Mudhoney bassist (and Harborview ER nurse) Guy Maddison tells COVID tales in a podcast; area health leaders blame public gatherings for COVID resurgence; Amazon now outsells Walmart (sort-of); Afghan refugees are headed our way.

Pop-art posters honor Indigenous women preserving the planet; Edgar Martinez gets a statue; WA COVID cases surpass a half million; ACLU sues to stop the city charter-amendment drive.

A city puts its masks back on; state, county, and city workers will all have to get vaxxed; famous local chef to close his last Seattle restaurant; finally-released report details systemic racism at Seattle Children’s.

The new ‘Skid Road’ book’s parallels to the older one; more institutions impose vaccine requirements; controversial PCC president quits; city attorney Pete Holmes is out of the general-election race.

Seattle Deconstructed Art Fair returns; feds find ‘improprieties’ at Alabama Amazon union vote; city eviction moratorium extended two months; Seattle Rep to stage a musical named after the mechanical shark from ‘Jaws.’

Water-themed playground coming to new Waterfront Park; does Seattle’s ‘urban village’ zoning perpetuate inequality?; the heat wave sickened Columbia River salmon; nine bars are or were temporarily closed due to COVID exposures among staff.

Local band Prom Date’s new Britney Spears tribute EP; new COVID case counts are close to last summer’s; Boeing ‘ekes out’ its first profits since ’19; southern resident orcas are finally back in WA waters.

New life (and maybe a new club) in R Place’s old building; Jeff Bezos had his costly li’l suborbital space trip; the Kraken’s about to have its Expansion Draft party/telecast; OR’s Bootleg Fire is so big, it ‘makes its own weather.’

Beth’s Cafe reopens; smaller-scale music fest to take Bumbershoot’s place this fall; King County councilmember tries to prevent huge light-rail project delays; yes, climate change had a role in the recent heat wave.

Locally-written opera explores Tacoma’s 1885 anti-Chinese expulsion; more music clubs and other spots reopen; payroll-tax opponents appeal the court dismissal of their suit; the pandemic slowed but didn’t stop local population growth.

Thoughts on the re-released ‘Streetwise’; the regional heat-wave death toll climbs; a heat-stricken BC town succumbs to wildfire; Microsoft rebrands itself as ‘the anti-Apple.’

Banksy ‘repurposes’ an old Mt. Rainier painting as a climate protest; day one of WA’s ‘reopening’; a Seattle cop shoots a suspect in a Puyallup home; a GOP politician compares vaccine guidelines to the Holocaust.

Continuing impacts of the scorching weather abound, as the state finally reaches The Big Reopening; the state bails out Point Roberts’ only grocery; a brutalist UW dorm tower won’t get razed for now.

A rare sign of beauty amid the heat-borne misery; it likely won’t get this hot again this year; Councilmember Mosqueda wants to rename the city’s ‘single family’ zones; today’s mask-off day in King County.

The meaning(s) of Juneteenth; Portland wants our tourist $ (and a more positive image); Durkan extends eviction moratorium; has the Gates Foundation’s money/influence hurt global vaccination drives?