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About us our email is info07@bhs70s.com (that's "info" like information and "07" like 2007) Where is BHS70s located? What is the purpose BHS70s? Who are the people behind the BHS70s site? How often do you add new items to BHS70s? Where do you get those old pictures? Do you charge a membership fee? What's your privacy policy? Why don't you list everyone's email address? Why do I get spam? And for information about what you can do to help and how to join us, see our "about you" section.  Where is BHS70s located? Well, we're not a brick and mortar type of organization. Heck, we aren't really an organization in the strict sense of the word. We are just a few friends from the 70s who got together through the Internet starting in 1996, sharing old stories, old pictures, and swapping news about where friends are now. This site you see before you now is the continuing development of the labor of love by many. top What's the purpose of BHS70s? We try to accomplish three main things: Promote reunions. In particular, we encourage everyone to attend the BHS reunion in Lebanon that is held on campus every summer in July -- and try to help the 70s gang have plenty of rowdy things to do while there. Preserve pictures, stories, and other tidbits of our history at BHS in the 70s. We consider the site our "global scrapbook," which is especially nice since many mementos sadly didn't make it through the war. Keep track of alumni email addresses from around the globe, so that long lost friends can get in touch again. There's nothing like that thrill of getting your first email from an old friend after many years. If you are in touch with old friends, be sure to tell them about the site. They'll thank you for it. We will, too. top Who are the people behind the BHS70s site? There are lots of people behind the site. People send in old pictures, email us with comments, write Tributes and Reunion Articles, help us find other alumni and spread the word about the site. Everything you see here is because of someone who cherishes his or her BHS affiliation. Three old friends run the web site administration: Sarmad Al-Wadi, Debi Cates-Bleam, and Linda Nagem Al-Wadi. Sarmad (BHS 1967-1975) is one lucky guy -- a young retiree now living in Lebanon, enjoying time with family, friends, and his new bride. Sarmad's BHS70s specialty is organizing reunions, taking lots of pictures, tracking down old friends by any means possible, and being our tireless, multi-talented contributor to the BHS70s site. Debi (BHS 1974-1975) lives in west Texas, hundreds of miles from any other known BHS alumnus. In 1997, Debi posted the first page dedicated to BHS alumni of the years 74-75. She recalls it as the beginning of a "joyful journey." Debi is our webmaster, designer, and a writer for the site. She also answers the general email for BHS70s. Linda (BHS 1973-1978) has stayed closer to the place that we all once called home, working from Lebanon as a professional Google Answerer. Her family continues the BHS tradition, her daughter attends BHS and her son recently graduated from BHS. Besides being a new bride, Linda is our editor, Lebanon liaison, and special projects person. Never say "impossible" to Linda. top How often do you add new items to BHS70s? We had been updating the site about three or four times a year. But that's about to change. We are hoping to increase our updates to at least monthly. We recently bit the bullet spending lots of time to restructure BHS70s, using new tools that we hope will enable us to more quickly post new things to the site. However, remember that everything on the site comes from things you send in, so if there's nothing sent in...well, you get the picture. One more promise to you. Our biggest goal is to get the Alumni Then & Now profiles updated and to keep them current daily, if we have changes that often. That is the project we're working on right now. top Where do you get those old pictures? The pictures in the Scrapbook albums come from dozens of alumni, who cherished them all these years, scanned them, and sent them to us. If you have pictures in a box somewhere, for heaven's sakes scan them, and let's put them here where everyone can enjoy them. And it just might prove to someone's kid somewhere that Dad once had hair (and lots of it, since it was the 70s, after all). As it has been twenty to thirty years since many of the pictures were taken, sometimes a name or two fades. That's when we put a U and a unique number by a picture. If you can identify one of the "Unknowns," please email us. Those U's drive us crazy. Also we have articles on the site, you know. (Some people just look at the pictures. That's ok, too.) We are lucky to have had such a good education at BHS because that means we have lots of alumni who use their gift of gab to write a nice turn of phrase. Some of our articles are written by an alumnus, some are written by our alumni as a group. We adore you all. Keep writing! top Do you charge a membership fee? No. We want as many friends as possible to join us here. We want to stay an informal group, having the most fun and joy that way. It has its drawbacks, sure, but we are convinced that the volunteer way is best for BHS70s. We don't want our motto to become "I serve...those who pay." (However, if you are a billionaire and want to hire us to do BHS70s full-time, we are willing to do that.) top What's your privacy policy? We don't sell, auction, distribute, or even blackmail your information. If someone writes us wanting to contact you, we forward that email to you. We do not give them your email address, or any other information. But do think about this privacy issue -- when you fill out our Then & Now form, write only what you are comfortable being available to any one on the web. We don't publish your email address on the site, but everything else you enter we do. Then & Now is a great way to catch up with you, but it's ok to be vague in some areas if you want. top Why don't you list everyone's email addresses? We used to, and we wish we still could. But there's a big problem with that. Spammers now have automatic programs that scour the web finding websites that have email addresses on them. They gather them and sell them to yucky bad guys. Those bad guys want to sell you all kinds of dubious, sometimes gross, things. As we used to say in the 70s, bummer. So instead we offer a forwarding service. You can send a message through us. That means the message isn't private, but after your friend writes back, you two can catch up in direct emails to each other. top Why do I get spam? That's great you took addresses off the site. But I am still getting spam I think comes from having my email address on the site before. Look around the web and see if your email is elsewhere (type in your email address into google and see what results you get). But the truth is, even if you get your email taken off every website, it's likely to be still floating around in databases available on CD. "$19.95 for 7 million email addresses!" is an actual spam ad, and gives you an idea how impossible it would be to get your one little email address out of circulation. The best thing to do, if you can, is get another email address. (Free email sites are available for example at Yahoo or Hotmail or Google's gmail.) Let that older, junked-up email be the one you give out on the web, saving the new email address to give only to your friends. And just a few more good suggestions: Never write back to a spammer. It confirms your email address as being a "good" one. Never buy anything from a spammer. Never give your credit card or passwords to a site by going to a link in an email. If you do need to update your data with a site you use (eBay, Paypal, whatever), type in that site address in your browser yourself and log in from the site's offical log in menu. top |