Last week, the BSR editorial team was looking forward to a long-awaited in-person meet-up. But Kyle messaged us a few hours before we were supposed to get together. He was feeling tired and having trouble getting through the workday. Could we reschedule? Of course, I wrote immediately. Get some rest.
Boy was that the right decision. The next morning, Kyle woke up with a fever and felt much worse. Yep, it was Covid. Fortunately, he was able to rest for several days, and is recovering well, thanks also to the vaccine that made his illness mild.
How many millions of people have a similar story by now? I'm mentioning ours because it's a great example of why we work the way we do. If someone on the team genuinely isn't up to whatever duty or activity they had planned, they can just say so, and we will adjust. The benefits of this are clear. If Kyle hadn't been gentle on himself and spoken up, we could have all gotten Covid this week, instead of just one of us being sick, with the others ready to fill in remotely. Now our unlucky colleague is in the best position possible to recover fully, without guilt or stress.
Speaking of rest, our whole team's annual hiatus is coming up for the next two weeks. That means we won't be publishing any new articles between August 1-14. But look out for Wednesday morning mailers all the same: ICYMI, we'll share curated roundups of some of our best essays from the past year, plus happenings in early August like the BlackStar Film Festival, and the Philadelphia Women's Theatre Festival.
Thanks for spending another week with us, and supporting our much-needed rest. We often ask our readers to support our work financially, but how about this? In August, you can support our rest, because we can't work without it.
Alaina Johns
BSR editor-in-chief