Ancil Nance Pages RAIN Oct./Nov. 1983 RAINIRCRC STAFFERS: (L to R) Mark Roseland, Tanya Kucak, Laura Stuchinsky, Carlotta Collette, Steve Johnson, Steve Rudman, Nancy Cosper, John Ferrell (1981). primary involvement. They also played heroic roles in the massive spring '79 promotional campaign that saved RAIN from looming financial disaster and provided a welcome nest egg for future needs. Other heroes in that drama were the many faithful RAIN readers who supplied promotional advice and free mailing lists. But by the following summer it was clear that still another era in the life of RAIN was drawing to a close. Lee Johnson had left some months earlier to accept a position with the Western Solar Utilization Network. Most of the second-generation staffers had either recently departed or were on the verge of moving on to new pursuits. And Tom and Lane, by now firmly settled into their rebuilt home at the coast, announced their official departure from the staff in the August/September 1979 issue of RAIN: ... We have been with RAIN for four years, helping share new patterns that are emerging and becoming real around us. It has been an exciting time, and one whi^ has been successful far beyond what most people could then conceive. Many things, only dreams four years ago, have become commonplace and accepted realities—not complete, but fully alive and healthfully taking form now on their own strength. ... Projects and information and ideas once part ofRAIN now appear in Better Homes and Gardens, Sunset, and The New York Times.. .. Special journals now track the burgeoning areas ofpassive solar design, alternative sewage, health care, urban agriculture, simpler lifestyles, and community economics. Much remains to be done, and much that we and RAIN will help with in our own ways. But the time has come when [we] must become the last of the "old timers" to leave RAIN—to make room for new people and new visions and to make new use of what the last four years have taught us. By the end of 1979, the staff transition was nearly completed. Carlotta Collette had arrived in October from Minnesota, where she had long been active weath- erizing attics, building solar greenhouses, and working with neighborhood groups on food and energy policy issues. She was soon joined by Mark Roseland, who had, until recently, taught social ecology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and volunteered with a number of a.t. and community groups in New England. Carlotta and Mark were both excited about being at RAIN, but perplexed about the myriad boxes of books and files that threatened to engulf the Rainhouse. "Only an archivist could straighten out this mess," murmured Mark one day. Almost immediately, RAIN serendipity came to the fore: John Ferrell, local solar activist—and former staff member with the National Archives— dropped by to see if there might be anything he could do. Carlotta, Mark, and John were to form the core staff of RAIN magazine for the next two and a half years. Despite a wide range of experience and wonderfully complementary skills, the new Rainmakers were faced with one inescapable dilemma: none of them had ever actually published a magazine before! "Learn by doing" and "community self-reliance" were much in evidence around the Rainhouse for the next few issues, but things gradually settled into a more subdued level of day-to- day frenzy. Fortunately for the newcomers, two members of the old staff—circulation manager Pauline Dep- pen and graphic artist Jill Stapleton—stayed on part- time for a few months, providing invaluable continuity. And the new Rainmakers took care to impart a sense of continuity to the pages of the magazine. Articles and reviews from former staffers appeared frequently, and RAIN continued to explore emerging trends in its traditional range of subjects: renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, alternative shelter, recycling, community economics, bioregionalism, and more. Certain themes did move into the foreground in response to changing times: women and ecology, the threat of government/ corporate exploitation of Native American lands, and urban self-reliance strategies in the face of Reagan-era cutbacks. The a.t./social change movement had continued to grow rapidly since 1977, when Lane deMoll had commented on RAIN'S difficulties in keeping up with so many new developments. By the early eighties, RAIN staffers sought to review only the best of the hundreds of movement-oriented books being published each year, and they saw RAIN's principle role as a "maker of connections" between the themes and ideas now being addressed in a host of more-specialized movement magazines—exploring how a particular energy policy might fit into a bioregional perspective, for example, or how a particular energy or ecological problem could be approached with community self-reliance strategies. The early eighties also saw an evolution in RAIN's relationship to self-reliance efforts in its own community. While the magazine continued its national focus, the Rainmakers were increasingly drawn back to the early RAIN goal of putting principle into practice locally. There was staff participation in local solar energy associ-
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