The song speaks of the cyclical nature of life, love, and loss, particularly war. It poses a series of poignant questions about the disappearance of beauty and innocence, symbolized by flowers.

Truth be told, the plaintive song was never the highlight of my hootenanny days and nights, but it did try to deliver a great message to politicians in those years.

Today, another similarly phrased question can be asked but it does not have any of the gravitas of Seeger’s creation: Where have all the chocolate chips gone in ice cream? With inflation (the cost) and shrinkflation (a half-gallon is no longer a half-gallon in the deceptively same-shaped container), the manufacturers of ice cream have cut back on the amount of now more-expensive chocolate chips they drop into their chocolate chip and mint chocolate chip ice cream. When I complained to the huge conglomerate – the parent company of my (used to be) favorite brand of the latter – the company ombuds(wo)man listened to my complaint, probably wrote it down, and then a week later sent me a coupon for another half-gallon as she may have interpreted a production error to the faulty manufacture of the selection. So did I, sort of.

With the coupon, I “purchased” another half-gallon of the revered mint chocolate chip several months later: same problem, a scarcity of chocolate chips. A few weeks later I purchased a regular chocolate chip selection from another company: not many chocolate chips there again.

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Maybe stores will have to charge slightly more for ice cream with chocolate chips. But, on the other hand, do colleges charge higher tuitions for science majors needing expensive laboratories for experiments than they do for education, sociology, and philosophy majors, whose learning can be accommodated in mere classrooms? No.

In today’s turbulent times, this chocolate chip kerfuffle is not the worst thing that can happen. I’ll try to keep it all in perspective on sultry summer evenings when I indulge in a bowl of ice cream.