Page 6 RAIN Oct./Nov. 1983 wrote. “One of the major undertakings is to do a monthly newsletter being kind of like the Centrex and kind of like Earthwatch [an Oregon environmental magazine] and kind of like my old Scribe [a Portland alternative newspaper] column." The name of the newsletter, Steve noted laconically, would be RAIN. No further explanahon of that name choice was required in a communication between two lifelong Oregonians. The new RAIN newsletter was an outgrowth of a much larger project called Eco-Net that was funded by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare and by the Hill FantLly Foundation (later called Northwest Area Foundation). Administered by Environmental Education Center director Dr. Don Stotler, Eco-Net was meant to serve as a communicahons network for people in the Pacific Northwest involved in a variety of energy and ecological concerns. Besides RAIN, Eco-Net supported a community access video project, an energy information facility, and a community resource center. Although it existed officially for only a few years, Eco- Net proved to be a remarkable seedbed for projects and ideas that continue to shape Pacific Northwest attitudes about energy, ecology, and communication. In September 1974, Steve Johnson and fellow Eco-Net employees Anita Helle and Mary Wells completed the first issue of RAIN and sent it free to a 3000-name mailing list. The 24-page publication was an eclectic catalogue of books, magazines, and organizations falling under such diverse headings as Air, Architecture, Art, Computers, Consciousness, Energy, Games, Land Use, Networks, Recycling, Water, and Whole Systems. In addition to the access sections, there was a news report on Eco-Net activities, a calendar of upcoming events, and a brief article by Bob Benson on "where to get maps." Readers found the following introduchon, written by Steve Johnson, on page two: RAIN is a monthly bulletin board. As stuff comes our way by phone, mail, feet, hands, and mouth, we make entries, abstracts, paragraphs. We emphasize environmentalIeducation related and communications kinds of information; and we are interested in the evolutionary possibilities of interdisciplinary connections. Our geographic emphasis is the Pacific Northwest, though our prejudice will be Oregon, and more specifically Portland. You can correct our bias by your feedback.... Reader response was immediate and dramatic. Letters and requests for the new publication began pouring into RAIN'S office at the Environmental Education Center from around the Northwest and from other parts of the country. Many of the new RAIN fans were active participants in various facets of the emerging appropriate technology movement: solar architecture, wind energy, sustainable agriculture, alternative transportation, and commuruty communicahon networks. These people were hungry for news of each other's projects and for leads to the often-obscure books and magazines being published in their areas of interest. RAIN filled their information gap and filled it well. As Rhoda Epstein, an early reader (and later a RAIN staffer), explained, "[The Rainmakers] were putting out my primary source of information about the things I was working with. I was living in a city [Washington, D.C.] where information is the biggest local industry and the newest information I got was from RAIN magazine." Soon after the first issue was mailed out, another Eco- Net employee joined RAIN'S small staff. Lee Johnson had been building windmills, solar systems, and alternative housing for several years, and he shared Steve's passion for information. The two Johnsons (no relation) decided to combine their massive collections of file cards, news clippings, organizational brochures, and networking miscellanea in the RAIN office. As they went about their pleasant work, they discovered another reason why, for information junkies, working with a magazine can seem like a perpetual Christmas morning: the RAIN mailbox began to fill with hefty packages sent by various publishers. Free review books! It was the beginning of the present-day 4,500-volume Rain Community Resource Center library collection. As RAIN'S press run continued to grow rapidly through late 1974 and early 1975, so did the optimism of its staff; it seemed more and more likely that the magazine could spin off from Eco-Net and survive on a paid subscription base. John Taylor of the Northwest Area Foundation agreed to ease the transifion to self-reliance with a one-year $14,090 grant. In June 1975 the last free issue of RAIN went out to approximately 8000 individuals and organizations. Steve and Lee Johnson, together with RAIN's business manager Anne McLaughlin, began to search for new office space. As has so frequently happened in the life of RAIN, serendipity promptly asserted itself. Two RAIN friends, Tom Bender and Lane deMoll, had recently left jobs with the Oregon Office of Energy Research and Planning, which, under Governor Tom McCall, was performing some of the most innovative net energy analyses in the country. Bender and deMoll were seeking a home for Full Circle, their newly incorporated community resource center. The RAIN and Full Circle staffs sensed a strong potential for synergy and decided to live and work together in a large, turreted Victorian house in northwest Portland. A few hundred dollars worth of fresh paint later, the Rainhouse was bom. RAIN and Full Circle saw the new location as a place to put some of their ideas about local self-reliance into practice. "We were planning to do a lot of things like neighborhood gardens...," Lane deMoll later told a reporter, "but getting the magazine on its feet independent of the grant money took all of our energy." Nevertheless, a "Random RAIN 10-Week Log" published in the July 1976 issue of the magazine indicates how little time elapsed before Rainhouse inhabitants were plunging into an amazing array of local and national conferences, energy workshops, consulting contracts, and educational fomms. The "10-Week Log" also notes in passing that the RAIN/Full Circle division had already vanished with the formation of the Rain Umbrella, Inc., a nonprofit educational organization. The 1975-76 transition to a paid subscription base was not a smooth one. Then, as now, there was always too little time and too little money for the staff to keep up with the usual kinds of magazine promotion. And then, as now, RAIN was the kind of magazine that passed through many hands in offices, libraries, and communal houses. It became abundantly clear that the magazine's readership vastly outstripped its paid circulation figures.
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