After 18 months of darkness, the lights came on at the Lyceum downtown to debut prominent Latinx playwright Octavio Solis’ “Mother Road,” which imagines a future chapter to John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” 

The Horton Plaza Park is bigger and looks better -- pretty good for being 146 years old. After five years of reconstruction, civic leaders revealed the park in a grand opening ceremony on May 4. The...