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.

Canadian artists depict Seattle’s CHOP protests; still more local fallout from the DC coup attempt; a quiet but ‘weird’ opening to WA’s legislative session; how the Storm’s Sue Bird helped get Raphael Warnock into the US Senate.

Local reactions to the DC coup attempt (plus a smaller break-in at the Governor’s Mansion in Oly); UW expert on predicting the pandemic’s decline; Teresa Mosqueda won’t run for mayor; one of the last 747s is being sold as parts on eBay.

Remembering past women’s-rights leaders; WA’s got the nation’s 3rd lowest COVID rate (though WA GOP apparently wants to make it worse); regional cooperation on homelessness goes awry; can Seattle get real police oversight?

Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic leader quits, claims systemic racism at parent organization; a local singer becomes a social-media meme as ‘Bean Dad’; local Catholics want archbishop to speak up about abusive priests; some computer-animated New Year’s weirdness fictionally set at the Space Needle.

Our 35th (Yes!) annual list of trends that will soar and decline over the coming 365.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.’

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.

Hundreds attend many Biden-Harris celebrations around town; the local COVID risk is now ‘higher than ever;’ the closed-since-March Local 360 restaurant may reopen after all; Ken Jennings remembers Alex Trebek.