Photos of COVID health-care workers shown big on a building wall at night; Sue Bird’s latest honor at the Olympic opening ceremonies; the Seattle Kraken’s finally a team (almost); eastern WA’s wildfire smoke blows all the way to NY.

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.’

Julia’s on Broadway drag cast goes on strike; WA reaches another grim COVID milestone; attorneys claim Children’s Hospital operating-room mold has had 100 victims; a suspect’s arrested in the 2020 slaying near the CHOP protest zone.

Fifty years and change since the ‘turn out the lights’ billboard; 2 (of 6) SPD officers are cited for being part of the DC siege; heat-wave death counts are still rising; a tireless advocate for the homeless dies.

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.

Tlingit art on a new postage stamp; how Amazon affected Seattle and vice versa; big Pentagon cloud contract rescinded; state of emergency declared over WA wildfire danger.

White Center gay bar destroyed by fire; new Amazon CEO enters as worker-organizing drives continue; activists sort out how to make Aurora Ave. less pedestrian-hostile; still waiting for the border to reopen.

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.’

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.

It’s beyond swelter-y out there, just in time to keep folks home who’d been aching to get out and about at last; other things also happened.

An ‘excessive heat watch’ is here; the state eviction moratorium’s renewed with changes; Uber to pay $3.4 million in unpaid sick leave and back pay; an uptick in air travel means an uptick in pollution at Sea-Tac.

A big picture book of local storefront murals; a major heat wave’s still on the way; an early state reopening’s unlikely; a longtime social worker’s past and present battles.

Online educational TV show for kids of color wins national awards; Black UW Police officers claim racist abuse; a major city landmark reopens at last; Microsoft hits $2 trillion in total stock valuation.