Perhaps the title ought to be more like from now to eternity, but I stole this one from James Jones who wrote the novel with the same title in 1951.

I read the book sometime during my high school years and saw the movie a few years after that. The book and the movie are both in my stack of favorite stuff for their realistic portrayal of life in the Army in the early 1940s and the mix of characters and subplots.

By the time you read this, the Roman Catholic Church may already have a new pontiff. I read something to the effect that none of the conclaves over the last centuries have taken more than five days to elect a new pope. I don’t have any basis for predicting how quickly the Conclave of Cardinals will reach a decision, other than history is on the side of sooner rather than later.

First, let me state unequivocally – I hate meetings.

As I progressed in the military, I had to attend more and longer ones. Conferences were even worse – two, three, sometimes four days of nonstop meetings.

To keep from going insane, I started to try to identify and watch the “players.” It was easy enough to identify the folks in charge. After that, I tried to figure out who really knew what they were doing and also to pick out the ones on the opposite end of the “clue” spectrum.

Over the years, I became pretty adept at people analysis.

When was the last time you read about a firearm loading itself, heading out of the house or store and killing a number of innocent people?

Did you ever read about a motor vehicle starting on its own, opening the garage door, driving out of the driveway and eventually running down some people on a sidewalk, ramming a house, hitting a group of pedestrians or throwing itself into a roadside ditch?