Chef Matt Storch, owner of Match restaurant in SoNo and Westport’s own BurgerLobster was born and raised in Westport. He graduated Staples High School in 1995 and currently lives in Fairfield with his wife and nine-year-old twin boys. 

There is a calm that has settled over the area. Not everyone is rushing around, getting to the train and going out. It’s extended family time and I think it’s hitting home with a lot of people, and they are realizing, again, that this is a small community. It’s touching, and I didn’t think Westport had it in it. Even though you can’t see each other, you feel the love. 

Business is ok. We’ve had some great weeks and we’ve had some mediocre weeks, but our staff is employed and we’re keeping them busy. Staying relevant is important and keeping your name in every body’s ears is important. We are doing curbside at both restaurants and have just started Match Provisions where we sell groceries for pick up. We just started and on that first week we immediately got 75 orders. We open orders on Mondays at matchsono.com and close the store on Thursday, pick up is the following Tuesday at the train station parking lot.  We’re selling milk, eggs, butter, gloves, toilet paper, a mixed produce box (CSA style), frozen pasta, shrimp, meat, fresh and shucked clams and oysters from Copps Island Oysters (Norm Bloom & Son) and a new product we’ve created called Copps Casino, which are shucked oysters with a topping that are baked and frozen to reheat. We also sell beer, wine and liquors. 

It’s truly going to be that the strong survive. It’s going to be survival of fittest and whoever is the smartest marketer is going to be lucky here–and I do think it’s luck. I truly do. I think unfortunately some of my fellow restaurateurs made the mistake of not staying open and not trying. I get it—they didn’t feel safe. I think we figured out the safety part—we don’t let anyone in restaurants except staff.   

I strongly believe that I think the restaurant industry is the best industry this could happen to because we are already sanitary. It is what we were trained to do. So, we add a mask—ok, big deal. It’s an inconvenience but it’s not that side of it that is the issue, it’s the hospitality side. That’s what I love about this business– it’s about making people happy. My fear is that the restaurant industry is not going to look anywhere like it did prior to this. I think it’s going to take a long time to get to full dining back with that fun, safe, entertaining, wholesome feeling. It’s sad. I don’t know what’s going to happen. If I can’t walk around my dining room and make people happy it will suck.” 

Ohio Native, Jim Marpe and his wife, Mary Ellen, have lived in Westport for 31 years. Previously an executive at Accenture, Marpe served on Westport’s Board of Education and on state-level education boards. Active members at Green’s Farms Church both Marpes serve on multiple non-profit boards. Marpe is also an avid wine collector who says “sampling the collection of excellent wines in my wine cellar is a pleasant way to end a challenging day.” He shares his thoughts on being at the forefront of the COVID-19 crisis management on April 30, the original proposed end-date for social distancing measures. 

“As the First Selectman, I have been working seven days a week to help lead Westport through the COVID-19 crisis. Unlike most of my fellow residents, I haven’t had the opportunity to enjoy the “new normal”. Most of my time is spent working virtually from my office and Zoom studio at home. A typical workday now begins at 7am and rarely ends before 9pm. At least some traditional evening meetings are being moved earlier in the day because of greater resident availability and flexibility. 

Mary Ellen spends a significant part of her time working as member of the Westport Country Playhouse to help the Playhouse manage through this crisis and plan for future re-opening and fund raising. She is also playing a lot of virtual Mahjong with her friends. 

As the chief community advocate for social distancing, I’ve gotten used to it and find it surprisingly natural now. We’ve been able to slow the spread of the virus throughout Westport, and this is the way to do it. We’ll need to stay disciplined about the distancing into the summer months as we begin to open public facilities. My personal style is to meet with people “in-person” as much as possible, so I’ve had to shift my communication approach to deal with many more telephone conferences and Zoom-based meetings. My observation is that Zoom forces a more disciplined and efficient meeting; making them more productive and less contentious.  

I’m very pleased with the way the majority have responded with our request to stay inside as much as possible and to socially distance and facemask as much as possible when in public spaces. Most have taken to the motto. “You’re not stuck inside, you’re safe inside”. As always, there are those who don’t want to follow the rules, but for the most part are willing to if confronted politely.  

