"Morning campers" I say in my best Nathan Warner impression, as I return to the MySpace boards while suffering from some insomnia while visiting at my parents' home. If you haven't already received the NYSMF Holiday Newsletter, i wanted to reiterate news of our annual early application discount to our loyal NYSMFers.

If you send in your application by the end of the year, Dec 31, 2007, we will automatically knock a full hundred buckaroos off your total tuition. That's enough for ten Pizza Night pies, or enough Oneontan chinese takeout to fill an entire bathroom, or almost three copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (if you account for paying full price and sales tax).

You can get even more knocked off your NYSMF 2008 tuition by spreading the Word O' NYSMF around your youth orchestras, high school bands, all-state choirs, even to your private lesson instructors and conductors.

For every person who you refer to NYSMF, we will grant you another $100 bonus. Most people apply it to their tuition, but if you would prefer a check or cash or stamps or pizzas instead, please just let us know and we'll be happy to oblige.

To receive the recruitment bonus, your friend must:
1) Write your name on the bottom of page 1 of the NYSMF application
2) Attend NYSMF for at least one session

Just to be clear, if you take a page from Tammany Hall or any crooked election of the past millenium (including one shown on an episode of "The Simpsons"), and, for example, send in a bunch of applications with names taken from a local cemetery, or random scatterings of first and last names culled at random from the Waukegan Yellow Pages, and none of the resulting entities actually show up at NYSMF, we can't in good conscience give you the bonus.

So please keep your referrals to good, honest, talented folk like yourselves. People who will not only love NYSMF as much as we do, but who will be willing and able to take full advantage of all the fantastic opportunities that they will have with us. Remember, even a younger sibling can be a great NYSMFer, so don't forget them, too.

Okay, clearly, I am suffering from sleep deprivation, and am drifting among stranger inner pathways than I normally do. SO good night, sleep well, and know that NYSMF is barely 6 short months away.

--Keisuke Hoashi
NYSMF Director of Sleep