I can’t get that song, “San Francisco,” out of my mind. Maybe it’s because we drove over both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge last weekend on our way to our grandson’s college graduation ceremony. Maybe it’s because San Francisco is in the news so much – for both the good and the bad. Maybe it’s because I think we all need a “summer of love.”
Scott McKenzie recorded the gorgeous song back in 1967 – the summer now referred to as “The Summer of Love.” Although in today’s Andy’s Corner Andy questions just how “lovey-dovey” that summer may have been, to me the reference to a summer of love seems incredibly apropos, given the fact that Andy and I got married in May of 1967.
However, while around 100,000 folks were gathering in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury in June of that year, dreamily talking about love and peace, Andy and I were saying our (very, very teary) good-byes, as he prepared to leave for Army basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey…with a year-long tour of duty in Vietnam almost inevitable. Having been drafted made the situation even more difficult. Believe me, we thought more about Canada than San Francisco!
It’s hard looking back at that summer and imagining those two different and conflicting scenes. The nation was so divided.
Another memorable song – recorded in July of 1967 – was the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” Upon listening to the song in May of 2023, Andy and I both commented that “love isn’t all we need!” Fifty-six years later cynicism may have overcome us. Nonetheless, hearing and seeing the Beatles when they were so young – and were performing in such a casual setting – is a treat. As you watch the video below, be sure to be on the lookout for another very famous musician among those gathered around. Admittedly, I had to check in with our son to make the absolute identification. I’m not as “hip” as those 1967 hippies!
I was 23 the summer of 1967. That summer, while I was consumed with thinking about love…and war, another young woman, born just a day after I was, was thinking more about food – and plotting her first book on that subject. Her name? Frances Moore Lappé.
Diet for a Small Planet, Lappé’s first book, didn’t come out until 1971, but she was working on it in the late 60’s at Cal, where her husband was in graduate school. At first Lappé thought of the book more as a political manifesto – pushing us away from meat and toward plant-based diets. But her very-supportive publisher, Betty Ballantine of Ballantine Books, encouraged her to soften it a little by including recipes.
In 2021 the 50th Anniversary edition was released – with some recipe updates, moving the ingredients toward a more world-view of food, rather than Mediterranean-focused. Over 30 million copies of the book have been sold over the years. Not bad.
Lappé has kept up her activism throughout her life. Her publications include 2004’s You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear and 2017’s Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want. Her 2021 updates describe the good and the bad and the ugly, relative to changes to food and farming and the environment. I love that Lappé has such an upbeat conclusion to that edition – the final lines of this Amanda Gorman poem:
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
If only we’re brave enough to see it,
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
Today’s vegetarian recipe comes from the 2021 edition of Diet of a Small Planet (surprise!), and it’s based on a 1970’s recipe which was served for lunch to the patrons of San Francisco’s Ecology Center. It was tweaked a bit for the new edition by adding coconut milk. I think those who participated in the Summer of Love would approve. Or should I say they’d LOVE it! 🙂
And here’s a shout-out to all of those new college graduates who are looking forward to a life committed to working together to improve our world – and to Silas, our grandson, whose major at Cal, fittingly enough, was Society and the Environment.
And let’s hope that love returns. Fingers crossed for a lovely and love-filled summer of 2023…”for there is always light.”
Chickpea Mulligatawny
- 3-4 T butter
- 2 onions, coarsely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 carrot, chopped
- 2 stalks celery, chopped
- 1 green bell pepper, chopped
- 1 large apple, peeled, cored, and chopped
- 1 tsp curry powder
- 5 T tomato paste
- 2 T finely chopped parsley – plus more for garnish
- 3 c vegetable stock
- 1 13-oz can coconut milk
- 2 c cooked chickpeas (you’ll need almost 2 cans, if you’re not cooking them yourself)
Melt the butter in a large pot, add the onions and garlic, and saute until the onions are transluscent. Stir in the carrot, celery, green pepper, apple, curry powder, tomato paste, parsley, vegetable stock, coconut milk, and chickpeas and simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Salt to taste – and serve with a grain of your choice (we like rice) and topped with more parsley, if you like.
This triggered a trip down memory lane, so to speak.
An old girlfriend of mine (in the early seventies) was an Albuquerque housewife in 1967. She divorced her husband, and took off for San Francisco with her boyfriend. She said the Scott Mackenzie song was playing on their car radio a lot. They went directly to the Haight-Ashbury. They met hippies who gave them LSD, which they enthusiastically swallowed. That night, the hippies took them to one of the San Francisco music halls where they saw The Doors. During the concert, she had sex with her boyfriend on the floor. That’s gotta be peak “Summer of Love.”
Secondly, Frances Moore Lappé lived a couple of houses down from me on Precita St. in San Francisco in the late ’70s. Weird, huh? I knew she was the author of “Diet for a Small Planet” (I had a paperback copy), but it never came up the few times we spoke.
Wow, Larry – your old girlfriends were certainly more colorful than mine. That’s quite a tale and definitely fitting for the “Summer of Love” reputation. And, if I am correct, in terms of the “small world” model, I’m only one handshake away from Frances Moore Lappé. Very cool.
“As you watch the video below, be sure to be on the lookout for another very famous musician among those gathered around.”
As you know, there were three “super groups” in the ’60s, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and The Monkees. That other famous musician is Micky Dolenz.
Andy here: Close, but no cigar. I believe the very famous musician” was Myron Floren, the popular accordionist from the Lawrence Welk show.