BY PETER BRONSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Two stressed-out nurses, a nicotine-stained gambler, flinty-eyed Sheriff Si Leis, Debbie Hill and 46,000 Promise Keepers are all crowded into a drawer in my desk.

They're part of nearly 50 columns that I perpetrated during the past 12 months. As 1997's fuel light comes on, it's time to look back and see what happened.

Last January, Hamilton County's Semper Fi Sheriff, Mr. Leis, leaned across his desk, gave me a steely ''Make my day'' stare, and warned porn peddler Larry Flynt to keep his Hustler magazine out of Cincinnati.

''He has threatened to bring it back. I can assure you that if he brings it back, my men will pick it up and bring charges,'' said the former prosecutor who ran Mr. Flynt out of town on obscenity charges in 1977. ''I have no doubt that if the case is handled right, he will be convicted again.''

Now Hustler is back - not just a few copies, an entire store, right in the heart of downtown's costly new Backstage district. The magazine is more obscene than it was 20 years ago, and Mr. Flynt is more belligerent, daring Cincinnati to prosecute and make him a national martyr for the morally impaired.

There is mumbling at City Hall about busting Hustler with zoning laws. But Sheriff Leis won't wait forever. Unless the city acts soon, Cincinnati may bring in the New Year with a new court battle to kick out Hustler.

Annie Hamilton and Cheryl Townsend, both R.N.'s at University Hospital, got fed up with dangerously low staffing last June. ''There is no hospital in this city we would feel safe in without a 24-hour advocate at our sides,'' Mrs. Townsend said.

Dozens of local nurses, doctors and other medical workers backed them up with calls and letters, blaming managed-care for a Darwinian ''survival of the cheapest'' struggle among hospitals, while HMO bosses rake in obese salaries.

One HMO executive said, ''If you look at how the (U.S.) automotive industry responded to competition from Japan, I think you will see that customers get more car for their dollar now. If we do this correctly, we can get the same kind of result in health care.''

Great. So hospitals must now be in the phase of exploding Pintos, rust-cancered Vegas and other ''economical'' death-traps.

I called Mrs. Hamilton on Wednesday to ask if anything has changed. ''Yes,'' she replied. ''Things have gotten worse. We have met with disapproval from the administration for what we said. I think nurses are even more demoralized, because even with the public attention, changes are not being made. Cost cutting still drives health care.''

Things are no better for Debbie Hill, either. It's now two years since I stopped by her parents' home in Loveland to ask about the yellow ribbons on their Christmas tree. Those ribbons spread to mailboxes and fences in Warren, Hamilton and Clermont counties, surrounding Mrs. Hill's former home in Maineville. But despite hundreds of letters to the Ohio Parole Board, she remains in a Columbus prison on a concealed weapons charge, with no parole hearing for two more years, because she shot and killed the former boyfriend who was stalking her and threatening her son and parents.

Last week, the Parole Board received new administrative rules that will open up parole and prison records - thanks in part to public protests about the stubborn refusal to free Debbie Hill.

Those same rules to open prison records may help the family of Clara Swart sue Ohio for paroling Jessie James Cowans, who killed Mrs. Swart, 69, of Monroe Township.

Prison records showed Mr. Cowans was first arrested for armed robbery at age 8, strangled a ''friend'' who was in a wheel-chair at age 17, assaulted prison guards and was classified as too dangerous for parole: ''A risk to persons and property,'' parole reports said. ''Release is not appropriate.''

But he was paroled - and three months later, he strangled his neighbor, Mrs. Swart.

Now he's on death row, and her family is seeking $10 million from taxpayers.

Those who saw him in court, harnessed in a high-voltage human version of an invisible-fence collar, won't soon forget it. It's in my file of mental snapshots from 1997, along with:

A chain-smoking farmer in bib overalls, whose deeply lined face and empty eyes put a grim human face of despair on the glitzy world of legalized gambling at Argosy Casino.

Jim Tarbell's cannon shot to wake up Cincinnati to his cherished dream of baseball on Broadway Commons. The thunderclap made hundreds of people at his rally levitate, but the Cincinnati Reds did not move a muscle. Broadway, like the Civil War cannon, fired a blank.

And the morning sun rising over the outstretched, linked hands of 46,000 men who lifted their voices in song and their hearts in prayer at the Promise Keepers rally last May.

Snapshots like that tend to put the Larry Flynts of the world back into perspective, reducing their blow-ups to actual size.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. See you in 1998.

Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer: call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.

BRONSON ARCHIVE