Prompted by a short essay from Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History.

For twenty-two years the FBI tapped his telephone, read his mail and went through his garbage.

They spied on Einstein because he was a spy for the Russians. So said his bulky police file. The file also said he had invented a death ray and a robot that could read minds. It said Einstein was a member, collaborator or fellow traveler of thirty-four Communist front organizations between 1937 and 1954, and was honorary chair of three Communist organizations. It concluded: “It seems unlikely that a man of his background could, in such a short time, become a loyal American citizen.”

Believe it or not, if you wade past the spam bots, name-calling and nuclear threats, there’s a heartwarming, human side to Twitter. Recently, 94-year-old Rose Marie, best known as Sally Rogers on the Dick Van Dyke Show, joined the fray, probably expecting it to be the soul-deadening echo chamber it is for most of us.

In a few weeks she’s gained about 100,000 followers, all coming out of the woodwork to express their love, admiration, and awe at her 90-year(!) career.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re living in extremely weird times. There have always been people who take pride in stubborn ignorance, emit lies and spurious arguments to justify bigotry, and are fundamentally disposed toward seeing the world in terms of “us vs. them.” But, for the first time, we’re seeing these qualities in the supposed leader of our country.

As a person who’s rational yet anxiety-prone, it’s meant a year of lost sleep and gnashing teeth. So it’s hard to overstate the value of a late-night host who can make me unhinge my jaw laughing, while reminding me that there are plenty of people out there who are seeing clear through the BS and are not afraid to call it out.

Last week I had the opportunity to spend three days in a caricature drawing class led by Mad Magazine artist Tom Richmond. Basically everything that’s covered in the course can be found in the book that I bought way back in 2011, so if you’re a self-starter, that may be all you need to step up your game. As for me, I tend to require someone standing over me and telling me what the heck I’m doing wrong, which is almost always obvious in retrospect. Actually, I don’t think I drew anything during the class that would qualify as a successful caricature, but after the concepts marinated in my brain for a few days I was able to crank out a few I was reasonably happy with.

Like me, Tyrus Wong grew up in Sacramento, scribbling drawings on recycled paper.

Okay, that sort of diminishes everything he went through. An illegal (trigger warning, Republicans!) immigrant to post-earthquake San Francisco, he powered through discrimination and prejudice to quickly rise through the ranks at Disney, almost single-handedly defining the look of 1942’s Bambi.

A Disney strike and World War II killed the momentum of the Asian-American artists group he helped to found. In spite of that, he earned U.S. citizenship, continued to contribute to animation and fine arts, and spent his later years designing and flying beautiful kites in the sunny skies near his California home.