In preparation for Memorial Day, I’d strongly urge you to take five minutes to read Garrison Keillor.

About Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor. I’m a cancer survivor, and I hope he will be, too. But there’s no question this is serious stuff.

I am not making this up. Today is National Train Day. Their theme, unfortunately, is “Get Your Choo-Choo On.”

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.

There’s an article in the new issue of State Legislatures Magazine on blogging that features — well, us.

Apparently, while in Carolina campaigning for that whole Presidential Primary thing, Barack O. found time to meet with my favorite — well, except for Dean Smith, of course — North Carolina resident. (He also played a pickup game with some members of the Carolina team.)

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

The National Association of Government Communicators checked out the blog we created while we were in Algiers. They loved the fact that we shared so many great new technology tools with our audience.

According to Talking Points Memo, down in Louisiana the opposition is running an ad that makes fun of the Democratic candidate’s French surname.

One Salon article puts down another one arguing that “Hillary should be winning.”

I don’t really speak French. My second language, such as it is, is Spanish.

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.,

The year 1968 was certainly the most tumultuous in modern political history, and for many people of my generation it shaped our political involvement. At this point in that year, we had already gone through the Tet offensive, which drained away remaining popular support for the Vietnam war; the emergence of Eugene McCarthy’s insurgent candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination; McCarthy’s stunning performance in the New Hampshire primary against a sitting President; and Robert F. Kennedy’s entry into the race.

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.