Ah, let's see.  The semesters after. In my university experience....

  An almost total reserve followed.  There wasn't a person who didn't feel some measure of involvement even though, overall, it was the "radicals" who took the fall and who were ousted from the hallowed halls.  There was a lot of unresolved that got placed in the stacks.  Faces had doured somewhat.  Activism had made a lot of noise, but like academia alone, not much had changed politically because of it.

  People developed better senses of self and self-control.  And a mutual sense of place as not really owned by any one group.  Professors seemed to revert to a more research-based learning rather than allow cracks into which an out-of-hand might slip and develop.  Some (with feelings hard to read) were clearly distancing their romantic notions of teaching from "job".  It became a dance again.  Very straightforward introductions like My name is Tim and I teach history.  At most people wished out loud that all the ground covered in confidence hadn't been lost to a stuffy-shirted generic, but group-wise, it had.

  A thoughtful professor started saying, My name is Belinda and this is what I bring to the table....

  Literalists didn't see any table, but remembered the woman's name.

  Deans made it a point to be heard by students, warnings with and without winks, Don't jazz it up too much.  Under a microscope turns shirts stuffy.  But it also shores up parameters on a notion like "Academia".  And that creates the need for speakeasies and alternate venues.  The need of humans to express themselves has often prompted communications and art.  That kind of work may not be welcome at a Board Meeting or even earn one enough money for beans with pork, but it saves lives and prevents flatlining in culture.

  Good, glad you found yourself, now go be that!  Certainly there were members of Congress who breathed easier when the Hill should be more like a campus.  Others with a more critical eye towards how America truly functions knew it would be harder than ever to refresh a liberal art bunch in there than a diversity of representatives who do the job as the job needs doing and step away from policy as schooling everyone.  The commentators droned on.

  Have YOU ever been in a prison?  A student asked the teaching a Social Justice class to get further in law school professor.  The professor didn't answer at first.  We watched as she eyed the student and didn't ask, Have you?  Or is it a relative?  Literally cleared throat.  Well, no, but

  A lot of conversations were started and left suspended.  Outside in the City guns in waistbands and drug paraphenalia all over the place spoke volumes about theories v realism.  Lawyering is as liberal as it gets, a parent said to a crying worn out Christian kid.  Really? Sucking back sniffles.  I'm tired.  Yeah, think about it.  Squiggling up, around, over, through any truth to prove point.  Did you guys fight with the teacher?  No.  Good.  You've only got a little time left and you, you don't have anything to prove to anyone but yourself.

  Okay.

  Self-authoring a life, I thought back to camping and how brave it was of an overworked mother to schlepp to the woods and prove love and care not just to her own son, but to more than a dozen she'd written a song for and sang without crying.  Ganging up to protect tenures and pensions, I thought of the hundreds of people I'd met in retail and food service, workers and customers alike, who agree: We're only as "good" as our next meal.  Hard to know about what to pursue for self exactly.  But I knew we didn't need to be afraid of an America that doesn't squiggle from the basics of Constitution.

  Not your playground, we made tee-shirts for the crossing guards at an elementary school nearby.  "Well, thank you." Eyes watered.

  "What's wrong?" One asked another.

  "Touched."

  The silence then stuffed with, with all of the things professors know and don't know in the spotlight of a question.

  A third ran a weathered hand over the folded tee-shirt and pressed it further into the tissue paper cocoon.  "Somebody might take it the wrong way," she said diplomatically.

  "Like how?"

  "Like it's a threat."

  "Oh my God," I watched my hands squish the lid back on the box.  Eyes just looking at each other.

  "I'll save them," the oldest crossing guard unsquished the corners of the box.

  "The kids too," another of the three assured.

  A closet door was opened and revealed totally neat.  "What else you got in there?" The youngest asked the oldest.

  "Oh, some different things."

  Up above uniforms and Sunday clothes, tee shirts in hangers, and shoe boxes with only a few pair of casual work shoes on top, other gift boxes on a shelf.  "Mostly things that came at Christmas." The smells of chili were starting to reach the sitting area of the apartment.  "You'll both stay to dinner," she said as she dragged a tablechair over to the closet.

  "Uh-uh, no, have to get back to campus before dark," heads shaking no.  "We'll stay," the other crossing guards offered.

  "You're not invited," the oldest one moved boxes around on the shelf and made a slot for our deposit.  "'Sides if nobody stays, I'll have lunches for the rest of the week."

  Outside the four of us lit cigarettes and made sure okay.  I shook my own head, stupid, "I shoulda thought of that, so stupid."

  A cloud of cigarette smoke said, "Not stupid."

  "Maybe too kind?" The youngest crossing guard asked.

