Russell Wilson and Ciara open a fashion boutique in U Village; COVID down big in western WA, still high in the east; Melinda French Gates to go her own philanthropic way; Rotterdam may dismantle a historic bridge so Bezos’ new megayacht can go through.

Sara Porkalob’s taking her one-woman musicals to NY; WA’s paid family leave fund could soon run out; Rudy Giuliani’s coming to (somewhere in) King County in March; a relative paucity of COVID-related local news items today.

George Freeman resurrects ‘The Monastery’ as a colorful church/event space; COVID numbers coming down in western but not eastern WA; local grocery workers’ ‘hazard pay’ to continue; workers at two more local Starbucks want a union.

Could public housing replace part of a major Seattle street?; Orcas Island’s got its own housing crisis; COVID cancels, postpones more events; state sues Google over tracking users who don’t want to be tracked.

Seattle-raised filmmaker at old ‘spaghetti western’ filming locales; student ‘sickout’ planned at several schools; non-emergency surgeries put on hold due to COVID surge; WA’s Cascade mountain passes all finally reopened.

Author Neal Stephenson defends utopian fiction; COVID-related staff shortages affect schools, bus service, and more; three more state senators test positive; two Cascade passes still closed.

Post-Xmas lights (and, oh yeah, the big snow); state sez Amazon won’t let it inspect warehouse safety conditions; PETA tries to deliver coal to Starbucks CEO in an anti-dairy protest; GameWorks stops working.

Ex-Seattle singer Mark Lanegan tells of his COVID nightmare; BC partly locks down again; two Tacoma officers exonerated over Manuel Ellis’ death; Seahawks clinch their first losing season in a decade.

Another ‘only from Archie McPhee’ product at Xmas; Christian schools with ‘lax protocols’ lead in student COVID cases; Pacific Place ‘goes indie’ amid ‘ghost malls’ tide; remembering WA’s first Black (and non-Indigenous) settler.

Indigenous contemporary art to view this T-Day weekend, highlighting a list of mostly cultural items left over from recent newsletter issues.

An out trans woman becomes a high school homecoming queen; King County’s got its first POC (interim) sheriff; a 75-year-old Black woman (and police-accountability activist) is struck with a motor oil can in a racist street attack; what’s so negative about being told to be ‘positive’?

The hidden history of a local jazz hall as it’s about to be commemorated; Seahawks, coach Pete Carroll hit a new nadir; SPD keeps full funding for unfilled jobs; Amazon, MS can bid again for a redrawn Pentagon cloud contract.

Temporary ‘COVID Remembrance Project’ now underway; UW football coach Jimmy Lake’s suspended for one game; 9 percent of Boeing’s US workers want a vax exemption; how has Amazon changed fiction?

Foss Shipyard suddenly closes; state eviction moratorium ends; cash incentives offered to new SPD officers; this year’s local elections have the same big-money interests backing the same business-as-usual candidates.

‘Ghost kitchen’ and other costume ideas; state eviction moratorium’s end nears again; last-minute big bucks pour into local elections; Amazon’s quarterly profits fall by almost half.