Oct./Nov. 1983 RAIN Page 5 The name of the newsletter, Steve noted laconically, would be RAIN. No further explanation of that choice was required in a communication between two lifelong Oregonians. THE MAGAZINE FROM ECOTOPIA: A Look Back at the First RAIN Decade by John Ferrell RAIN is a mythological publication in that it distributes only a few thousand copies per issue, yet it is quoted and used as a basis ofinformation ■■ - by many professional architects, builders, ecologists, government energy planners, and so forth. Its reputation exceeds its circulation much in the same way that I. F. Stone's Weekly did in the early years of its existence.... The people who edit and publish the magazine also have reputations in the Northwest and the nation: they are young economists, architects, cartographers, consultants to state ‘ government in Oregon and California, magazine editors, teachers. Their large, wood-frame house on N.W. Irving Street in Portland is like some kind of massive New Age braintrust data bank. One approaches it with respect. The "mythological publication" that journalist Ray Mungo described in the November 1976 issue of New Age magazine was just launching into its third year, fueled (in Mungo's words) "by avocado salads and organic peanut butter on whole wheat bread." That someone like Mungo was already according RAIN mythological status was gratifying to the founding Rainmakers, but also a bit bewildering. They had begun with much more modest goals. In the summer of 1974, Steve Johnson, a Portland- based freelance writer, sent a note to Bob Benson, a well-known local historian and mapmaker. The two friends had recently co-edited the Chinook Centrex, a kind of Pacific Northwest people's yellow pages. Now Steve was seeking Bob's ideas for a new project he was undertaking at Portland State University's Environmental Education Center. "I'm working here, funded to find ways to increase communication among environmentalists," Steve
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