Alternative (and distanced) New Year’s ideas; homeless advocates stage an occupation at a Fife motel; probable arson totals a Lake City strip mall; Seattle home prices just keep rising.

Year-in-review punditry galore; dumped logs temporarily disable a ferry dock; a third COVID vaccine’s in local testing; a right-wing militia plans to ‘occupy’ the state capitol when the next legislature opens.

Seven Gables Theater movie memories; the local COVID curve’s still ‘flattening’ for now; Seahawks clinch division title; ‘excessive force’ lawsuit against the SPD could cost the city $600,000 or more.

Alaska Airlines’ suddenly popular ‘Safety Dance’ ad; Cal Anderson Park ‘reopens;’ an obscure part of the federal relief bill could threaten live-streaming; a holiday message for our time.

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.

Cal Anderson Park encampment swept, 21 protesters arrested; ‘J.P. Patches’ costar Bob Newman dies; some restaurant workers say they don’t necessarily want to go back to indoor-dining work yet; the ‘Twin Peaks’ connection to tonight’s planetary conjunction.

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.

A still-closed Henry Art Gallery puts its art on buses; the first local vaccine shots get taken; more post-ethnic sports team names are on the way; Tim Eyman hates face masks (duh).

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.

A live Santa greets kids from inside a plastic ‘snow globe;’ ‘several’ COVID positives among the UW football squad; a bomb scare at the Spokane County Democrats’ office; imaging ‘a future where Amazon rules the world.’

Getting young adults to take masking/distancing seriously; end to federal aid could imperil local COVID response; Seahawks’ and Huskies’ late-game comebacks fail; Olympia MAGA rally member shoots at counter-protesters.

Space Needle New Year’s fireworks are canceled (again), to ‘go virtual’ this year; COVID outbreak at a WA Frito-Lay plant; police pepper-spray and topple an old man with PTSD at a Capitol Hill protest; can the unfinished Convention Center expansion plan be redirected?

New kids’ book ‘Panda Demick’ looks on (and for) the bright side; state starts COVID tracking phone app; Tacoma ICE jail uses solitary confinement heavily; make your own ‘restoration of federal sanity advent calendar.’

Microsoft’s business-meeting surveillance and ‘scoring’ plan; local doctor’s COVID precautions pay off; Amazon accused of warehouse-safety cover up; UW football’s big comeback win.