We are fortunate to have experienced, professional, Town department heads, deputies and employees who are leading the various dimensions of the Town’s response from first responders to public health officials to human services social workers. Our seniors are surprisingly resilient given their vulnerability to COVID-19. It is interesting to see how part of the community is ready to “open up” right away and other parts are wary of opening too soon and, in fact, continue to encourage me to place more social distancing rules in place. But most of all, the great thing about Westport is the creative ways people have found to volunteer and help their neighbors as well as find alternative and creative ways to pass the time. 

All of my skills, experience and beliefs have been called upon to lead the Westport community through this life-threatening event: 

• faith in God to give me the strength and inspiration I need more than ever 
• quantitative and analytical skills from my schooling and professional career  
• leadership experience throughout my professional and personal life 
• respect for experienced professionals and the ‘chain of command” 
• trust in my team and support of my family  
• listening more and speaking less  
• motivated to act  
• no “analysis paralysis”  
• planning for the return to the “new normal” as well as for tomorrow  
• need to inspire  
• speaking with confidence and empathy  
• dealing with my own fears and anxieties while speaking with confidence and positivity 

My hopes are that we come through the next weeks and months with a limited loss of life and that this terrible journey ends as quickly as possible; that we learn the lessons of preparation for such events in the future and that we take what we’ve learned about operating government and business in a more efficient and technology based manner and apply that to future productivity and cost savings; that we learn to pay more attention to those among us that are having challenges of all types and commit to helping them; that we learn to be satisfied with a simpler lifestyle and realize how much less “stuff” we need to make a difference.  

My biggest fear is that we “re-open” too soon without the necessary testing, contact tracing and personal health condition ID information, which results in going back to the current situation or worse. My biggest long-term fear is that we don’t learn the lessons noted above and rebound to our previous collective lifestyle. I also fear that in our rush to get back to “normal” we may forget the enormous environmental challenges that our planet still faces, and which have had to take a back seat to our battle with the Coronavirus. 

Sara Scully and her family have lived in Westport for four years. She is a high school family consumer science (Home Ec) teacher. 

“I’m teaching my classes online, or at least trying to because I teach Home Ec, so it’s kind of difficult because I can’t teach them cooking right now. We’re creating cookbooks and we’re learning about different types of produce. And we’re talking about how the shutdown of everything is impacting the farms and how they’re having a lot of waste because people aren’t buying it. And then all the crops that they planned for like restaurants, so the farmers are having to change because people don’t want to buy like gooseberries and microgreens. They want like lettuce and green beans.  I found it interesting! The children that I’m teaching… they answer my questions but I’m not sure they find it as interesting as I do, but I try to make it exciting. We watch videos too. I get videos from like Alton Brown and the Culinary Institute of America and I show them how to make things through video. But I don’t know what people have, so I can’t ask them to cook. 

I make cakes so I’ve also been making a ton of birthday cakes for all the poor quarantine birthdays. And I’ve been sewing masks to give to friends, family—whomever asks. 

Homeschooling my own children and trying to teach my class at the same time takes up a lot of time. My daughter, who is 12, FaceTimes or SnapChats with her friends, so she’s okay.  

My 10-year-old really looks forward to his class Google Meets so that he can see his friends. 

He is dyslexic so he needs a lot of help and he has a lot of energy, doesn’t want to sit at the computer all day. So, we go for walks and I’ll show them different plants outside. And they don’t know they’re learning. We talked about how the full moon made the tide really high and really low and stuff like that.  

I used to go to work and that was my work time. I planned my day. I did my work. I planned tomorrow. And now I don’t have time to plan and do work because I’m homeschooling and the laundry is here, the dishes are here. It’s terrible. So, I find myself staying up until 11 o’clock at night because that’s when I need to plan or correct papers. 

Hopefully this is a once in a lifetime thing. I guess you can compare it kind of to the hurricanes that we had that trapped us at home. But that was only because we couldn’t get out because the trees were down and there was no power. But I don’t think that has prepared us for this.  

Hopefully it won’t happen again and we all get through it safely and happily, because I know being trapped at home with your family can be very difficult and very hard on relationships.  

For my students, I know some of them don’t come from a happy place, and they come to school to get away. And, I feel like telling them, “I’m sorry we had to send you back there.” 

