Controlling the garbage collector?

[Bobby D. Bryant]

Is it possible to disable, or at least restrain, guile's garbage
collector?  I'm being eaten alive by this message:

ERROR: In procedure apply:
ERROR: Wrong type argument in position 1: #<freed cell 0x40878878; GC
missed a reference>

My host program loads and evaluates a lambda expression to create a
Scheme function, and stores the resulting SCM in a program variable.
The program invokes the Scheme function once each time GTK+ causes a
certain host program procedure to execute, and that is where the problem
occurs.

Invariably, the SCM variable is corrupt the very first time the host
program's procedure executes.  However, I can catch that by asking guile
whether the variable is a Scheme procedure and then reloading the
definition from the external file if it is not.  Then everything runs
fine... for a while.  How long it runs is random, but never more than a
minute or so.  My best guess is that eventually the garbage collector
eats the Scheme function during the short time period between the check
to ensure that it is indeed a function and the actual application of the
function.

I suspect I am trying to use guile outside the realm it was designed for
(Ada, GTK+), but perhaps there's some trick that will help me out.  Is
there a mechanism for temporarily suspending garbage collection?  Or is
it possible to set up data spaces that are exempt from examination by
the garbage collector?

Thanks,

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas