REMARKS: STILL STRONG TWO CENTURIES AFTER REVOLUTION

After some 10 weeks of various types of intrigue, protests, debates, denials and controversy, the American election process is finally complete. Despite its bizarre circumstances this time around, the American political spectacle was once again a grand dance. I rarely tire of the spectacle of American politics.

I also have to stop and think just how fortunate we are. A 200-year-old government of any type is not the norm in this world. A 200-year-old republic is totally unheard of. When one thinks of it, it is really amazing just how bloodless the American Revolution was. Oh, certainly there were thousands of casualties on the battlefield and a few more in "massacres" in New England cities. Yet Americans never turned on each other in a self-consuming purging of alleged counterrevolutionaries, as was the case a few years later in France. In fact, we were just reading in class this week about some of the horror of the French Revolution and the Terror that followed immediately afterward. In one city an official was killed and beheaded. His head was stuck on the end of a pike, a metal pole with a sharp end, his mouth stuffed full of hay. His son-in-law was then captured and forced to march through the streets, on the way to his own decapitation, with the head in front of him, as the crowd cried "Kiss papa! Kiss papa!"

Fortunately, American history is bereft of such hideous tales -- although we certainly have some shameful chapters in our own epochs. The truly amazing thing is not so much that mob violence has largely been avoided in America, or that one government has maintained power for two centuries. The really astonishing thing in that the very Constitution and Bill of Rights -- as well as the original provisions to amend them -- continue to serve the nation as they were designed to do in 1789 -- the year the revolution burst into flame in France.

Winter continues to grind on. A few vestiges of snow still hang around from Dec. 13 -- and the light dusting of the other day. "Raw," "cold" and "ugly" are three words that pop into mind, describing the weather. I guess "muddy" could also be thrown in when describing the private road on which I live. At least the snow and ice is gone -- except when the puddles re-freeze!

I'll blame the winter weather for my latest mental blunder. Calling the Bank of Missouri by the name of a competitor in a headline last week was especially inexcusable on my part. Not only had I just written the story, I also bank with the Bank of Missouri! In any case, my apologies go to John Thompson and the bank staff.

I hope readers like the new USA design. (I guess I can't call it the "USA Signal" anymore, since the word "Signal" no longer appears on the flagstaff.) I can't take credit for it, though. Jamie Hall, our bright, young design editor at the Missourian (and former sports writer) designed it.

I once again urge readers to submit photos, fiction, poems, news releases or story ideas. We want this to be a community newspaper that everyone can get something out of. I am finally giving in and running one of my own young adult novels, chapter by chapter, in the hopes that others may be inspired to submit fiction. This was my attempt to cash in on the then-booming YA horror genre.

The frigid days of January have also reminded me that 20 years ago this month, I launched my professional journalism career. I started out as a part-time sports "stringer" at The Daily Journal in Flat River (now Park Hills). To date myself for the readers, when I broke in, the Journal still had dozens of manual typewriters. We would type out our story, then the sports editor would make corrections or edits with a pencil. The copy would then go to one or two typesetters on an old CompuGraphic typesetting machine, where they would type it. It would come out on a wet, stinky strip of paper and be dried on some sort of homemade drying bed. (This varied from paper to paper. This part of the process continued even after reporters got their own computer terminals in the 1980s.) It would then be waxed and cut out (in whichever order one preferred) and pasted on the page. Actually it would be proofed first and then go back to the typesetter, who would retype the line(s) containing the error(s), or possibly a whole paragraph. That would be run out, dried, proofed, cut and waxed, then slapped over the offensive typo in question.

Yes, the times, they are a-changin'!