  "Pretty vanilla," the next oldest crossing guard said.

  "Like we're just dumb white people?  Vanilla?"

  "Nobody's talking about smarts smartypants."

  "What are we talking about?"

  "Or not talking about?"

  She didn't answer.  She shook her own head, eyes narrowing.  After a while she said, "My father knew Biko."

  "The guy in the song?"

  "The guy in the song.  It took a long time to do what he's been doing."

  "Are you South African?"

  "Your daddy knew the Bishop?"

  "Meaning one failed tee shirt does not activist make?"

  "No, just black.  As black as black gets.  Yes, my father worked with him more than once.  And you, Mrs. T appreciated, appreciates people at the College thinking of the younger ones, but the crime problem here is not going to be solved by tee shirts.  It's endemic."

  I put that word on the running list to ponder in my dictionary.  She took a tube sock rolled up out of a pocket and got her keys out of the sock.  "A flavor that's all.  We're all just humans with flavoring Vanilla."

  "Should I call you Licorice?  Or Just Black?  Or As Black As It Gets?  Or Chocolate?  Or

  "It's Gina, that's my given name."

  "Cool.  I'm Lara and my schoolmate here is," on the phone, so often on the phone.  "Starting to make it as a musician."

  "Really?"

  "Beth, hey sorry," she put her hand out and both crossing guards shook it.  One asked, "What kind of music?"

  "Uh, not defining it on purpose."

  "Well, maybe we'll get to hear it sometime."

  "This semester's been crazy busy."

  "And now we can take act of activism off the list."

  "Or re-do, maybe it should go on the re-do list," the younger crossing guard suggested.

  "I'm so over other peoples' lists and wasn't even aware that activism was a thing separate from life," Beth took a pack of smokes out and offered to share.  No takers.  "I never heard of that kind," someone said.

  "Well, I've got to get ready for work, early," Gina said.

  "Thanks.  For not being mean or anything about the tee shirts," I said.  

  Gina passed the younger crossing guard a bus pass and told all of us, "If I was going to waste time being mean, it would be at the bad guys.  But we just can't right now."

  Endemic, the word was one I knew and didn't know I knew.  Like "flavors" it stuck in the gristmill of my mind.

  Back in the class Lincoln who was calling himself Moomaduke chewed on one corner of his inner lip.  How'd it go?

  How'd it go for you?

  Neither of us seemed to want to answer the question.

  I learned the word endemic.

  Ah yes, erndemic.

  And I met someone who knew someone who worked with Bishop Biko.

  Beeekoh, Beeeekohoh oh Beekoh he humsang.

  And, got named Vanilla as a flavor as in we're all humans, different flavors.

  Least you didn't get spit on.

  You got spit on Moomaduke?

  He responded with an older lady eah-hmmmmm.  Then said, Yep, big old clump of spit right here, he pointed to his breastplate.

  Did you spit back?

  Hell no.

  My tee shirts were a flop, now stowed away like ugly sweaters and reindeer socks.

  I could add my picket sign to that pile.

  The professor came in just then.  A tiny lady with a high squeaky voice.  She put her drink with a reusable straw on the edge of the desk and asked, How is everyone?

  Groans and mutters mostly.  Then someone ventured that was hard.  

  What was hardest about it?  Let's use that as a starting point.

  Turned into an honest discussion about levels of comfortableness with doing activism.  Some people felt such work shouldn't be about personal comfort.  Other students felt strongly about sacrifice and activism not really being service so, How is the greater good served?

  Is it?

  More conversation brought people to definitively not agreeing about activism's purpose and we got into asking each other if it has a role?

  Like life's a movie?

  Lincoln slipped me a note.  Tutu was the Bishop.

  Is your life like a movie?  A student asked another student.

  Yeah, a horror flick.

  The professor said, Let's switch gears.  What was easy about the projects you undertook?  And let's write that down.  What is written down can be the start of the due "process papers".  Eyebrows went up and people sighed.  But all of us started writing.

  After class Moomaduke said, Thought you were more of a journalist White Bread.

  White Bread?  That's not a flavor.  And, the conversation about Biko was just people talking.

  Still.  It was a lie.

  Maybe a stretch Linc, Pastrami and Swiss on Rye, but not a lie.  And I really wouldn't know about South African history.

  So, White Bread just takes it all in?  

  What's your point?  Why are you

  All up in your grill

  About something, I don't even know what.

  Have you considered actually using journalism to achieve the goals you say are the same for everyone?

  Like activism journalism?  The two things don't go together for me.

  Think about it.  He was gone to cross campus before I could give him the stink eye.  How dare he even suggest someone should combine journalism with anything else.