, NPR Radio and NBC Today in New York City.

Tai Chi, Green Building and The Grateful Dead: A Sustainable Golden Braid

We live in an extraordinary moment in the history of humankind.  Just as the destructive forces of the human animal are peeking, with such intensity as to have literally altered Global Climate Systems, there is a rapidly growing movement of awakened and very concerned, very smart people who are bucking the trend, including green business professionals who are beginning to compete and win in the marketplace.   If "the business of America is business" then it is only through the greening of business that we have a fighting chance at moving towards real Sustainability.  

As someone who has worked for 13 years at trying to start and grow a green building firm in NYC and beyond, I have boiled down my green business strategy into three Principles:  Integration; Synergy; and Collaboration.  At my greatest moments when I am performing at my best and helping to bring love, compassion and positive change to this beautiful Earth and to this Divine Animal we call Humankind, I am able to weave these three Principles into my own small thread (and make money as well.)  And it is with this thread that I hope to make a contribution towards the Sustainable Golden Braid that we will have to weave if we are to continue living on this planet for much longer.

Coincidentally, three of the greatest loves of my life, Tai Chi, Green Building and The Grateful Dead all embody elements of Integration, Synergy and Collaboration.  It is through doing Tai Chi, practicing green building and playing Grateful Dead Music, that I weave my thread. And it will be so inspiring to hear how others are doing their weaving and how we can assist one another in this most important personal and collective mission of Sustainable Living, referred to here as The Golden Braid.   As it is written in the Dead Song, Terrapin Station:

"I can't figure out
if it's the end or beginning, 
but the Train's put its breaks on
and the whistle is screaming."

PRESENTER: Robert Politzer

In the Summer of 1979, Madison Wisconsin was completely overtaken by Grateful Dead "Deadheads" with the Dead playing out of every Hippie household.  That summer, I started to understand the profound depths of Jerry Garcia's music.  I also learned first hand that there really was nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.
 
That same summer in Kibbutz Regavim, I was introduced to Taiji Quan by John Lash, a red-haired, Jewish convert, ex-marine from East Texas.  Four years later, I traveled to Taiwan where Master Wang Yen Nien introduced me to the Yang Family Hidden Tradition of Taiji Quan.  I have been practicing this style ever since and for the last 15 years have been teaching this Taiji in New York City.

After teaching Bilingual Chinese Biology at Seward Park High School and then working as an Environmental Engineer and as an adjunct professor at NYU, I began a green construction company called GreenStreet.  GreenStreet Inc. has grown from a small environmental testing and abatement company to a leading green building firm, operating primarily in the tri-state region. I am a LEED accredited professional and was the Chair of the Sustainable Business Task Force of the New York State Environmental Business Association.
 
Tai Chi, Green Building, and The Grateful Dead are intimately liked within my body, mind, and heart and if nothing else, this is my story.

All Lines Lead to Sustainability

Every single human rights injustice being perpetrated today can be directly traced to the problem of sustainability. Our entire globalized ecology of production and consumption is, at its core, unsustainable across factors such as health, society, and the environment. This is an overwhelmingly complex and dynamic problem; the amelioration of which will require the participation of individuals in their personal and professional capacities, working across all sectors of life and the economy, throughout the world. 

Organizations, communities and corporations of all creeds and political leanings are beginning to incorporate sustainability initiatives into their plans and practices. This is an encouraging gesture, even if minuscule in the shadow of the problem. What, though, does sustainability mean? And, how are we –or how can we– teach sustainability as both an ethos and a mode of practice in our everyday lives?

PRESENTERS: Denise Ofelia Mangen

DENISE OFELIA MANGEN is a Gates Millennium Scholar, a Steinhardt Fellow, and a doctoral candidate in Educational Communication + Technology at New York University. Her research interests include catalysts for positive social action, sustainability, consumer attitude + behavior change, and the use of information + communication technologies in crisis response. Ofelia has held various positions on projects for organizations such as MediaStorm, TEDxEast, National Geographic, the International Center of Photography, The Raw File, Against All Odds Productions, Backlight Media Group, the Moth, and the UNICEF Innovation Team. She earned a MA in Media Ecology from New York University in 2007 and a BS in Visual Communication from Ohio University in 2004.

Psychic Spies: The Pentagon’s Secret Remote Viewing

From the mid-1970's until 1995,  an elite group of military officers participated in a top-secret program called "Stargate."  They were trained in the art and science of projecting the mind to a remote location in order to pick up specific information that was used for espionage and for locating Americans who had been captured.  This controversial program was spoofed in the movie "The Men Who Stare at Goats,"  but the characters in the film are based on real psychic spies.  In her best-selling book"Sixth Sense: Unlocking Your Ultimate Mind Power" and on her internet radio shows, Dr. Laurie Nadel interviewed some of the top veterans of the Stargate program and will share what they have told her.  You will go home with a handout listing the best remote viewing resources and training programs. 

