DAVID GUILBAULT

PLEASE PASS THE GRAVY

Here is a great demo of how to make real turkey gravy:

Sauces & Condiments:How To Make Perfect Turkey Gravy

TURKEY TALKS, TURKEYS DIE

OH MY GOD! You can't make this stuff up.

THE WAY YOU MOVE

Not a day goes by, I don't think about you.

TO THE LOVELORN

Around this time each year my thoughts recall a lost love and a life that might have been.  So, in healing memory, I send this out to all the lovelorn, a trio of great compositions, sung by Judy Garland, the greatest performer ever recorded.

FINE AND MELLOW

Billie Holiday had one of the saddest voices I've ever heard. Here she performs her composition 'Fine and Mellow' in 1957 with Lester Young (tenor sax), Coleman Hawkins (tenor sax), Ben Webster (tenor sax), Gerry Mulligan (baritone sax), Roy Eldridge (trumpet), Doc Cheatham (trumpet), Vic Dickenson (trombone), Danny Barker (guitar), Milt Hinton (bass), Mal Waldron (piano) and O.C. Johnson (drums). 

This jazz greats' track is intoxicating. Play it more than once if only for Roy Eldridge's searing trumpet highs. According to a comment on YouTube, the solo order is: Holiday, Webster, Young, Holiday, Dickenson, Mulligan, Holiday, Hawkins, Eldridge, Holiday.

"Love will make you drink and gamble, make you stay out all night long.
Love will make you do things that you know is wrong."

- Billie Holiday

ARCHIVAL REVIVAL

Before there was digital, for years I kept a VHS tape in the VCR to record any music that aired on broadcast TV.  I've been going through those tapes and have converted a few of my favorite performances into digital files.  For your watching and listening pleasure, I will be presenting clips from my collection, 'Archival Revival.'  First up, one of my all-time favorites, Tom Rush performs his songs 'No Regrets' and 'Rockport Sunday.'  Enjoy.

You can buy Tom's music directly from Tom on his website. Please do.

CHANGING MY TUNE

I am just so happy and relieved that Barack Obama is going to be our next president.  I can stop worrying so much about my children's future and the terrible, terrible course this country has been on under the dangerous, arrogant, belligerent buffoonery of Bush/Cheney/Rove/Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld/Kristal.

So, in this blog, I'm going to 'change my tune' a bit and spend some time on my first and true love - songwriting.  Here are a tip of the hat to Johnny Cash:

ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE

All politics aside now, could 7-year-olds Piper Palin and Sasha Obama BE any more adorable?

Bless their hearts.  The Huffington Post has slide shows of Piper's and Sasha's so-called sassier moments.

UNCHECKED SOURCES

Well, the blogosphere and some of the mainstream media have been embarrassed again for publishing supposedly inside McCain campaign information from what turns out to be a hoaxster.  Read the story, 'A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence', on The New York Times website.

SHOW HER THE DOOR

Alessandra Stanley, writing 'The TV Watch' New York Times article 'Rehashing '08 and Rehearsing, Perhaps, for '12' says Sarah Palin "is on a speed date with history, upending protocol as she goes."

Please, Ms. Palin, just go away.

“I’m like, ‘O.K., God, if there is an open door for me somewhere’ — this is what I always pray — I’m like, ‘Don’t let me miss the open door.’  And if there is an open door in ’12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.”

- Sarah Palin to Greta Van Susteren

Photo Credit: Stephan Savola / Associated Press

CHANGE DOT GOV

President-elect Barack Obama's transition team has posted a new website, change.gov, which promises to be "your source for the latest news, events and announcement so that you can follow the setting up of the Obama administration."

 

Meanwhile, The New York Times has profiles of Obama's transition team and potential members of his administration.

RIGHTING THE COURSE

When President-elect Barack Obama takes office next year he will have the opportunity to immediately start to right the course of this country, which President Bush has steered so wrongly.

According to a news report on the Washington Post website, 'Obama Positioned to Quickly Reverse Bush Actions', transition advisers to Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders which could be swiftly undone.  They relate to Bush policies on such issues as climate change, stem cell research and reproductive rights.

But, The New York Times warns in an editorial, 'So Little Time, So Much Damage', that Bush aides have been "scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others - few for the good."

According to the Times:

• Last month,Attorney General Michael Mukasey rushed out new guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use chillingly intrusive techniques to collect information on Americans even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

• The administration has been especially busy weakening regulations that promote clean air and clean water and protect endangered species.

• Soon after the election, Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, is expected to issue new regulations aimed at further limiting women’s access to abortion, contraceptives and information about their reproductive health care options.

• In the last few days, the Bureau of Land Management has completed six long-range management plans for Utah that will expose these acres (and as many as 6 million more) to some form of commercial exploitation. On Tuesday, the bureau announced that it would soon begin selling oil and gas leases — essentially the right to drill — in some of the most beautiful and fragile areas.

Here's hoping the 44th President of the United Stages can repair the damage done by W. and his oily oilmen.

YES WE CAN

"We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check. We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we’ve been told that we’re not ready, or that we shouldn’t try, or that we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights.

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality.

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes we can heal this nation.

Yes we can repair this world.

Yes we can."

- Barack Obama, January 8, 2008

MR. PRESIDENT-ELECT

The first press conference for President-elect Barack Obama. At long last, a leader we can follow and trust.

TEARS TO REMEMBER

Judith Warner writes a wonderful opinion piece called 'Tears to Remember' in today's New York Times.

"This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. And for so many others of us, of the trampling and debasing of our most basic ideals, beliefs that we cherished every bit as deeply and passionately as those of the “values voters” around whose sensibilities we’ve had to tiptoe for the past 28 years.

The election brought the return of a country we’d lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance.

For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its grief. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about."

- Judith Warner, The New York Times

Photo Credit: David Goldman / The New York Times

THE MORNING PAPERS

  

  

 

 

NEW DAWN AT HAND

First Speech of President-Elect Barack Obama

"A new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope. For that is the true genius of America – that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

- President-elect Barack Obama, November 4, 2008

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you – we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand."

- President-elect Barack Obama, Nobember 4, 2008

CHANGE HAS COME

OBAMA WINS  - Racial Barrier Falls as Voters Embrace Call for Change
By Adam Nagourney/ The New York Times

"Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.

The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country. But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago."

PLEASE VOTE

Poster by Shepard Fairey

Photo Credit:  Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images