Oct./Nov. 1983 RAIN Page 11 does require some staff assistance from the Resource Center.) The perennial problem for Rain (as well as for other nonprofit organizations) is that grants come and go and don't cover basic overhead costs. The starting point for the Resource Center's present transition is the recognition of the need for a self-sustaining funding base. Going along with that is a recognition that a community project can only survive if it is supported by the community it serves. A big step that we have recently taken is to institute a more formal Rain Umbrella Board of Directors made up of local community leaders. The Board members provide both increased contacts in our own community and some of the long-range vision that is often difficult to muster among harried staffers. One way we hope to generate self-sufficient funding is through paid information services. More and more, people are coming to recognize the value of the many kinds of information the Resource Center is capable of providing, and we are attempting to work out new ways to market what we do best. In 1975, former RAIN magazine editor Lee Johnson wrote an essay entitled "A Future Story I Like." The essay described what the Rain organization might look like in the spring of 1984: an energy/environment center, located next to a neighborhood office, that is attempting to empower local citizens by assisting in such projects as the conversion of older homes to solar heating and the establishment of community cable TV channels, recycling centers, community gardens, and food co-ops. Today the Rain Community Resource Center embodies many of the values and goals of Lee's vision. Hopefully, the end point of our current transition will be a community-based, financially sound Resource Center that can expand its present efforts to build a more just and durable society. With the support of RAIN magazine readers and our local community, we just might make it to that goal not too long after the spring of 1984. □ □ TOUCH AND GO "Touch & Go" has been a RAINfeature, offand on, since 1975. Below are some of the best of the early "Touch & Go" entries. Going Cuckoo in the Salem Meat Locker (Dec. '75) Jack Nicholson was living in Salem, Oregon, getting up before dawn every morning and plodding off to the hospital where "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was being filmed. Tim Cahil, in a Rolling Stone article, describes Salem: "Winter in Salem, Oregon, can add several hundred pounds of bad psychic baggage to the soul of a Southern Californian like Jack Nicholson. There is a constant chill fog, and the sun, at high noon, could possibly be that faint glimmer behind the brightest cloud bank. It is like living inside an Edgar Allan Poe poem, minus 20 degrees centigrade.. .. Have I yet suggested that the effect of a winter's day in Salem can best be experienced by wrapping oneself in 30 pounds of wet blankets and standing inside a meat locker for 24 hours?" Fourteen-Ton Birdbath (Feb. /Mar. '76) Rubella is an evolving castle compound in the San Gabriel Valley (California) that has a windmill irrigating a small vegetable garden and running an old washing machine. Another machine, a 14-ton, single-cycle gas engine, operates a birdbath. A similar four-ton engine turns a barbecue. You enter the compound through a 4,500-pound gate topped off with menacing metal letters that spell "Rubella." Inside, a road of railroad ties leads under a water tower that holds a 2,000-gallon storage tank. To the right is a garage containing a fleet of 18 old cars, trucks, and tractors that Rubel (Lord of Rubella) says will be ready for a local bicentennial parade. Motor Cola (Oct. '75) Captain Jack is building a spacecraft in the hills of southwest Portland, Oregon, and calling it his home. "I was born on Saturn," says Jack, "but our family got kicked off the planet because my dad was fired from his job. We went off to Mars, but it was horrible there, so bushy and no social life. One night I was out with my chick and we ran out of gas. The gravitational pull brought me down to earth, and ever since I've been trying to figure out how to get back." Instead of food. Captain Jack says, he drinks what he calls "motor cola," and needs only one bottle of this a day to sustain himself. Famous Last Words (Dec. '75) "Stand away, fellow, from my diagram"—Archimedes "Moose, Indian"—Henry David Thoreau
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