Flowers in Full Bloom

Song 370: This week the playlist comes around to San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers In Your Hair) by Scott McKenzie, written by John Phillips. When this song came along in the late spring 50 years ago, I was already a big fan of Papa John's songwriting, having gotten hooked a year earlier on the music of The Mamas and The Papas, but I had no idea about the community that had gravitated to the Haight-Ashbury district, so I really liked the record the first time I heard it, but it took a while for me to get the message. Growing up in a conservative and fundamentalist religious home, I didn't necessarily connect with the hippie counterculture, as much as I did with the music, but by 3 years later, having lived nearly a year outside of the family circle after graduating HS, I had fully plugged in with hippiedom and the peace bohemians. This year, on the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, one of those peace types defused and ultimately entirely deflated a scheduled neo-Nazi rally in San Francisco. The gathering was due to happen yesterday, August 26, but, unlike Charlottesville, where antifas met nNs with serious signs and protests, and serious injury and death ensued, in SF, an artist named Tuffy Tuffington created a Facebook event page that recommended greeting the nN assembly with flowers for their hair, and a carpet of dog poop. Tuffy’s inspired hilarity quickly galvanized an opposition force that included clowns, kayakers and kids, and the Flowers Against Fascism actually succeeded in getting the alt-righters to cancel their gig. Kudos to Mr. Tuffington for putting the Turd Reich into context, using humor to defuse the fascist absurdity, which is, I think, the best and most effective way to face neo-Nazis.