Page 2 RAIN February/March 1981 & £ETTERS Dear RAIN: I've always valued Karl Hess as a utopian with one foot on the solid ground of reality. But my high esteem has been tarnished by his curious statement in the November RAIN that "You have to go to your local hippie to get anything done well. Who would· trust a short-haired auto mechanic?" Well, I do. My young, short-haired auto mechanic is a local product and he is an absolute jewel: personable, extremely bright, and completely trustworthy. Relatively cheap, too, compared to auto repairmen in nearby Syracuse. As for my hippie friends who used to work on my cars, one is now servicing Xerox machines, while another moved out to Idaho to enter the rent-a-tool business. I wonder about the experiences of other RAIN subscribers: are the hippie newcomers really more competent than the local old-timers? Sincerely, Michael Marien LaFayette, New York Dear RAINfolk, Thanks for the Dec. '80 RAIN, received this week. I was particularly interested in the piece about the University of Maine's woodstoves, which we had already read about in ASE. I've two comments on your piece: first, no prices were given; such a highly developed piece of engineering doesn't come cheap, I assume; second, it would help if you would adopt Soft Energy Notes' practice of using, or at least giving, the SI equivalents of "Imperial" (i.e. North American) physical units. Outside N. America and the British Empire, no one has even heard of a BTU; and in this country, after 15 years of metrication, the same goes for the youngest 25 percent; the next 25 percent, up to say my age, have forgotten what a BTU is, and the oldest 25 percent are past caring. No doubt every school student should know that a BTU is about the same as a Kilojoule, and that 100,000 BTU/hour is 29.4 kW, but they don't. Don't be fooled by the obscurantist twaddle you read in Co Evolution Quarterly; the world is nearly all metric, and so should you be. With best wishes for a solvent '81. Fraternally, Chris Hutton Squire Undercurrents London, England RAIN Writing this month's RAINDROPS is a bit like trying to clean the house after copy deadline ... I'm not sure where to begin. I read an old RAINDROPS that Lane deMoll had written when Steve Johnson was leaving the magazine in 1976. "He's taking a sabbatical," she'd said. Well, it's a few years later and I guess telling you that Steve's back is as good a way as any to start bringing you up to date. Steve and Nancy Cosper (formerly with Cascade magazine and the Cascadian Regional Library-CAREL) and Steve Rudman (formerly with the Grantsmanship Center in Washington, D.C., and the Portland Community Resource Center [PCRC]) have opened the RAIN Community Resource Center, blending PCRC's library on communities, neighborhood self-help and Portland organizations with our RAIN library. We told you a bit about that development back in November. These folks bring •the RAIN collective up to a full-time staff of seven and, I'm delighted to announce, we are all back on salaries! ! That amazing development is due in part to the support you've all given us, and we thank you very, very much (the day that two one hundred dollar bills came in the rnail was a real highlight), and in part from our -,'surrogate parent" the Northwest Area Found;ition (NWAF). When RAIN was first spinning off from Portland State University six years ago, the NWAF was there with the seed money and encouragement necessary. When we returned to them last spring with our "big vision" as we keep calling it, the Foundation and its Director, John Taylor, met our request for funding with a "challenge grant" of $25,000. The catch is that we have to match it. So far we've raised $12,500 of the match and have received half of the NWAF money to begin our new project. 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, Oregon 97210, telephone 503/227-5110. Copyright© 1981 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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