How badly the coronavirus lockdown is impacting you in terms of your craving human contact outside your immediate family circle will vary with the degree to which you’re an extrovert by nature. After weeks and weeks of isolation, however, even those of us who normally enjoy cocooning may be feeling a touch of loneliness. For those who thrive on social interaction, cabin fever may be at an all-time high scarcely alleviated by frequent FaceTime or Zoom chats.
It’s enough to reawaken Psychology 101 memories of those creepy 1950s behavioral experiments in which baby rhesus monkeys pined away when their cloth-covered surrogate mothers were replaced by new ones made of metal wire. How can we feel connected when we can’t be in the same physical space, lest more people catch the coronavirus and wind up dead?
Various members of our communities are coming up with some ingenious approaches. On March 17, two Needham, Massachusetts friends, Cara Soulia and Kristen Collins, initiated something they call the Front Steps Project. Its stated goal is “to highlight the faces of our community during a time when we might not see them in passing at the grocery store, coffee shop, on the train or at the gym.”
Soulia, a professional photographer, brings her equipment to people’s homes and takes portraits of them on their porches from a very safe distance. The photos are then shared on social media.
In lieu of a fee for her services, Soulia asks that her subjects make whatever donation they feel they can afford to a local community council. So far that group has raised more than $25,000.
The idea has spread like wildfire to other towns across America, with a stunning $750,000 in total raised for local not-for-profit organizations.
‘We’re new in the area’
Now the Front Steps Project has taken hold in New Paltz, thanks to Leo Vatkin Photography. Vatkin and his wife, Laura Miller, who does marketing for the home-based business, relocated from the metropolitan area to New Paltz only last July, after having been weekenders for some years.
“This is our full-time home now, but the majority of my work is still in New York and Long Island,” explains Vatkin, who makes most of his living shooting weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs. “Since we’re new in the area, we don’t really know many people up here,” says Miller.
With their business at a standstill and plenty of time on their hands, the couple responded with enthusiasm when they heard about the Front Steps Project via the professional photography grapevine. Here was a way to do some community-building, get to know their neighbors, and make some new friends – not to mention get the word out about their services for the future.
“We are closed for business, and we are simply lending our skills as a personal volunteer project to raise funds for a local nonprofit,” Miller said. “We are not taking a penny from anyone. We are event photographers and all our spring/summer events were postponed, so we are doing this because we want to help. This is not about trying to find a loophole to skirt any laws and stay operating when we shouldn’t be.”
“It’s nice for people to see their neighbors’ faces, looking happy and doing okay,” adds Vatkin. “Everybody wants someone to speak to.”
They chose the New Paltz Community Foundation’s Project Help Your Neighbor 2020 to be the recipient of donations that participants in the Front Steps Project would like to contribute.
They got the project under way with a self-portrait in front of their own house, and then photographed their immediate neighbors, Gina and Joe Guarante, and their son Joey, 16, and daughter Sammy, 14. “My back yard touches their back yard,” says Gina. “They introduced themselves to us in the fall.” Gina and Laura hit it off immediately, often talking walks together and joining the same book club. The Guarantes were the first to sign up for the Front Porch Project, An adjunct professor of English at both Marist and Dutchess Community College, Gina is able to continue working from home via distance learning.
‘The kids are all in different places’
Joe’s work as entertainment director at Rocking Horse Ranch has come to a complete standstill. “The hardest part is getting into a new routine, having everyone in the same space 24 hours a day,” says Gina. “The isolation part of this is really hard.” The Guarantes keep in touch with extended family via Zoom, collectively mourning a great-aunt in her 90s who recently died from the coronavirus in a nursing home.
Another New Paltz family who eagerly agreed to participate were Jenn and Jeff Torborg and their three sons: Ben, 6, Sam, 4, and Peter, 2. They learned about the Front Steps Project on the New Paltz Community Facebook page. “We just moved into the house in July of last year. So, we don’t have a lot of photos of the family with the house as background,” says Jenn.
Jenn teaches English to kids in China online, and Jeff was already working from home as an electrical engineer, but not being able to take three little ones on hikes and to the playground to burn off energy, or to storytime at the library, makes this a challenging time. Playdates for Ben these days take the form of remote Lego tutorials with a friend.
“The kids are all in different places,” she says. “I can play a board game with the four- and six-year-old, but then I have to keep the two-year-old from messing up the board.”
Getting their photos taken, even from far away was an exciting event for the Torborg household. “The boys are incredibly interested in seeing themselves in the pictures,” says Jenn, “especially the ones with the tipi they made out of sticks and wooden pieces.” A highlight for Sam was seeing photos of his preschool teacher and her son posted on Facebook the same day that his family’s pictures appeared, according to Jenn.
Instructions for how to sign up for a free 15-minute photo session in front of your house or apartment can be found on Vatkin’s website. “As a result of the Covid 19 pandemic, people are spending time at home like never before. We’d like to document this unique point in time in New Paltz life,” he writes. “We will not interact with you at close range. We will text you when we are ready to capture your family, and will maintain a safe distance, utilizing a strong zoom lens. Safety is paramount! New Paltz families of any size are welcome: individuals, couples, families with kids, with well-behaved pets are invited. Dress up, don’t dress up, wear a costume, wear your PJs – anything goes!”
Vatkin and Miller say they are planning to expand their efforts to other locations in Ulster County. possibly Rosendale, Kingston, Woodstock and a few other areas. “We will raise money for Project Resilience in those areas,” said Miller. ‘We have not started promoting this expanded effort yet, but hope to do so in the next week.”
For more on Project Help Your Neighbor 2020, visit here.
Join the family! 
