Boistfort Veterans Assembly

Our second performance was for the Veterans' Appreciation assembly on the morning of November 10 at the Boistfort school in an area hard-hit by 2007's December floods (Lewis County). This school contains pre-school through 8th grades, and has a total student body of 70+ students. It was a privilege to attend and participate in such a heartfelt and respectful tribute to our veterans.

Our New Horizons band played the national anthem after the presentation of the colors, then the pre-schoolers led us all in the Pledge of Allegiance. We later played Armed Forces Salute, a special medley that features the songs of each of the service branches. (We also played two additional marches: Emblem of Unity and Burnished Brass.) When the veterans attending the the assembly were named and recognized individually, it was awesome to realize that about half of our band members have served in the armed forces!

The speaker, Robert Wheeler, recounted an amazing story of his wartime experiences as a child; a sixth-grader read the poem Red, White and Blue; and the children of the school sang a beautiful song, Thank a Vet, that brought tears to the eyes of many of us there. The upper-grade band students performed with us on two songs (America: Sweet Land of Liberty and Liberty March), and did a fine job.

One of our own Olympia New Horizons band members, Merle Webster, has "unretired" this year in order to teach the band and choir students at the school. After meeting and playing songs with the band students and hearing the vocal group, we're convinced that he's really doing a great job with them. Go Merle!

Our third performance was at The Festival of Trees at the Red Lion in Olympia, at 4:00 pm on December 3rd. We "changed gears" in our rehearsals and prepared several pieces of Christmas music for this event. It is part of a week-long fund-raiser for the local hospital, and many of our friends came to hear us!

Our fourth performance was also a Christmas program, this one at Olympics West in Tumwater on December 15th at 3:00. We always look forward to this one, too, since the people there always make us feel welcome and enjoy our music -- this year just as in past years. It is so much fun to make people smile!

NOTE: Speaking of "making music," one change you'll notice here at the website is our new e-mail address. Because at one point we received over 3000 spam mailings in one day, we've changed our approach: our address will no longer actually appear in text anywhere on the website.

Instead, you'll see the "rainbow 45" * picture containing our e-mail address here on the site. This means you'll have to read the address on the picture, then type it into any e-mail you send us, rather than just clicking on a link -- but it also means the spammers can't "harvest" our e-mail address from these pages. Thanks for your understanding.
* If you know what a "45" is, you're old enough to play in the band!!

If you want to know what several of us did this past summer (2008), please check our Band Camp 2008 page. We had a wonderful band camp here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest this summer! More information about this experience will be coming to the website later on. And, news flash, it looks like we'll be presenting another one in 2011!!! It's not set in stone yet...but we're hoping to make it happen.