‘Flowers grow from crumbling towers’ in a new, mechanical art installation; bad weather in the east delays vaccine shipments; pioneering local gay-rights organizer dies; should Seattle grow to two million people?

Inaugural poem set to a local funk-rock track; waiting lists for vaccine-clinic helpers are getting as long as those for the vaccines themselves; Tacoma police SUV runs over street-race spectators; Microsoft’s developing chatbots based on dead people.

City asks artists and others to ponder their communities’ future; remembering one year of COVID in WA (and in the US); state makes a new vaccine distribution plan; man arrested at DC riot had tried to join Seattle protest groups, but was suspected of being a right-wing infiltrator.

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.

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.

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.

A quiet, (very) socially distanced holiday time; COVID cases cancel a UW football game (and maybe the rest of the season); 45 percent of state’s restaurants could fold within a year; new push for NW light rail.

Local photog’s shots of national racial (and racist) historic sites; Amazon warehouse work is officially riskier than logging; pandemic economy hits nonprofits (and their clients) very hard; historically comparing COVID, AIDS, and the ‘eugenics movement.’

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.’

‘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.

New statewide closures and restrictions announced as COVID cases skyrocket; Inslee may be sticking around; Microsoft says Russian hackers seek vaccine-research data; lotsa little earthquakes on Vancouver Island.

Hi-tech election counting explained; still more Boeing cuts (both people and real estate); COVID’s hitting especially hard in south King County; a warning about a ‘suspect’ indie election-info site.

A joint march marks 150 days of local protests; experts’ advice on COVID winter survival; T-Mobile joins the TV ‘streaming wars;’ violent shootings are up locally and nationally.