Sorta makes you wonder if all the good stuff hasn't already been
written...  It is a bit overwhelming, I admit.

Will, T2

One of my all-time favorite songs, because I can so relate to it.  Used to
sing it to my boys nearly every night at bed-time.  That is until they were
old enough to tell me "STOP SINGING DADDY WE'RE TRYING TO SLEEP!"

Hi Loretta,

Not really, Loretta, except perhaps incidentally as a source of inspiration
in the creative mind of Harry Chapin....

Of course you know that the "cat's cradle" is a creation a person makes with
string and a pair of hands.... really popular with children and adults.
Chapin's song was about children growing up, change, lost opportunities of
parenting, and regret.... Vonnegut named his book that, because that one of
the characters in the story was playing cat's cradle when the atomic bomb
was dropped on Hiroshima, and went on to write a social satire about global
change and disaster brought on by man as a result of science, religion and
technology run amok.

Over the years since I first read that book, I sometimes find myself
reminded of different aspects of it by things and conversations that occur
in daily living. For instance, the hookah reference in this thread made me
think of the implement of capital punishment on the island of San Lorenzo in
Vonnegut's book... A big hook upon which the unfortunate person being
punished was impaled.... It was used only every two year, so its main value
was symbolic. The dictator, "Papa" Manzano over those who would oppose him
by threatening with impalement on the hook....

Will, T2