I’ll ask them how they were doing with some of them. Some of them say they are okay but are really bored. Some of them are say they’re going crazy. I tell them I’m always here to talk. I mean, I wish I could help them more. One of my very good students hadn’t turned in three assignments in a row. When I emailed her to check in and see if I could help, she said she and her mom both had COVID-19. Her mom worked and her mom worked for a hospice. So, it’s just really hard. 

And then all my seniors, they’re so sad because you know, they’re missing out on internships and prom and graduation. Some of them haven’t even picked their colleges. On spring break, they were going to go and drive around and see where they wanted to go to college and make a decision. 

Overall, I think we’re doing a really good job here in Westport. Whenever we go out everyone has masks on. All the stores are complying with how many people should be inside and I think it’s great. I’m really happy with what they’re doing. And I think because of the party we wrapped our heads around it real fast and went on lockdown. I feel like in a lot of other towns, it’s not like this. I go to Norwalk for the grocery store and I feel like they don’t even think anything’s wrong. Some people have masks on, some people have gloves on. But people are standing way too close and they don’t seem to be caring… so I think our town got it real fast. 

Chef and Restaurateur Bill Taibe, is the mastermind behind the beloved Westport restaurants, Ka Wa Ni, the Whelk and Jesup Hall.  He lives in Weston with his wife and two boys who are 15, and 18—a sophomore and a senior in high school respectively. 

We pivoted very quickly to change operations as soon as schools in Westport closed– about a week before the mandate to close restaurants came through.  That Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, we had limited seating and precautions for all staff.  That Saturday I had a full 80-person virtual staff meeting, saying that I believed we were just going along in that way, and then an hour later I told everyone we were shutting down and going to delivery and curbside pickup. It was just my gut reaction to do that. Restaurants are important pieces to the social epicenter of the town and I thought it was our responsibility to do our best for our town, by getting ahead of this thing.  

We are still open and we have 36 employees fully working between three restaurants. I had to send 30 to 40 employees to unemployment and we are trying to do our best to help take care of them. We get nice gratuities from delivery and pick up and we Venmo money to people on unemployment as a donation because even with the extra subsidies, it’s just not enough.  

Sometimes I feel bad that we are doing relatively well under the circumstances. We are in a tremendous place and I would not want to do what we are doing in a different place or different town. We are trying to feel normal and help our customers feel normal and we’ve been fortunate to continue doing what we do best– creating great food. 

It’s funny, my brain works really well when there’s chaos. In fact, I might have been patient zero for ADD back in high school. When I’m kind of cornered and put in a situation to solve, move and pivot—that’s when everything fires away. This has been exciting for me–obviously, not in a good way– but in terms of problem solving and adjusting. Internally, these circumstances make us realize we get a sense of who and what people are. I have 36 employees thrilled to come to work and happy for that opportunity. I know other restaurants that are struggling because employees are happy to stay home and collect unemployment even if the work is there. 

We are the center of a community. In my four restaurants, we’ve seen a lot and heard a lot and pulled people together. In terms of gathering and needing time together, this puts things in perspective. As a community I think we are picking and choosing those things that are important. For example, maybe we’ll come out of this thing and that party we want to have doesn’t need forty people but only fifteen who mean the most to us.  

I really think that there’s this sort of a beautiful awkwardness to the whole thing. It’s not right but there’s a lot of good from it. I am thrilled with how my children are dealing. I can promise that at 15 and 18 I wouldn’t have been dealing. We are not talking about that enough—their resilience and strength. Seniors won’t have last year of playing sports, won’t have a graduation or a senior prom. They will never get that back; these kids and people are complaining about not sitting at a bar? 

I know, too, my perspective is coming from a person who has not been in quarantine. I have worked more in the last month than in last five years. I had to lay off 40 and had to pick and choose and have been dealing with situations and decisions I never thought I’d have to.  

People are learning to care about others. I closed on the Saturday after schools closed not trusting people to do the right decision and make the right choices. I think what is crazy about COVID-19 is not necessarily how it can affect me, but the just as likely chance it does nothing to me, but that my making a poor decision could affect someone else. I take that seriously because I can’t carry that burden if someone comes into contact with a carrier in my space. 

I think we will come back stronger but I don’t think that will happen soon—I don’t think you’ll be sitting at my restaurants any time soon for probably 12 months. I’m preparing for that. We all should.  

