If you’re at this site, you probably attended, as we did, the Arts Magnet High School at Booker T. Washington (now called the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts). And, also like us, you might have gone for a number of years without thinking much about it; when the two of us graduated in 1982, we couldn’t get out of Dallas fast enough. Our feelings about the town haven’t changed much since then, but we’ve had occasion to think about the school in recent years. As we’ve grown older and wiser (which we have, though we’re not necessarily more mature), we’ve started to realize that the Magnet was, in fact, a shockingly wonderful place. In fact, had we gone to school anywhere else, we’re both pretty sure we would’ve enjoyed the hellish fate suffered by untold thousands of intelligent, irreverent, free-thinking American youths: our brains would’ve been numbed, our spirits crushed, our sexualities twisted, and our personalities gradually replaced by sophisticated software programs capable of driving the husks of our bodies through the empty routines of consumption, procreation, and deference to existing power structures that define “mainstream” life in the U.S. today. We’re not sorry to have missed that.

And seriously, we had to give the Magnet a lot of credit. We both know people who went to “better” high schools—schools with more engaging academic classes, plusher facilities, and larger numbers of students going off to fancy colleges. But neither of us know many people who had as much fun in high school as we remember having, or who emerged from it with their self-esteem largely intact, or who are still friends with a lot of the people they knew there. On balance, those seem like pretty remarkable accomplishments.

So when we heard that the Magnet was engaged in this big fund-raising project to get a larger and halfway decent building (since it’s now got twice as many students as it did when we graduated), we decided we ought to take part. Despite our claims to be bohemian renegades, we’re now gainfully—even respectably—employed, and shelling out a little cash to ensure that the Magnet continues to provide a safe haven for dissident and unruly youth seemed like a worthy cause to us. If you’ve been directed to this site, we figure you might share our views.

So we’ve got two suggestions. First, use the link to the left to visit the BTWSHPVA site and check out the new building plans and the fundraising campaign, and contribute some money that you might otherwise have spent on holiday gift to yourself like an ipod upgrade or a new grill pan. Second, use the “contact us” link to send us a note telling us what you’re up to. You can provide us with any relevant documentary files too—photos of your misspent youth at the Magnet and beyond or of your current rich and satisfying life; sound, video, text, or image files of your recent work in progress; whatever. We don’t really have a fully-baked plan for this site at present, but we’ll take what you send and put it to good use on these pages. Or use it to make fun of you.