Page 2 RAIN November 1980 LETTERS You've been terrific . .. both your donations and your encouragement have been much needed and appreciated. We're still needful, however, and some distance from regaining solvency. The crunch is very real and very immediate. We may need to skip an issue or two. We are also considering some form of advertising to give us the steadier base most magazines rely on. In the meantime, yes, we're desperate, not just slightly pinched. We could really use your help. -RAIN Dear Dew, Good to see you again, especially after this dry summer. Sorry to hear of your financial woes. Enclosed you will find my renewal check and if you can send a bundle of flyers I'll see to it that our solar van, NE Coastal Power Show, distributes them (we are in dire need of free lit on alternates and nukes, if you have any suggestions). Now for the back-talk. I wish the letters were back at the back or the middle. I want to hear from you, not from the readers, at least first. It is also so ORDINARY. About Steve Baer: I admire the man very much and he has been very generous to me in a previous incarnation but it is plain to see from his writings and pronouncements that he has an authoritarian bent. If you talk to people who have worked with him they will confirm this. Recently, Solar Lobby printed an enthusiastic article about Mr. Baer in which he complained about OSHA interfering with his small business. It was your regular "Republican" rap. Byron Kennard's little tap-dance on rhetoric was a little too arch for my tastes. I never called myself or anyone doing what we are supposedly doing appro tech. I thought it to be a bogus term from the start. I don't think we have to have a name for it. Some things are better left unsaid. I can see appro tech for defense though and have been seriously thinking on it at the edge of my mind since I heard Tom Eastler talk about the depletion of essential elements to the Maine Organic Gardeners and Farmers conference in '76. He was in the Air Force, involved with Civil Defense and a geologist at Univ. Maine, Farmington. I think farmers markets and community gardens and food forests and solar collectors are not only renewable energy devices but also civil defense measures. I think defense means not only against war, nuclear or otherwise, but also against the eruption of volcanoes and earthquakes and tidal waves and epidemics and hurricanes. An integrated food, energy and transportation system will go a long way to making our cities and towns defensible against all of these things. It will give us greater " selfreliance" and bring us into Biblical compliance with the need to store the harvests of the good years in preparation for the bad. In this time of war and the rumors thereof it would behoove us to point out these cooperative and communal forms of taking the power back to ourselves, of bringing the circle closer, of making the supply lines shorter. Imagine the VFW planting trees or doing workshops on energy conservation as part of civil defense. For those interested in monitoring the military I would suggest The Defense Monitor from Center for Defense Information, 122 Maryland Ave. N.E., Washington, DC 20002. One other thing about the military: military spending if done carefully can have positive repercussions on the civilian sector. Does anyone remember the two government reports of three years ago that sa.id a half~ billion spent by the military now on photovoltaics for remote generators presently using diesel fuel would mean 50¢/watt solar electricity by '84? I am sure that there are a lot of possible positive interlocks like this. We shouldn't be afraid to look for them even if we are extreme pacifists. On permanence I would like to point out that again we should be looking for interlocks and concatenations. If New England's second growth pine forests were gradually replaced with deciduous hardwoods we would expand strearnflow rates by up to 50% because hardwoods transpire moisture much less than evergreens. If we are also planting carefully we could probably be channeling the wind away from our towns and thus reducing our heat loss due to wind chill while we direct those same winds towards our RAIN windmills. To say nothing about the impact on wildlife and flora. If we aim towards permanence we must aim for an almost impossible complexity. But still I don't even see these kinds of second order possibilities taken into account. Recently, I had a bumpersticker made up that says, "Expand the Biosphere." As far as I am concerned that says it all. I do little or no barter but a hell of a lot of cooperatives and farmers markets and gardening. My vocation used to be solar organizer/carpenter; now it is only carpenter. I registered as a Republican to vote for (hah) Anderson in my state primary. I probably heard about RAIN through CoEvo Quart or such. I've lived here for 3 years now and about 8 years in.Mass (en rnasse). Glad to see you guys are still ecumenical in your views and ideas even though being progressively invaded by the Amherst mafia. Hope you don't give up on the city as New Roots always seems to have. Love, George Mokray Carnbridge, MA Dear Rainpeople, Just a note to thank you for your superior reviews of our books in the Aug./Sept. RAIN, and to cast my personal vote in favor of what you seem to be doing. I don't know what to think about RAIN's financial problems, for our experience here runs dead against the conventional wisdom in your Raindrops editorial. We bust our heads to put out the best magazine we can, spend the spare money editorially rather than on marketing ploys, and charge the readers what it turns out to cost-no deals, no discounts. We'd have the same size editorial hole without any ads because it's all subscriber based, and believe it or not, we're prosperous. The difference is probably in the scale of it all (now near 200,000 circulation) although the economics worked fine at 40,000. Best, John Kelsey, Editor Fine Woodworking Newtown, CT Our economics would probably work fine at 40,000 too-but that's a long way from here! -Rainmakers Journal of Appropriate Technology RAIN is a national information access journal making connections for people seeking more simple and satisfying lifestyles, working to make their communities and regions economically self-reliant, building a society that is durable, just and ecologically sound. RAIN STAFF: Laura Stuchinsky, Mark Roseland, Carlotta Collette,John Ferrell, Kevin Bell. Linnea Gilson, Graphics and Layout. RAIN, Journal of Appropriate Technology, is published 10 times yearly by the Rain Umbrella, Inc., a non-profit corporation located at 2270 N.W. Irving, Portland, Oregpn 97210, telephone 503/227-5110. Copyright© 1980 Rain Umbrella, Inc. No part may be reprinted without written permission. Typesetting: Irish Setter Printing: Times Litho Cover Photograph: Ancil Nance
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