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.

Space Needle New Year’s fireworks are canceled (again), to ‘go virtual’ this year; COVID outbreak at a WA Frito-Lay plant; police pepper-spray and topple an old man with PTSD at a Capitol Hill protest; can the unfinished Convention Center expansion plan be redirected?

Woodland Park Zoo’s new walk-thru light show; where most new COVID infections occur in King County; Amazon Web Services has a big outage in the east; a street sign honors a late local Black theater producer.

‘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.

Art posters remember ICE detainees; COVID cancels college football’s Apple Cup; homeless advocates try to squat empty Tacoma school building; Seattle seafood co. accused of horrid working conditions and wage theft.

The 50th anniversary of the ‘exploding whale’ film; Inslee wishes you’d spend T-Day at home; where I want new arts spaces to go when we can have them again; UW football season starts (finally) (maybe).

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.

Anchorage mayor quits in weird sex scandal; would Durkan’s plan for minority communities help them or just bring more bureaucracy?; remembering a pioneer female judge/lawmaker; the UW doc who’s all over national TV.

Beloved ex-kids’ TV star Ruth Prins turns 100; local jazz great Overton Berry RIP; pandemic job recovery ‘sputters to a halt’; is working at Amazon warehouses more dangerous than logging?

Wizards of the Coast sued over role-playing-game spinoff novels; a ‘fall surge’ in regional COVID cases could be here; Durkan asks Seattle cops to stay; ballots just keep a-coming in.

Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme make a streaming holiday special; will we ever get to a ‘phase 3’ reopening?; 16 arrests at another Capitol Hill protest; gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp’s book compares gun laws to the Holocaust.

A new Amazon wrist band warns if you’re not ‘happy’ enough; comparing our age to a cheesy BDSM movie (NOT ‘50 Shades’!); the Storm joins the pro-sports strike; CHOP murder victim’s dad sues for $3 billion.

The real Ivan the Gorilla vs. a new streaming movie version; Durkan vetoes budget bill with 1-percent SPD cut; how hard it is to get a cop ‘decertified’ in WA; Chris Cornell statue is vandalized with white paint.

Rick Steves is ‘traveling from home’ these days; marchers turned away from Chief Best’s suburban home; City Council’s police restructuring plan gets a lot more modest; Argosy Cruises ends its summer season early.

TV puppets teaching local youth of color; COVID transmission rate eases a bit in WA; even a temporary end of extra unemployment aid could hurt thousands; Amazon just keeps growing.