PRESENTER: Laurie Nadel

Dr. Laurie Nadel is the best-selling author of "Sixth Sense: Unlocking Your Ultimate Mind Power" (ASJA Press, 2007) which contains interviews with scientists who ran the Pentagon's top-secret remote viewing program.  She has appeared on "Oprah" and"Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell and George Noory."  Dr. Laurie studied remote viewing with Dale Graff, one of the leaders of the Pentagon's secret program and with indigenous healers who practice an ancient form of remote viewing called "psychonavigation." 

Peaceful Revolution in the Global Village

The present events in North Africa and the Middle East may prove to be more revolutionary than even the fall of the Soviet Union and its satellites, for nearly every 21st century meta-variable intersects here, powerfully and unambiguously.   For the Westerner, it has already suggested that we change our perceptions of the region, from viewing these as exotic lands supposedly fomenting large youth movements of Islamic fundamentalism and violence to realizing that they are principally the home of educated, savvy, peaceful (and young) members of our human family. However, this is but the tip of the iceberg.  A short-list of the variables we will consider in this evening’s discussion include:  

• The evolution of global and individual awareness (psycho-spiritual, communal, political and environmental).
• The transcendence of political & ideological dualities (left-right; material-spiritual; local-global, etc.)
• The hope found in tipping point moments (e.g. in Tunisia it was the self-immolation of the vegetable vendor Mohammed Bouazizi, and in Egypt the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook page.)
• The role of communication technology and social media in the evolution of consciousness.
• The historical record concerning large-scale change (e.g., internal and peaceful solutions versus invasion and violence).
• The so far unheard call for economic democracy.
• A reflection of our own “democracy” at home, hopefully inspiring us to channel and frame a meaningful discussion so as to apply decisive action for change in an optimal direction (here in our local communities, expanding to the rest of the interconnected Gaian family.)
• The historical record (in the U.S.) of legislative success from mass demonstrations and the ensuing erosion of these victories.
• The role of the military in society.
• The role of American imperialism, financial capitalism and hyper-consumerism juiced by (foreign) fossil fuels.
• The inequity of wealth, an issue with increasing resonance in the U.S.
• And finally and perhaps most significantly, the realization that even this “revolution” is about freedom, jobs and modernism at the very moment that these and their relation to the biosphere are severely in question.

PRESENTERS: Carleton Schade, Debra McCall & Michael T. Clarjen-Arconada

Carleton’s interests include cosmology, consciousness, earth systems, meditation and literature.  He is currently involved in a futuristic project entitled Dieback: the Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse.  He found passion in traveling, politics and writing fiction; comfort, fulfillment and love as a householder and teacher; and peace through meditation and yoga.

Debra McCall is Associate Director for Research, Curriculum and Professional Development at the Ross Institute Academy East Hampton, NY. She has served on the graduate faculties of New York University, Adelphi University, Art Therapy Italiana, and Pratt Institute where she was Mellon Lecturer.  An Advanced Design Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, she has also been awarded National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities and NYS Council on the Arts fellowships in choreography, dance film, and historical research.

Dr. Clarjen-Arconada came to the U.S. with a Fulbright Scholarship to research fundamental etiological factors of illness and optimal regeneration sequences. A published author, he has over thirty years of experience working on fundamental issues of Natural Biological Medicine: Self-Regeneration processes and Self-Regulation Methodologies.. He has taught at Long Island University (Friends World Program) and has led workshops and seminars throughout Europe and the U.S. Recognizing the profound link between illness, toxicity an environmental degradation, he has developed global programs seeking environmental regeneration and universal healthcare. He has forged the code: Return to the Garden, as the main catalytic instrument for the regeneration of the Human Being and Society, and their transformation toward genuine Optimal Sustainable Development. More recently, Dr. Clarjen-Arconada was appointed part of an International Committee for the Development of Ecological Communities under the auspices of The European Union. 

What Do You Fear Most About Dying?

For many of us the answer is pain, but research shows that 90% of all pain is treatable. However, four-fifths of all people in pain at the end of their lives do not have access to pain medication. In the 1960’s Cicely Saunders, founder of the first modern hospice, coined the term “total pain” to describe what she witnessed in her patients—not just a medical event, but a multi-faceted human experience affecting the spirit. There is a crisis of suffering worldwide that must be addressed. My work as a hospice and palliative care nurse is to ensure my patients die in comfort and dignity—but what if I had nothing to offer them to alleviate their pain? 

