WE ARE STRANGERS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD

My street is only one block long.  There are ten houses on each side of the road.  When I first moved here, we were younger couples with children, had a lot in common and many of us got together socially and even had neighborhood parties.  The first divorce on the street started a change. As years went by, there were seven divorces and that number grew in time, and soon people stopped knowing one another as new people moved in and out of the neighborhood  Following the spate of divorces , as neighbors grew older, deaths removed many people and it seemed that most people isolated themselves.  We stopped having parties that included most of the neighbors.  One newer couple had Christmas parties for a few years and connected neighbors.  They stopped and we have become a street of strangers, for the most part.

It makes me wonder if this is reflective of the country at large but I have no way of knowing.  It saddens me  that a way of life has become one when each house remains alone in a a crowd,  To the best of my knowledge, people no longer visit one another's houses.  There seem no shared interests and little in common, or just the lack of awareness if there is.

This effects cohesiveness of effort.  President Obama is trying to bring the country together. 
we need someone with youth and energy to do the same with the people on this one little block.  We, on this street,, represent the disparity of our nation.  We need to start relating to real people who live next door rather than the limits of contact through Facebook,  We lose much of the basis for being in America.  We know facts but not people.  As I think more on it, there are some assets to Facebook but people rely on it too much and relate with the emotional distance of its founder.