Wilhelm Reich

[orion@wpi.wpi.edu (Kenneth G Descoteaux)]

I've had this since before I became a Kate-fan and I finally remembered to 
bring this to my terminal so I could get it right...

If anyone is interested in reading about Wilhelm Reich, the Doctor
Who Made it Rain, the September 1989 issue of _Yankee_ (Vol 53, No 9) was 
a special issue on "New England's Most Famous Imposters, Hoaxes & Frauds:
Unforgettable Tales of Mad Scientists, Patent Medicine Miracles, Flagrant 
Fakers, and Foods That Aren't What They Taste (and that's no hoax)"

'The Doctor Who Made it Rain' by Tim Clark (pp. 72-79,130-134)
(there's a good BW of a real cloud-buster, the nozzle end was just made out
of steel pipes, 10 tubes made of three pipes screwed end-to-end)

Some tidbits: 

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian pschiatrist born in 1897.
By 1953 he was living at Orgonon in Rangeley, Maine. 
One of the uses for orgone enery was similar to 'pyramid power' in that boxes 
or cones were used to accumulate energy for using to heal minor injuries.
He noticed the effects of acid rain in 1952, a decade before _A Silent Spring_ 
and  24 years before "acid rain" was a phrase. He attributed the effect to a 
nuclear testing at first, but later decided it was caused by a bad form of 
orgone energy called 'deadly orgone' originating from the exhaust of flying
saucers. It was in an attempt to eliminate DOR that the cloud-buster was 
invented. One of his employees accidently made it pour for over 24 hours by 
accident once by over use of a cloud-buster.
A nine-year old Peter gets mentioned in connection with a $1000 fee for making
rain over a blueberry farm during a drought in 1953.
The FDA was all over Reich for his claims about the healing capability of 
orgone energy and brought an injunction against him in 1954. 
In retaliation, he threatened to "flood the East" and apparently caused rain 
and snow up and down the coast. 
While fighting the FDA in court, he was sentenced to two years in prison for
contempt of court. Appeals went all the way to the US Supreme court, but he
went to jail in March 1957. He died of heart failure on November 3, 1957
while in a federal prison. 
A cloud buster is supposed to be rusting at Orgonon, not far from his tomb.

Apparently believers in Orgone energy are around who publish something called
the "Journal of Orgonomy", and who used cloudbusters during
the nation-wide drought 'last summer' <not sure if they mean '88 or '89>

<With the above offering, I humblely state that I too have some small holes in
 my music collection, don't we all?>

Ken Descoteaux
orion@wpi.wpi.edu