We're in a cozy cabin in the woods but I'm at AAR! It's a drag being on the receiving end of webinars, where we can see the speakers, in their boxes, but they can't see us. I suppose it's the way we live now - and I'm learning a lot - but one misses all the unscheduled stimulation of a conference, bumping into old friends, meeting new people, gathering around a speaker after a panel... An old friend took time out of her response to three new books on American yoga (all of whose authors' names curiously began and end with a) to name all that's not happening. She introduced it under the phrase "research continuity," something she argued we need to realize has been seriously disrupted by the pandemic. Not just the scholarly community-building effervescence of in-person conferences (she thinks now she should have pushed AAR to cancel this year's conference rather than go for this bloodless simulacrum) but the analogous blockage of access to libraries, the other places we get to browse old and encounter new scholarship. All of this on top of the untold grief, anxiety and isolation of living in these times. "I'm supposed to act like I'm okay as I speak to you about these amazing books," she said, "but I'm not okay." It was good to hear these words.
