Will warehouses occupy ex-Weyerhaeuser HQ?; highly-profitable Kroger closes two QFC stores, blames Seattle ‘hazard pay’ law; state to ramp up COVID testing, hoping to reopen schools sooner; NY state sues Amazon over working conditions.

After the Big Snow, get ready for the Big Melt; the Lava Lounge building gets closer to demolition; Sen. Murray says she was ‘within inches’ of the Capitol mob; the state reports 1 million vaccine shots.

Retro civic-PR art from a ‘Department of Design;’ no cruise ships to Canada (or, likely, Seattle) this year; Lorena Gonzalez’s last rival wants the Council seat she’s leaving to run for mayor; judge overseeing SPD reform warns against major restructuring without his OK.

Bezos to leave Amazon’s helm as company’s HQ2 gets a strange ‘Helix’ structure; SAM fires its beloved film guru; another local clinic hit by systemic-racism claims against its management; Durkan won’t veto grocery ‘hazard pay.’

Two Bells demolished three years after it closed; SPOG head Mike Solan refuses to quit; activists claim the FBI had a role in suppressing local summer protests; a post-COVID national recession could make homelessness a whole lot worse.

On the day after the Seven Gables Theater burned, we look back on some recent local arts and culture stories, trends, and tales of survival.

Where poetry, programming, and Amazon intersect; train cars with crude oil catch fire; homeless-services group refutes KOMO’s depiction of it; a few of the big COVID relief bill’s various pieces and their various effects.

Timothy Egan on Lewis & Clark’s lessons for surviving a bleak winter; right-wing protesters try to break into Oregon’s capitol building; daytime flooded streets are followed by nighttime snow; some folks want a gondola to West Seattle instead of light rail.

Local home sports ‘Schitt’s Creek’ tribute Xmas decor; WA’s COVID curve may be ‘flattening’ again; Cal Anderson Park encampment hasn’t been swept (yet); Inslee issues new school-reopening guidelines.

Light sculptures on the waterfront depict ‘seeds for a future culture;’ UW scraps another football game; first local vaccine doses arrive; far-right extremists threaten state election officials.

Views of an empty Microsoft campus (except for construction crews); the state passes 200,000 COVID cases; the first vaccine doses are on the way; another shooting at another right-wing Olympia protest.

Inslee keeps restaurants, bars, etc. closed three more weeks (restaurant industry assn. doesn’t like it); Seattle School Supt. Denise Juneau won’t ask for another contract; big-biz group wants city’s big-biz payroll tax tossed out.

‘Cascadia’ group wants four big, all-new cities; City Council passes budget with some SPD cuts; a massive (but multi-day) state COVID case count; an appropriate Christmas carol for this ‘bleak” year.

A bizarre concept for an imagined futuristic high-rise; 737 MAX is approved to fly again; state budget forecast improves; state officials really want you to stay home for Thanksgiving.

Major fund campaign aims to keep live music spaces alive; Kshama Sawant fund campaign aims to fight recall drive; COVID cases still rising in King County and at UW; another month with no new Boeing plane orders.