When I think what I’m getting out of this– me personally—it’s that I can see who is helping each other and who is not, I want to be around the people who are helping and less around those who are not.  

In the early days of this, we were the first restaurant involved in Food For the Frontlines which was put together by Nicole Strait, an old dear friend whose daughter is part of Westport EMS. She wanted to do something for those workers that could also help restaurants make a little money. We put out 50 meals that first Sunday but we haven’t done another since—not because we don’t believe in but because we are doing relatively well under the circumstances and have received tremendous support from the town. I’d rather step back and let restaurants that need the income more have a chance. What we have been doing instead is a rotating meal to the police department, fire department and EMS locally on my own dime so we can help out hyper-locally. 

 I have built my own confidence to stand my ground on my belief, on my gut, and the sense that this was serious. When I listen to the nonsense of people joking through the process and making fun, I think that’s a malicious approach. If you don’t learn from this and get better through this and figure out new ways of living, you are a fool and you missed a chance. At the end of the day if we get through, and if this gets back to normal, I wish and hope that in our restaurants we will be better, my staff will be better, the town will be better. My feeling is this town is strong and committed to itself. I wouldn’t trade our customers for the world. 

This has been a special time for our family of 3 to be together before baby number 2 arrives in mid-May. We are getting creative with ways to entertain our two-year-old son Harley, while both trying to work from home. We’re doing lots of cooking together, playing outside, watching movies and cuddles! 

I am an Interior Designer and I own my own business, L. Kate Interiors LLC. I normally work from home and have clients in the local CT and NY area. Currently there is very little work that I can do since venders are temporarily closed across the nation and contractors cannot go inside homes to finish up projects. I am able to do some design work for future projects but cannot get anything completed for current jobs. Luckily my clients have been very understanding during this time and I hope to get things moving again as soon as we can! I’ve enjoyed seeing how past clients are enjoying spending so much time in their homes that have been fully furnished and designed by LKI. My husband Zach, is a Sales Director for a digital ad tech company. Given the effects of COVID-19 he is now working at home full time vs his normal commute into New York four days a week. Business has definitely been affected, but with all of the advancements in virtual conference calls, he’s still been able to keep up with all of his normal responsibilities from the comfort of his home office (our dining room!). 

I started hearing about it at the end of January but didn’t understand the impact. Now, the biggest change in my daily life is the lack of work that I am able to do at this time. I am used to dropping off my son at daycare every morning and filling my entire day with work until I pick him up. Normally, my days go by fast but I accomplish a lot and that feels good! The things that make me feel accomplished now have completely switched and the days are longer but I am able to have time with my family which is a wonderful silver lining to all this. 

I am very proud of our community. I think we all jumped into Social Distancing very quickly for something that seemed so surreal and foreign to us. Places we all love to go to in town and look forward to visiting are empty, streets are quiet but people are still smiling and friendly. For such a scary time, I am impressed with how we have all handled this. 

Growing up Jewish and learning about the history of our culture and the hardships that were endured has given me a unique perspective on life. Nothing can prepare you to live through what we are experiencing now, but understanding that difficult times have occurred throughout history allows you to look beyond the immediate effect on daily life and see the bigger picture that we’ll make it through okay. 

Being a teacher is hard, being a mother is hard, being pregnant is hard, running a business is hard, but being everything at the same time is near impossible. I’m trying to stay positive everyday and giving it my best! 

Dawn Collins has lived in Westport for 20 years although she originally hails from Maine. She lives with her daughter, a high school freshman, their dog and cat. 

My best friend’s daughter is a NICU [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] nurse and she emphasized the seriousness of Corona Virus from the beginning. I am an elementary school special education paraprofessional and from the minute they sent us home from school, I didn’t go out without mask and hand sanitizer. People told me I was fool and that I looked like an idiot, and that masks do nothing but I didn’t care. I keep my groceries on my porch then I wash them and bring them in. I’m keeping us safe—my child, and myself.  

I wasn’t as scared in the beginning but I am more scared now. It’s the dribs and drabs of information coming in and the arrogant people who continue to cluster and think it’s not going to happen to them. I wonder is it because they feel they are that important or that they can afford the best doctors? I’m not sure what the thinking is and it scares me. I do think it’s harder on other people than on me because they haven’t learned to live without.  Before this we didn’t go out to dinner, we weren’t shopping to keep ourselves busy. So, on that end, I’m good. 

