From the cradle to the grave, belonging to something is important. Neighborhood kids form gangs or sandlot sports teams, teenagers don the colors of Pflugerville High School, college kids fill up the stadium for Old Siwash. Alums return for homecoming, donate vast sums to the old lacrosse team, travel hundreds of miles and spend thousands of dollars to watch the alma mater in The Frozen Four. Why? Because, by God, they belong to something, they are card-carrying members of a club, be it the Shriners, the Trap Door Spiders or the Owlhoots Motorcycle Gang. They might miss Aunt Susie’s funeral but they’re all in for the annual Sturgis, South Dakota bike rally. Loud and proud, with God on their side. I was walking down the South Kabob Trail in the Grand Canyon one fine July day several years back and up the steep footpath came a trekker in a University of Florida cap. “Go, Gators!” I said in passing and he smiled, straightened up and hastened his pace to the top, cheered on by this unknown brother from the same club. It’s you and I against the world, bro! In all kinds of weather we’ll all stick together because otherwise…well… it’s a little lonely.
Belonging is a fundamental part of being human. We need people and this need is hardwired into our brains. A recent MIT study found we crave interactions in the same region of our brains where we crave food. Another study showed we experience social exclusion in the same region of the brain where we experience physical pain. A study at the University of Michigan found when people lack a sense of belonging it is a strong predictor of depression…an even stronger predictor than feelings of loneliness or a lack of social support.
It’s also telling to look at animal examples. According to Jeanine Stewart of the Neuroleadership Institute, “When something is conserved across species, it’s an indication that some elements of our behavior are driven by things that are more basic and which we can witness.” Research from Florida Atlantic University provides a telling example in beluga whales. The FAU study found these whales form complex social relationships with close kin, but also with distantly related and unrelated whales…a behavior mirrored in humans as well in their connections with close friends, family and others more distant.
As Barbra Streisand sang:
And yet letting our grown-up pride
Hide all the need inside
Acting more like children than children.
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world.
That’s you, pal.
One Nation Under God. And One Is Enough.
In 1978, National Football League film narrator John Facenda, who sounds a lot like God, used the term “Steeler Nation” to describe Pittsburgh’s avid fanbase, thus drawing a distinction between the Steelers’ ardent supporters and those of other teams. Ever since, passionate fans of teams in all sports have adopted the term, even if the average observer might wonder how many citizens it takes to constitute a decent nation. Red Sox Nation is acceptable, of course, as is Gator Nation, but what about lowly Muhlenberg? Must we have a Mule Nation? It sounds so awkward and unoriginal. How about resorting to the phrase “a pack of mules” and calling Muhlenberg the Mule Pack? Florida fans could be the Alligator Congregation, Ohio State fans the Buckeye Nuts, while FSU would have its Seminole Reservation. Much better. Just think of it; the Tulane Wave Surfers, the Army Brats, the Texas Horn Dogs…there’s no end to the possibilities. Hold on a second---someone just asked about Syracuse, an obvious problem. The Orange Juliuses just won’t do and the Orange Aid seems wimpy. Okay, got it---we’re going with the Orange CRUSH. What else ya got? Iowa State? The Storm Trackers. Baylor? The Bear Necessities. We’ll be here all week, folks…don’t forget to tip your waitress.
Jesus Loves You, Despite Everything
Siobhan and I were walking through the neighborhood one recent morning when we passed Cathy, a familiar face on the morning jaunt. She carried with her a smile and her imposing stick, intended for balancing and to ward off errant coyotes. Somedays we pass with a couple of words, this time we stopped to talk, and Cathy brought up the subject of church, asked us which one we belonged to. Not nosy or preachy, just curious. We told her we were members of the Church of the Golden Rule, which was very forgiving about Sunday service lapses. Cathy said she was a believer but the main attraction of her facility was its ambiance, fellowship, the opportunity to make friends. She was fairly new in the ‘hood and wanted to belong to something and when that something is church, nobody asks any questions. You are immediately assumed to be an okay guy or girl, maybe even a future dinner invitee or quilting bee companion, or, if you get particularly close, co-mourner. People at these places often speak very little of God, himself, but more about weddings and swap meets and health issues and vacations. If some unfortunate member of the congregation becomes ill, everyone knows what to do, where to go, what to say. Of course, the inverse is also true. If someone is exiled from their religious community for, say, their politics, their sexuality or other unacceptable taboos, they often lose their entire little world.
