Opinion

When my four-year-old recently told me that he liked his friend's pink dress and wanted one of his own, I brought up a children's clothing site on my phone and let him pick one out. It was a small gesture -- the whole affair set me back roughly three minutes and $5.95 -- but one that could mean a lifetime of affirmation for a child.

It's not like we don't have serious national concerns. President Joe Biden is working hard to make a deal with Senate Republicans to fix up our crumbling infrastructure and public health officials are pushing to get us out of the pandemic. But Donald Trump and his minions keep dragging us back to an awful past.

The latest season of the Netflix series "Master of None," which premiered on May 23, subverts longstanding racial stereotypes to create a brilliant, thought-provoking depiction of the intimacies of Black life. At this moment when America is reassessing the ways in which Black life has been historically and contemporaneously valued and devalued, this season could not be timelier.

In the 2002 blockbuster Star Wars movie "Attack of the Clones," Jedi Masters Obi-wan Kenobi and Yoda use a detailed three-dimensional map of their galaxy to solve an intriguing political puzzle. That map, while no doubt an amazing (if fictional) achievement, pales in comparison with the goals of a new telescopic facility that is just beginning operations here on Earth.

I will always appreciate the joy and challenges that came with helping my son Joaquin do his homework. It involved many inside jokes and thoughtful conversations throughout the process of understanding the main subject and achieving the final task.

A decade ago, just before my son was born, I surprised myself by leaving New York to move back to the small California town where I grew up. Suddenly, for the first time since college, I was living day in and day out in a small bungalow six blocks from the home I'd left almost two decades before.

This week, 3,234 pages of emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the President, were released through a Freedom Of Information Act request. I'm still trying to digest them all, as I expect many people are.