Say what you will about TikTok and Facebook and the banality of the internet, it does provide us with a unique way to connect with one another. How else would we enjoy the beautiful humanity on display? Or see the world with fresh new eyes?
As a matter of fact, my friend Judith Bruder and I met 13 years ago because of the internet. This was back in the early days of blogging when WordPress was coming of age, and Julie was cooking Julia. I had just started my blog, Random Acts of Writing, and Judith was posting at A View from the Woods from her new home in Northampton, Massachusetts.
We liked each other’s posts, commented now and then, remarked on shared interests in writing, food, and France. But it was her frequent photoblogs about Look Park in Northampton that sparked my curiosity one summer, and we agreed to meet in person.
One visit begot another. There were long conversations at her dining room table. Visits to local museums and restaurants. Cooking lessons. Celebrations. Consolations. We weathered milestones, heartbreaks, and the entirety of the pandemic.
It was during the pandemic that Judith happened upon the brilliant idea of starting a podcast. As she explains it:
“I knew that for me, the physical danger, which was grave, was less than another danger, the death of the spark which is the beating heart of the life force. That’s what had kept me young and vital until 85, my age when the world stopped. I had to find something that could keep the “me” that really counted, my spirit, my life force, alive.”
Her podcasts, called From My Button Box, kept her, me, and her varied listeners alive and engaged through the roller coaster months and years since St. Patrick’s Day 2020.
If you missed her podcasts — or haven’t yet been introduced — I’m excited to tell you that more than 50 of her “buttons” are now available in the book From My Button Box: Collected Essays in a Pandemic Time. It’s a special collection of her favorite podcasts, presented in a unique hybrid format: read the essays or listen to the original podcasts using individual QR codes throughout the book.
From My Button Box: Collected Essays in a Pandemic Time is available from Three Chairs Publishing, Broadside Bookshop in Northampton, and from online retailers.
For more information and to buy books, click here.
Now here’s my favorite part…when you get your copy of the book, turn it over and check out the photo of Judith and her late husband Frank. One of her favorites, it’s the photo I took on the day we first connected in person back in 2012.
Here’s to happy connections for you and your loved ones, now and throughout the coming year.
With Love,
Jen Payne
Three Chairs Publishing 
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