Sunday, November 20, 2005
Having coffee tonight with two people I have not seen in seventeen years, one of whom is an art director for Law and Order: SVU, the other of whom is a practicing roboticist. One of these folks lives 5 blocks away from me. Another person I went to high school with, also a roboticist, lives one block away from me. I know they say life is like high school, but...
I suppose it should be no surprise to me that many people I went to high school with ended up here. I went to Arts Magnet H.S. in Dallas, which used to be Booker T. Washington H.S., one of the more prominent and accredited all-black high schools in the nation. Sometime in the mid-seventies, the artists took over. They promptly turned it into a wonderful, ramshackle, intellectually advanced, academically shady spot that, were I (god forbid) living in Dallas as a father, would not think twice about choosing as a high school for my children. Good enough for Norah Jones, Erykah Badu, and Edie Brickell? Good enough for me. The place encouraged productive lassitude in a way most American schools do not, and it gave me a better intellectual education than I could have possibly expected at the high school where I served for one unpleasant, academically charged year--a place whose football fans once cheered, at a game against a black Dallas high school, "We're all white,/ But that's all right!"
In any case.
I suppose it should be no surprise to me that many people I went to high school with ended up here. I went to Arts Magnet H.S. in Dallas, which used to be Booker T. Washington H.S., one of the more prominent and accredited all-black high schools in the nation. Sometime in the mid-seventies, the artists took over. They promptly turned it into a wonderful, ramshackle, intellectually advanced, academically shady spot that, were I (god forbid) living in Dallas as a father, would not think twice about choosing as a high school for my children. Good enough for Norah Jones, Erykah Badu, and Edie Brickell? Good enough for me. The place encouraged productive lassitude in a way most American schools do not, and it gave me a better intellectual education than I could have possibly expected at the high school where I served for one unpleasant, academically charged year--a place whose football fans once cheered, at a game against a black Dallas high school, "We're all white,/ But that's all right!"
In any case.
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