As Third World populations continue to grow in size and poverty, so will the burden of illness and painful deaths.  Yet the solution is simple, inexpensive and readily available.  So, how can we stand by when so many of our human family die in agony? How is it that we can we readily accept this degree of disconnect with one another? 

Please join us in a screening of the film LIFE Before Death. This multi-award winning documentary explores the issue of untreated pain and the need for improved access to palliative care globally. Filmed in 11 countries, LIFE Before Death exposes the suffering going on in the world today as told through the stories of experts in the field and the patients in their care.

PRESENTER: Diane Schade

Diane Schade’s path to being a certified hospice and palliative care nurse has been a winding one. She studied Art History at NYU, catalogued prints at Sotheby Parke Bernet, owned Dede’s Dog-O-Rama in Greenwich Village, traveled for a year through Asia, lived in Madrid, and then moved to Brooklyn to have her child at home and to settle into being a mom. Yoga, meditation and service brought her back to nursing school, where Hospice care became her passion. After developing a palliative care center at Southampton Hospital, she has begun a Nurse Practitioner degree at George Washington University.  She lives in Sag Harbor with her husband, daughter (Ali-14) and dog, Candy.

The Stories of our Lives: What do they teach us & where do they take us?

Wafa Hallam’s newly released memoir The Road from Morocco is the true story of a feisty thirteen year old Arab girl wed against her will to a much older man in French-occupied Morocco and of her daughter’s rise as a Merrill Lynch financial advisor years later.  It culminates in the harrowing realization that the fabled American Dream had become the harbinger of their downfall. 

“As a young woman, my mother’s struggle to win a divorce in a country and time where only men had that privilege and the single-minded pursuit of her independence in a Morocco divided between French Western and Arab traditional cultures paved the way for her children to leave for America and for me, her oldest daughter, to thrive in that bastion of American male dominance, Wall Street.  But the land of freedom and opportunity did not shield us from a tragic destiny. A violent marriage, mental illness, the 9/11 terrorist attack, the Iraq war and economic turmoil, successive stock market crashes, and devastating infirmity all conspired to bring about my mother’s demise, my emotional breakdown and the end of my career.   Then, through the redemptive power of a newfound spirituality my life was transformed.”

The introductory presentation of the memoir is meant to encourage discussions around its various themes, including but not exclusive to:

Girls' under-age marriage in Morocco

The changing status of Muslim women from independence to post-Islamist resurgence.

What does it mean to be a Muslim Arab-American woman in post 9/11-Iraq War America.

Abusive marriages and co-dependency syndrome.

Mental illness and how it affects families.

The potentially destructive nature of symbiotic mother-daughter relationships.

The way to awareness and the redemptive power of spirituality.

PRESENTER: Wafa Hallam

Born and raised in Morocco, Wafa F. Hallam lived in Europe and traveled to over thirty-five countries before she moved to the U.S. in 1980 to  attend college. A graduate of the University of Florida, she was awarded a series of fellowships to attend New York University where she earned a Master’s Degree in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies. Wafa currently lives in Sag Harbor, NY.

Off the Grid, On the Map

Peak oil, population growth, famine, disease, pollution, degradation of arable land, biodiversity loss, climate change... An overwhelmingly bleak stream of environmental catastrophes are forecast to plague the Earth and all those who inhabit in my lifetime. And I, like many others in my generation, am well aware of the responsibility handed to me to cope with the inevitable collapse of a socio-economic system based on perpetual growth.

As if being in high school isn’t difficult enough.

But I’m not complaining. Palliative phrases like “we are all just captives of the system” and “que sera, sera” have always driven me crazy; we create the “system,” so we’re no one’s captives but our own!  In the summer of 2009, I embarked on a month-long Thoreauvian journey to retool my lifestyle and explore “sustainability” from a practical angle. To live simply, provide my own sustenance, drench myself in nature and apprehend the bare essentials for living amidst a culture marked by extravagance and excess. My question: “How can I transcend my own cultural barriers? And how can I do it in a way that doesn’t alienate my friends and family?” 

I see this project as a rigorous microcosm of the approach that the developed world may take as environmental issues and natural resource depletion necessitate a collective move towards sustainable evolution.

PRESENTER: Sylvia Channing

Sylvia Channing is a dedicated environmentalist, artist and student. She has a deep interest in ecology and anthropology, in the many meanings of "environment," location-specific education, and sustainable agriculture. At the Ross School, Sylvia traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East, tracing the evolution of Western cultural history. Firsthand exposure to foreign cultures can be the most powerful education, while traveling itself can often conflict with an environmental ethos. Though home for the month of January working on the Ross School campus garden, Sylvia is currently a student at Oberlin College in Ohio, focusing primarily on environmental studies, visual arts and theater.