Record of a Friendship

There will be no convention this year, and probably none next year.

My work has carried me onward to the problem of weather functions

and rain making over deserts. I am planning a small expedition to the

Southwestern parts of this continent.

• I •

[The following letter is from Ilse Ollendorf! Reich]

Orgonon

Rangeley, Maine

Dear Neill:

July 26th, 1952

Reich said in his letter that he hopes somebody will write to
you and tell you about what happened here, especially since the end of
March. So I shall try to give you some idea of what is going on here.
Around March 22nd, the Oranur at Orgonon became so strong that it
not only made it impossible to stay in the Observatory and the Students'
Laboratory and the Lower Cabin for any length of time (10 to 15
minutes maximum), but it reacted on all of us in a very deep way,
bringing all the hidden fears and hatreds so much to the surface that
they either had to explode and give way, at least partially, or made it
impossible for some to continue working in this atmosphere. I myself
was most strongly hit, and it is only during the past month that I am
slowly emerging and that I have started functioning again and begun to
realize the extent of what happened. The purely physical conditions of
living are absolutely impossible, especially for Reich who has been
living partly in a tent, partly in hotels in Farmington [some 40 miles
away] and Rangeley and who, every once in a while, insists on going
back to the Observatory and tries to live there again, with quite
disastrous results once or twice, when he nearly died. He still hopes to
regain the Observatory and the Lower Cabin, but the Students' Labora­
tory is still absolutely unusable for longer than lh hour at a time. Reich
is planning for the winter or late fall an expedition to the desert parts
in the U. S. Southwest to study atmospheric conditions and the possibili­
ties of cloud formation and rain making on the spot. Eva came back
to Rangeley this spring and is working part-time assisting in Reich's
experimental work. Tom Ross, too, is helping with the experimental