This would be important in a General Assembly blog only if one knows that our friend Ward Armstrong is something of a train fan.

Some might say “train nut.” They would also be right.

(For those of you who may be slightly less obsessive about the Tar Heel basketball team, that’s Coach Roy Williams.)

But here in Algeria I have rediscovered my Menu French. I may not be able to find Main Street, but I can navigate my way around a menu. (One basic rule: if I don’t recognize word, I don’t order the dish. Strange words often turn out to be disgusting body parts or slimy marine creatures.)

Algerians mostly speak both French and Arabic. Many also have at least a working knowledge of one or two more languages.The chef at our hotel can prepare a superb breakfast, even for English speakers. Over easy? Scrambled with green peppers? Pas de problem. He speaks, we have decided, excellent Egg English.

In our workshop for members of Parliament and their staffs, we rely on the offices of a superb translating staff. Although we were cautioned not to use jargon or slang, the subject of technology just comes with its own linguistic challenges. (How do you say “YouTube” in French?)

Today, I was afraid I might have stumped even this great group of translators. In the course of discussing blogging, I exclaimed, “Holy Cow!”

Would an international incident ensue? I need not have worried. One of our group who was listening to the French translation reported that the translator handled the phrase with elan.

His translation: “Ooh la la.”

Like so many things, it just sounds better in French.,

But none of the events of those first three months prepared us for this week. On Sunday night, March 31, at the end of one of his periodic TV addresses on the war, President Johnson announced that he wouldn’t seek nomination for another term. No President enjoyed the power of that office more than Johnson, and the spectacle of him giving it up was almost Shakespearean. Then, just four days later, on Thursday, the nation was convulsed by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis. 

We’re witnessing another exciting presidential contest in 2008 — but what are we going through that compares with 40 years ago? Up against 1968, kerfuffles like “Sniper-gate” and Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s sermons look like pseudo-controversies, ginned up and repeated endlessly to fill the cable networks’ 24/7 news holes.

This story also includes the best lead I’ve read this month: “This doesn’t have anything to do with an apostrophe, does it?