The so-called summer of love was also the summer of riots, and being a product of that period has shaped my life. In 1987 I moved to inner-city Detroit, where it looked like the riot was still going on twenty years later. I also attended my first Rainbow Gathering to verify that the hippie vision of communal love still commanded converts. My reflections on love and riots are not so much my story, but the story that this world we inhabit has made of me.