Among the things I can't explain are...

why my outgoing e-mail stopped working for two weeks. I couldn't solve that problem and neither could my internet provider, so i have a new e-mail: jeffepton13@gmail.com. And

why I spent three hours at the ophthalmologist's office this morning and why the word is spelled the way it is, but my eyes are apparently okay. When I finally did get to see Dr. Branch, I found that I really liked her. We talked about Erica Jong's book, Shylock's Daughter, and Anthony Burgesses' Nothing Like the Sun and Steven King's The Stand. The Jong and Burgess books are great for people who struggle with Shakespeare, but don't want to be entirely out of the Shakespearean loop. The Stand is wonderful humanist story about ordinary people gathering courage and building community in the face of extraordinary danger. And

why A Bad Idea: Generals Making Social Policy got ten or so hits between spring of 2009 when I posted it and this week when it got about 30 more hits, including at least one visit by a guy who has a cab service running to and from Dallas Fort Worth Airport. The easy explanation is that all things are possible on the web. A precise explanation would be more elusive and is not pending. And,

finally, why we don't do something significant and urgent, like organize a global Marshall Plan aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change. This, of course, is a near constant preoccupation of In and Out and will be explored repeatedly on this website. In the meantime, if you missed Bill McKibben's incredible piece in last June's Rolling Stone about just how certain a four or five or six degree increase in the average global temperature is, it's not to late to go back and read it. In fact consider reading Global Warming's Terrifying New Math an assignment, we all need to get on the same page (page 10, more or less, in McKibben's piece) and mobilize ourselves.

Best Case Scenario

or the silver lining at the end of the world

Stephen King says this:
at the end of all rationalism
the mass grave.
Science,

biology, physics, he says,
technology--
the deathtrip.
At the end of it all

the bomb, the plague--
something--
climate change
at the the end of it all.

The final genius
of our everloving, overstriding
brilliance.
He also holds this:

Technological collapse will reduce
the ambient noise that shrouds
our magic selves and
we will see

our dormant gifts awakened.
Manifest in all survivors
a certain wizardry more or less.
Hallelujah, anyway.