Assimilate!

   Was the concept back then, not critical race theory.  As colleagues, friends, and foes were we carving ourselves as sculptures intellectually and emotionally.  And we were realizing how much culture also carves and chisels us as individuals.  All that shaping and molding is its own kind of "work".  It takes time and energy, resources, and willingness.

  Some white people were just as sensitive about race and religious assimilation as were non-whites.  And as developing professionals we all cared about what we were supposed to become, what we'd become, what we were going to become if.

  If I do it that way I will

  Be like you?

Lincoln was thrilled.  He went through names like pepper packets on french fries and vinegar.  He wore funny outfits.  He even ensembled a foamyfabric hot dog costume.  When he walked up to some women chatting in that get up, they'd get it.  Various reactions.  

  You are what you eat!  Someone would have a aha moment and connect one more drift into central highlighted concept.  That particular concept seemed to be getting all over everything and forcing a war of the wills.

  At the Reader's Feast I'd stacked about forty books around my coffee.  "In there?"

  I looked around my barrier.  "Hey you."

  "Hay is for horses.  What's going on here?"

  "Uh.  Why?"

  Eyebrows up and down.

  "Do I look weird?"

  "Can't be seen from the street."

  I cleared a path.  "Got any money?"

  "TWO!  That's my limit."

  "Dollars or books?"

  "I'm not buying your books!  Dollars in my budget for this sort of thing."

  "This sort of thing.  We're onto something at my school."

  "We're not."

  "I'll buy your coffee if you put just a couple books on

  "I want tea today.  Which two of the forty would you pick?" She crossed to the counter and I cussed capitalism but immediately thought about the condition of the books if they'd been burnt or dumpster'd or mangled in a semi-truck with used luggage and beat up shoes and 

  The steamy tea obscured her face.  I started to clear more of a space at the table.  I plucked at least six books and stretch-reached them away.  She looked at those before sitting down.  "And the theme is?"

  "What's wrong with your school?"

  "All the same, all the time, all together now.  Rah, rah!"

  "Assimilation."

  "Should we run or roll over?"

  "I'm...well, I'm hoping there's more answers in these."

  "It's a rehash.  The debate."

  "Maybe amongst you smart people, but it's really bringing some stuff up for people."

  A corner of her mouth frowned.  My mind scrambled to not waste time.  "But in that course I told you about Sources of Power

  "Yeah?

  "Well, it's like the Catholic Church, like 500 years behind the times on some stuff."

  "Like what?" She grabbed a book and opened it, ptetended to read.

  "Well, people the world over are just now starting to talk about the Vietnam War."

  "So we're in a post Vietnam War period."

  "I guess but there's, like, well, that professor told us, she has to be sooooo careful."

  "Was she in the war?"

  "She's like, well, the course is like

  "Classified?"

  "No, but it's a seminar and

  "She'll have to kill you if you retain the information?" Her fingers with broken nail polish ran up and down the stacked spines of the books.

  "Noooo.  But everybody in there is top level serious.  And the course combines materials without or being very careful to not collide, like

  "You should pick this one!" She'd settled on a novel.

  "Not sure but it seems like a lot of the people can't talk to each other."

  "Bet she gets tired of lecturing."

  "She doesn't really lecture."

  "No lecture?"

  "It's way better.  So we get like handouts from different categories of, hmmm, workers or

  "Professionals?"

  "Yeah." The tea had stopped steaming and she slurped it and grinned.

  "Right, professionals but you know in a war

  "Like everything"

  "In a war, half or maybe more than half of everything is about separation.  Even on the battlefield.". 

  She got up then.  Stretched, admitted to watching TV News all night.  "I am listening."

  "Let's take a smoke break." The cafe had just recently taken down walls and there was NO SMOKING inside anymore.

  Because it was hot war in the Middle East....

  For one thing the curtains between people were sometimes there, sometimes not.  We had to learn on the fly.  We made lists, index carded, memorized, practiced.  Some people mastered not really saying much ever.  As much as there was opening in worldly culture, there was also a lot of stifling self into toolbox, specializing into "field".  Dancing was again a pounding-floor.  Work it out!  Working professionals would encourage the you-think-too-muchs.  People were making descions about in or out not only on tolerance du jour, but according to ambitious visions for self's future.  We had more goodbye, bon voyage, and Godspeed parties than gender reveals.

  There were people with lasso.  Academia allowed for a dissection of cultural flow and ebb, and it was a holding ground on something's got to stay solid in this hurricane of policy and change.

  Put your shirt back on, a chaperoning colleague urged a potential professor on the cusp of 

  Okay?

  Some okays? were definitively met with NO.

  Some people stalked off, cussing but not in anyone's face, some splashed into the still-more-nebulous "art world" with outrageous outfit and falsetto bravado.  Processing.  Had been emboldened.  Did it.  Everyone in every field wondering...Did it matter?

  Sticking to the books seemed like following a fence line in the Dustbowl.  But the amount of books was mounting like the dust.  Channels of communication were choking with quotes at length and synopsis and summation.  AND WHAT'S YOUR FEELING ON THIS?  Team leaders asked and some people actually responded about their feelings.

  A lot of stuff was combining to make hybrid.  Some stuff, grouping, and so multi.  People and place was exploding on the television.  Like little songs that held so much, towards "peace process" was loaded statement.  As was someone's LEAVE ME ALONE.

  Minds and hearts wrestled with the matter of life and love/hate as we'd done with fissure and nuclear material.

  "W" ducking that shoe thrown was because he was a man immersed in the culture of it and "on his game", keeping up with the waves.

  In theory someone working in a field can get updates and learn about recent innovation and issue, it's keeping up with the waves.

  Complicating what a nation does to its own policies and procedures are the big things like plague and war.  Some writers have made "masterpiece" of it all.  Those same, some, and others have times when the "genius" of situation is not formed and/or emerging.