Fortunately, there are other options for community, sometimes an entire town. In the nineteen-sixties and seventies, places like San Francisco and Austin and Boulder and Gainesville drew endless young pilgrims looking for a new shrine at which to worship, new companions, a life in common with people who were discovering an alternate way to think and live. The Peace/Love crowd gravitated to the Subterranean Circus, the Florida Theater, any back porch where a hometown rock band was playing free music, forming their own society within the greater one. Today, they're still at it---only the venues have changed…to Heartwood Soundstage, the One Love Cafe, Friday Nights on the Downtown Plaza, Chiappini’s sanctuary in Melrose. On a good night, you might even spot a quiet Jesus floating through these landscapes (though it might also be Chuck LeMasters in a fright wig).
The hippies, of course, had their own religions, often Eastern, sometimes pagan, occasionally Wiccan. Then---and perhaps now--- there was also the inclusive live-and-let-live Universal Life Church, with its outdoor chapels in the forest. If you were so inclined, you could send in a cereal boxtop and five dollars and become a licensed minister of the ULC, allowing you to preside over weddings, speak in solemn tones at funerals and give fatherly advice to your flock, as our old pal Danny Levine did. One day, an old acquaintance from Temple Beth Sholom in Miami came up and asked, “Danny, what’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a place like this?”
D. Levine looked up and offered his usual genuine smile. “Fostering harmony,” he said. Where do we sign up for that church?
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
“It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood…a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?”---Fred Rogers
The Facebook neighborhood is a little rougher these days…filled with varlets pushing crotchy reels, posting silly questionaires and trying to convince you you’re smarter than Einstein if you can just answer these ten questions. Where are all the stickball players, the hopscotch boxes, those guys who come around in fifty-year old trucks to sharpen your scissors? Facebook, of course, sends out its Sanitation Department periodically to clean up the place but its difficult to maintain a neighborhood which lets just anybody in. Maybe they need a few gated communities.
Nobody has to live in a Facebook village, of course, but there are obvious benefits. If you’re Nancy Kay, you might catch a ride to the ophthalmologist. If you’re Will Thacker, you can set off stinkbombs. If you’re Georgie Ghetagrip, you can reveal your flirtations with suicide to see if anyone cares. Having Facebook friends offers several psychological advantages, including an increased sense of belonging, reduced feelings of isolation and emotional support. It can also help individuals maintain close contact with loved ones, particularly those who live far away, like in Bronson. Then too, FB residency provides a platform for sharing experiences and receiving validation, not to mention the opportunity to post funny cartoons of Donald Trump on the toilet.
Positive social relations are known to have a beneficial impact on health, physical and mental. Dawn Stevenson of South Florida, a modern day Perils of Pauline heroine, rises from the dead monthly after yet another scrape with the archvillain Cancer, who carries bullying to new heights. Just when you think she’ll be run over by that railroad engine steaming around the curve, she unties herself from the tracks and leaps to safety, giving Cancer the finger one more time. Having a FB audience to cheer her on is like being the home team at an SEC football game and Dawn is boosted in mind and body by her cheerleaders. Simultaneously, the cheer squad is boosted by realizing they are not Dawn. Studies reveal that just thinking about friends activates specific areas of the brain---including the ventral striatum, amygdala, hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex---more significantly than other types of relationships. At least that’s what our pal Big Ted of Newark tells us.
The hitch in our getalong is that after age 70, our friends start disappearing faster than Arkansas Democrats. In your seventies, you pull up to the toll plaza and the Grim Reaper is manning three-quarters of the kiosks. Other friends move away to Bhumfuk Junction, like Judi Cain did. And anybody who’s left can’t leave the house, crippled by some septuagenarian plague like shingles, the vapors, narcolepsy, the rockin’ pneumonia or the boogie-woogie flu. This is obviously a job for the new Pope, Bobby Prevost of Chi-town, a known healer and righter of wrongs. We called him and made a deal.
On the weekend of May 2, 2026, a protective aura will be placed over the Heartwood Soundstage facility. No one will be nauseous, lame or otherwise incapacitated by some grim disease. For seven hours, everyone will be allowed to dance without fear of heart attack, stroke or angry bunions. If it’s critical that we see our friends as much as possible, how valuable is it to see all of them at the same time in the same place? Where have you gone, Michael Hatcherson, Gregory Barriere, Debbie Adelman, David Matthews, Thomas Sutton, the Nation lifts its lonely eyes to you?
Write it down on your wrist with indelible ink: The Grand Finale, May 2, 2026, 1-8 p.m. at Heartwood. Free admission to people of good cheer. All your friends will be there, even Judi Cain, who promises to parachute in naked. If you liked the original, you’ll love the sequel.
Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle,
Just remember darlin’ all the while,
You belong in Gainesville.
That’s all, folks….
