This, That, and the Other

For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has instructed us to respond to this challenge by either using the prompt word bird, or by means of the song, “Morning Has Broken,” or by going with another song by Cat Stevens. I decided to go with another Cat Stevens song, “Where Do the Children Play.”

The 1970 song is actually an anti-pollution song in which Cat Stevens admits we’ve progressed a long way through technological advances, but in doing so, he protests that we have destroyed much of our environment by trucks “pumping petrol gas” and by building over and cementing our children’s play areas in cities.

This song has a special meaning for me. When I was in graduate school at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., I was taking an urban planning course. Our term paper assignment was to explore an urban neighborhood in the city and write our paper about the challenges that neighborhood was facing from an urban planning perspective.

I chose the Adams Morgan section. It’s a diverse, multicultural neighborhood in the heart of the city. Back then, when I wrote my paper — I think it was 1974 or 1975 — it was a neighborhood in transition. A lot of new restaurants, many of them ethnic, were opening and the there was a “gentrification” process underway. That led to rent and property value increases, as well as new development.

Looking back, I don’t remember much of what I wrote in my paper, although I do remember getting an A on it. But the one thing I do clearly remember was coming across a large, vacant lot that was once a playground behind a school. The school was set for demolition and there was a huge sign just outside of the fenced in lot that read, “Coming Soon: Luxury High-Rise Condominiums to be Built on this Site.”

Someone had painted graffiti on a blank, brick wall facing into the vacant lot. It said, “Tell me where will the children play?”

Well, I think it's fine
Building jumbo planes
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train
Switch on summer from a slot machine
Yes, get what you want to if you want
'Cause you can get anything

I know we've come a long way
We're changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well, you roll on roads
Over fresh green grass
For your lorry loads
Pumping petrol gas
And you make them long
And you make them tough
But they just go on and on
And it seems that you can't get off

Oh, I know we've come a long way
We're changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well, you've cracked the sky
Scrapers fill the air
But will you keep on building higher
'Til there's no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh?
Will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live?
Will you tell us when to die?

I know we've come a long way
We're changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

Note: this is the second time I’ve featured this song on a Jim Adams Challenge. It was on September 19, 2019, and I wrote it for his Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Music Challenge.