I’ve been very busy, supporting my teachers by helping to provide activities that special education students can do at home and resources for parents to help them.  I’m also making masks for my friend’s daughter and the nurses she knows. So far, I’ve made 50 for her and her friends. It is good because I’m a person who needs a purpose. 

My hope coming out of this is that we will all continue to be good neighbors. People have shown me such kindness, I can’t even believe it. My fear is that so many people will lose their jobs. I don’t fear for myself–I’ve been poor, I’ve been needy, I know how to do it. I’m scared for the people in our community who work in hospitality or retail. What’s going to happen to them? I hope that people will take note. There are still people who think this is a hoax. I can’t wrap my head around that, that’s worrisome. I just want people to continue to be nice to each other.  

At 91 years old, Larry Untermeyer is still very much the international jet-setting man-about-town he was back in his days as an original “mad man” in the heady golden era of Manhattan’s advertising scene. A 58-year resident of Westport, Larry moved here with wife, Nikki, and raised two children. He is known to most about Westport as the gentleman with the camera—a second career born out of a hobby from his advertising days. The adopted son of the celebrated poet, Louis Untermeyer, Larry’s life reads like an adventure novel: He’s been on the stage, served in the Army during the Korean War both entertaining troops and as a special service agent, worked as a producer in television, radio, motion pictures and documentaries. He continues his world travels—58 countries and counting– including, recently, a photo-safari to Africa.  

“Being cooped up is hardest for me. I feel like a caged lion but I think we’re all handling it. The town is handling it. It’s a great town, by the way, I wouldn’t have lived anywhere else and I could have. I stayed here because of the beautiful town and great people.  

I could go crazy if I wanted to but I don’t want to. I do wish I was a few years younger to be running around. I have another great-grandchild on the way in August, in Germany. My first great grandchild—Luna—is 1 ½. I wanted to go to Germany and Italy this year, but that’s all blown up now. Of course, I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again. I’m here waiting to see if I can travel. I still take pictures from my window—a lot of them. And I have a lot of pictures to organize, so I’m pretty busy here.

I am very fearful about the fact that I don’t think this country will be the same again. I think we are in for terrible times for the next generation. It will depend on the next president. If it’s Trump for another four years I wouldn’t want to be here, he is a horrible man who has done horrible things. I have no respect for anyone in the Congress, even Democrats, who didn’t scream enough and didn’t do enough to fight. The little TV that I watch is so full of disinformation that it’s disheartening. I am afraid this country is going to be a dictatorship soon –it’s all being made up as they go along and nobody stops them. 

For now, I’ll stay in my house and behave. I can do it. I get angry but I can do it. When the weather turns better, I’ll be on the porch. Of course, there’s a number of things I worry about– I can’t get cleaners in or house maintenance done.  But hey, if my yard grows to be a big field, I might have to plant oats and alfalfa. When I was young, I grew up on a farm in upstate New York so I’m very familiar with that sort of thing. I just remind myself, I have a beautiful house, and a beautiful property. I still have a few dollars in the bank. I’m luckier than 99% of the people in the world. 

I was aware of COVID in January because of what was happening in China. In February, we were in Costa Rica on winter break and things started getting serious. Our airline sent out an email saying like that they were shutting down flights from certain places. In that moment I knew we had to get home right away. 

We’ve lived in Westport six and half years, and I have seven-year-old twins who are in second grade at Kings Highway. I’m always grateful that I have kids but especially now because they give me direction during the day. We wake up, we have breakfast, we get ready for school, just like we would on a regular day. Then we have stuff to get through — reading, writing math, word work, science, Spanish.  

I don’t live in a big house so everybody’s home. And that’s great because we like each other. But you know, all day now I’m mom and teacher and wife and I need to exercise and need to make meals for everybody and still need to clean the house and take care of myself and it’s just nonstop. Of course, when you have young kids when you’re in the throes of it, you feel like you’re not tearing your hair out. But I try and remind myself that this has been amazing family time because I think my most common complaint about life before quarantine, especially in Westport, was just how intense it is with playdates and practices and activities at homework and school and it’s very busy all the time. I don’t remember it being like that when I was kid. I remember being honestly a little bit more like this where we had family dinners every night and we watched Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune together every night.  

