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.

Church stages ‘ICE cage’ nativity scene; judge OKs Cal Anderson encampment sweep; next vaccine shipments to WA cut back; Inslee’s next budget proposal includes a capital gains tax (again).

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.

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.

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.

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.’

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.