It is a lovely day here in New York City—still a little hot for my liking, but cooler than yesterday, with an off-and-on breeze. I was just sitting near my apartment window, listening to the birds and thinking about those exciting New York City years around 201X. I recently saw a few writers on social media talking about death threats, and although they may have been joking, that really took me back. It must have been sometime around then, after I published an essay or something, when I saw folks tweeting “professor in Crown Heights,” when my acquaintance had only just received a death threat for something they wrote. I was like…uh OK, well, even my editors don’t like me, so I’m just gonna start wearing shades when I exit the building—that & pray for rain! My acquaintance fled the country, the last I heard, which seems so very unlike not long so ago.