RIVER CITY JOURNAL: DON'T GIVE UP -- IT GETS EVEN BETTER NEAR THE END

Some columns write themselves, but others take more energy than training a bunch of cats to look like they care.

It has been almost a month since my last column, so let me get a few things out of the way pronto:

First, whaddya mean we don't get every Friday off?

Those three-day weekends are habit-forming, not to mention all the other habits that develop when you have lots of spare time and you're imprisoned in your own home by an ice storm. Napping and snacking are a couple of examples.

Second, I was struggling with what I should write about in this premier column of 1999. So many things have happened since the start of the holidays, which for me begin with St. Nicholas Day on Dec. 6 and last exactly one month until the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6. Look, I think you should take advantage of any good reason to celebrate.

While I was celebrating, two owls moved into our neighborhood. The one my wife and I have seen is an enormous great horned owl with a deep, almost booming hoot. The other owl, which is much more discreet, has a higher-pitched hoot. On some nights, the two carry on a hooting contest for up to two hours.

I can't say exactly why, but I find having owls as neighbors to be a satisfactory arrangement. For one thing, the squirrels were getting a little too cocky -- and too plentiful -- for their own good. Now there are fewer squirrels. It's nature's way.

One thing I don't understand about owls, however, is why a predator would spend so much time announcing to his intended prey that he's in the same oak tree. Go figure.

Another thing that happened during the holidays is that our younger son and his fiancee kayaked -- that's right, small boats with paddles -- completely around the fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar, which is in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. I looked it up. The trip took 21 days and included several excursions into the jungle as guests of indigenous tribes, a rather frightening bite from a sea snake and a confrontation with the French navy on the lookout for drug smugglers and terrorists.

Since younger son and his fiancee don't speak any native dialects, they had a good time not really knowing if they were invited guests or had been captured by the pygmies, who were either preparing for a sacrifice or throwing one heckuva party. My wife and I wonder how many times they were married by the shaman without even knowing it.

The kayaking duo kept in touch with family, friends and colleagues around the world through a satellite telephone that also had e-mail capabilities. Boy, the world has sure changed since the days when we had to drive from Kelo Valley to town and ask the local telephone operator to place a long-distance call to St. Louis that might take an hour to connect.

In spite of all these holiday doings, however, I want to spend a little time on what's happening in Washington.

Over my three decades-plus of column writing, I have strenuously avoided topics that smacked of politics. You don't need to know what I think about politicians. You have a brain of your own.

But I must say I was moved -- emotionally, politically, consciously -- by the events in the U.S. Senate yesterday.

Thinking back, I listened on a battery-powered radio by the light of a kerosene lamp as Adlai Stevenson was nominated by the Democrats in 1952 and Ike by the GOP. I have seen bombers headed for Korea flying in formation over the Ozarks and, later, sputniks sparkling from one hilly horizon to the other. I can tell you exactly what I was doing when Kennedy was assassinated. I have stood a handshake away from the Queen of England at Windsor Castle. I survived the Vietnam era. I was awake in the wee hours of the morning when an American astronaut stepped onto the moon. I wrote headlines daily as Watergate unfolded. I have held two newborn sons in my arms shortly after my wife had given birth. I watched in horror on television as the space shuttle exploded. All of these events had a profound effect on me in one way or another.

But I doubt that anything will ever be so seared in my memory as the television view, while gabby commentators were momentarily dumbstruck, of 100 United States senators filing up to a clerk in the well of the Senate and signing the oath they had just taken as jurors in the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton.

I was not the only person moved by the historic event. Anytime TV talking heads are at a loss for words, you know something really important, something beyond mere words, is taking place.

My view is that the 100 senators were similarly struck with the awesome responsibility they had just inherited. Up to that point, it had all been more politics. As the senators put their pens to paper, an uncharacteristic hush fell over the chamber, an eerie silence that occurs during awkward moments at funerals when you don't really know what to say to those who are grieving.

Yes, I'm full of tales about owls and kayakers and all the videos I rented over the holidays, all of which my wife and I had seen before but which, thanks to my age-advantageness, I thoroughly enjoyed again.

Something historic has just happened. The whole world witnessed it. Now, like those tongue-tied TV commentators whose silence bounced off satellites to places like Pakistan and Uruguay and Madagascar, I don't know what else to say.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.