Nobody’s been sick I’m super thankful for that and super grateful that we’ve all been healthy. If this is the worst of it than I made out okay. People like my parents who are elderly and in their 80s, they’re just home and they can’t go anywhere and they can’t go to the supermarket. They can’t see anybody and we can’t see them and they have nothing but time on their hands and that I think must be tricky  

Their biggest question really is when do we get to go back to school? I tell them I wish I knew, but I don’t have any answers. I don’t think that they grasp how big it really is. They do understand that it’s not normal.  The day that they closed school, my daughter’s teacher filled each child’s backpack with books and activities and homework and gave them like, two hours to go to the library and get whatever books they wanted out, and take home anything that they want to take home.  

I emailed our principal and both of my kid’s teachers that night, after I’d gone through the packets that they put together for the kids. I was amazed at the organization of it, the amount of information in it. I felt the next day we were going to hit the ground running with the schoolwork they gave to us. I commend them on that because they had very little time– they had hours to put that all together.  

Their classrooms have been left exactly the way they were when they left that day. Those classrooms are just frozen in time. I don’t think they’ll go back to school this year, but even if they get like one day or two before June 12 just to have some closure on the year– I feel like that would go a long way, especially for my daughter who is always excited about the last day of school, but comes home in tears because it’s so hard for her to say goodbye to her teachers.  

The town is really special and they’ve done an amazing job. Our numbers [of cases] have obviously gone up but I don’t think they’ve gone up in huge increments. I think that is a testament to how serious Westport took it from the beginning. You know, there’s that infamous party where it stemmed from, which was controversial. But I said, and I stand by it: I think that that party ultimately saved lives because if it hadn’t been for that party, and if it hadn’t been for that person getting sick from that party, we would have been dealing with it two weeks later. More people would have gotten sick and more people would have died. Westport got it right in a crazy, unheard of situation. It’s tricky in the US, because of how we live our lives–obviously we move from state to state, and we like our freedoms so I can’t say that it’s been handled as well across the board across the country. But I do feel like in Westport, they did it right. 

My hope is that this summer has a semblance of normalcy like that we can swim in a swimming pool and we can go to the beach and my kids might go to a camp and we can go see my family in Cape Cod and visit our family in the UK, which I don’t think we’ll be able to. I just hope life returns to normal a little bit by then, whatever that looks like.  

I don’t know what this looks like next school year because until they have a vaccine, I don’t think this completely goes away and then if they have a vaccine, some people might opt not to get it, so I think we’ll always– until they have a vaccine– be kind of playing that whack a mole game where you’re just squashing the hotspots as they pop up. In the fall as we transition into flu season again will we have to transition back to homeschooling? Maybe. And I just don’t know what that long term looks like. I’m not afraid of it. I don’t really have any fears. I just obviously don’t want to get sick first of all. 

I was terrified in the beginning, like when that email came out that schools were closing because Westport had its first positive case I broke down into tears and was terrified. I called my mom in tears, and said, I no longer know how to keep my children safe from diseases, from guns– any of it. I follow all the rules and I still can’t do it. But I don’t feel that way anymore. I wear a mask when I go in the grocery store. The kids haven’t really left the house. We wash our hands like maniacs, but we were always supposed to be doing that. And we just stay away from people right now. That’s the best we can do. 

I don’t know what the future looks like. I just hope that come summer that things are a little bit put back together so that we can start having fun again. We’re doing the best that we can. And I know everybody is. We remain hopeful and optimistic and follow the rules so that this will soon be behind us. I hope we can go back to living life the way that– I don’t even want to say go back to living it how we did before because this dial down this has been nice–but just so that we can resume some sense of normalcy.  

Navida Greifenberger has lived in Westport with her husband and almost-9-year-old daughter for 8 years. She is the founder of the Facebook Group Westport Coronavirus Info, a page that provides information to members about all aspects of the pandemic here in town. 

“I have a nine-year-old– almost nine-year-old– and have been busy with homeschooling. I wanted to be part of this project because I felt it would be nice for my daughter because she’s raised in Westport. I thought it would be nice for her to have her family at the History Museum.  

Between homeschooling, and making masks and managing the Facebook group I set up, I’ve been keeping very busy. The days are flying by. 

On Westport Coronavirus Info people discuss basically anything related to how it’s affecting the town, their lives. Social distancing was a major topic. There’s lots and lots of people seeking information on testing and where to get tested and how to get tested. Lots of people are looking at just the numbers and there is a fear factor. 

More recently, which is really sad, we’re seeing more posts of people who actually have loved ones who are sick and seeking donors for plasma donations. And then other assistance from people who have loved ones in hospitals, and they’re seeking PPE equipment. Today we had someone asking for wipes and bleach from Norwalk hospital. It’s really just a bulletin board that people are coming for help, to air their concerns, to find out information, because everything’s changing all the time. Yes, I’ve definitely seen some trends around what things are being posted as time has gone by.  

What I miss is going outside and not being able to work anymore. I do a little bit of freelance work, working with small companies helping them with their marketing and operational type issues. It’s definitely reduced the amount of work I have. I have a lot less work than I had previously. I initially provided some advice to my clients from ways in which they could take their business more online, but now they’re all just hunkering down trying to get through this. And I’ve just accepted that I’m not going to be working much through this period. I’m one of the lucky ones who doesn’t rely on my particular income to pay the bills, so I’m not too worried about it in the short term. 

I do like to see my friends fairly regularly and not being able to see them has been a big blow. I’ve been doing everything and anything to stay in touch with people. Zoom, and the Houseparty [app] that I’ve never even heard of before but mostly Google Hangouts, FaceTime, you know, anything and everything that anybody wants to use to get connected.  

I think people are understandably very worried, and you see a lot of fear and uncertainty. And I think that’s just the same as it is all over the country and all over the world. I think the one thing about this community– I’m sure it’s in other communities too– but I really did notice in this community, is that immediately as soon as things became apparent that the community had been affected, you immediately saw people stepping up and wanting to find ways to help and reaching out to people and setting up various types of support mechanisms. I’m always amazed by that in Westport. I think that whenever there’s any kind of untoward happening, everybody steps up and tries to find ways to help everybody else. 

I think in my personal life, I’ve experienced a lot of different environments and a lot of change so change doesn’t frighten me, change of circumstances doesn’t worry me. I’ve also gone through some strange experiences. I don’t really want to go into them in detail, but I’ve experienced bomb blasts and you know, listened to bomb blasts as a child and having missiles flying over my head. And I feel like those sorts of experiences kind of make you feel that when in times of crisis, you know that you’ll probably get through and you just look for ways to move forward. I think I’m more of the mindset of “okay– this has happened, and now what do we do about it?” rather than just getting into panic about it. 

My greatest hope is that it’s going to be over as soon as possible without too much disruption, which I think is everybody’s hope. And my greatest fear is just how much havoc it’s going to wreak and how long lasting of an impact is going to have. Is it that we just have to bear the brunt of it for a few months and then everything goes back to normal and the economy recovers and, people go back to their lives? Or is this just going to be a cycle that goes on for a longer period that leaves devastation in terms of unemployment and people losing their livelihood and people dying? And that’s my biggest fear is that this goes on for a lot longer than we’re hoping. “ 

I am the Editor for CTBites, Your Guide To Great Food in CT. As you can imagine, the playing field has changed. My job has shifted from a profitable business reporting on the restaurant industry in CT to a not-for profit fundraising and support platform called  Food For The Front Lines. It started when I helped Founder Nicole Straight launch Food For The Front Lines Go Fund Me to raise money for local CT restaurants to deliver food to first responders and healthcare workers. To date, we have raised almost $30,000.  

As this started, I was concerned at first as few seemed to be heeding the advice of our local officials, but saw a change two weeks in. In launching the Food For The Front Lines program, I’ve been blown away by the level of community support, kindness, and generosity. 

I regularly check in on my out of work friends, people I know are struggling, and those who are afraid. I’m not worried about the economy or that the world will get back on its feet, because it will. My greatest fear is for my family living in Manhattan. I view this as a wake-up call. If you look at the silver lining in this global pandemic, several things become clear. Pollution is vastly improved, families are spending time with each other, and people have started to realize that Trump is a farce of a president. My hope is that people remember what they have learned in this time of crisis.