A lot of solemnity in today’s news: An up-from-poverty role model with a horrifying downfall; more evictions of unauthorized homeless camps; a “tech support” scam victimizes PC owners. But we could get some pandas here!

What’s probably going to be a slow news week starts off with more Seahawks triumphs; more Seattle Times shrinkage; new life for a Capitol Hill arts center; and one institution doesn’t need diapers but another one needs Legos.

Your 100-percent Star Wars-free MISCmedia MAIL discusses how extreme climate change would look like around here; the African-American exurban diaspora; the wrongness of calling an Asian-American woman a white man’s “sidekick;” and tons of weekend activity listings.

As the holiday season draws ever closer to its inexorable denouement, we discuss plans for the waterfront, light rail, and a Freeway Park expansion; dead swans (without “songs”); the potential end of the 747; and whether pot stores threaten minority neighborhoods.

Our midweek report includes: Paul Allen’s real-estate tentacles reaching into the Central District; the potential return of Ride the Ducks; the fate of Skyway’s mountain of concrete scrap; photos by homeless gay youth; and Boeing old-timers missing its old corporate culture.

Your Tuesday e-mail missive discusses a beautiful, doomed Ballard warehouse; the law to let ride-share drivers organize; a professor who warned about Chipotle eight years ago; and why Krampus and why now?

The darkest two weeks of the year are underway, and we’re here to help you survive. On Monday, read about more weather woes; anti-Islamaphobia marchers; just how Microsoft and other companies shave their tax bills; and a real-estate developer who tried to improve views from his property by poisoning neighbors’ trees.

Many, many weekend listings in Friday’s e-missive. Also: X-Treme weather woes continue; does the waterfront need eight lanes of traffic?; racism/fascism in local history; Group Health management vs. member democracy.

It’s been a long time since KEXP morning man John Richards regularly broadcast to Seattle from far-off New York, as part of a co-production deal with a station there.

On Wednesday morning at 9:03 a.m. (for 90.3 FM), he was front n’ center as he played the first song from the station’s ultra-deluxe new studios. (It was Robyn Hitchcock’s “Viva Sea-Tac.”)

The station now occupies 27,000 square feet of the Seattle Center Northwest Rooms. The facility includes a big open office done up in Late Dot-Com style (complete with indoor bike racks), a big “Live Room” performance space, multiple audio and video editing/mixing suites, a second DJ booth for future multiple online streams, showers, a laundry room, and a big open “Gathering Place” that will be partly subleased to a coffee house and record store.

The whole thing cost $15 million, most of which has already been raised.

A formal grand opening will occur at an unannounced future date.

As some of you know, I was a “new wave” DJ on KEXP’s precursor KCMU. It was a much wilder, more freeform outfit then, and it was all volunteer-run. It was based in a tiny space on the third floor of the UW’s Communications Building (whose code in campus documents was CMU); a DJ booth, a second booth for newscasts, and a classroom.

The early KCMU could reach amazing heights of aural beauty, and equally-amazing depths of unlistenability. But that was part of its charm.

But today’s KEXP is an empire. It’s got 40-50 regular employees plus volunteers and specialty-show DJs, and an ongoing annual budget around $6 million.

What has KEXP got that other “public” broadcast radio stations (such as the apparently doomed KPLU) haven’t? Several things, including:

1) Its own “brand.” By producing all its own programming, it’s not simply “the local NPR,” or, worse, as simply “NPR” with the local call letters (and local programming) ignored by listeners.

2) A global reach. KEXP’s both a local broadcaster and a global “streamer,” and raises donations from both audiences. So “Viva Sea-Tac,” with a Brit singer-songwriter fronting a band of Seattle music legends, is an even more appropriate choice for the first song played from the new studio.

Today’s KEXP is a big-time, ambitious operation. Its new space is a postmodern palace.

That’s even more of an achievement at a time when broadcast radio, like so many other “old media” institutions, suffers from shrinking audiences and revenues, leading to cuts and consolidations (cf. KPLU).

But damn, I still miss the old KCMU.

skin yard at kcmu benefit, 1986; posted to youtube by daniel house

As KEXP moves into its super-deluxe new digs, our midweek report remembers its far-less-slick precursor KCMU. Also: dampness everywhere; Amazon’s plans for the Dog House/Hurricane Cafe block; Troy Kelley refuses to quit.

tiffany von arnim

In Tuesday’s e-missive: a visit to the beautifully decrepit Eitel Building before it gets “restored”; a rural school district may be charter schools’ legal savior; Comcast offers Seattle a slightly better franchise deal; and a brief thought about the John Lennon shooting’s anniversary.

Monday’s missive contains the disappearance of Group Health as we know it; the neo-Nazi march that wasn’t; the final (at last) election result in City Council District 1;  tough times for an artist/entrepreneur; and a brief thought about Pearl Harbor Day.

Our biggest-yet MISCmedia MAIL (our six-month anniversary, in fact) has hordes of weekend activity listings, plus potential hockey hopes; potential freeway-lid hopes; ginormous “cocktail napkins” at a tech-biz gala; and the end of a Belltown institution.

MISCmedia MAIL, still fiercely independent, watches yet more local media consolidation. Also: just how “hate talk” inspires shooters; Redhook returns to Seattle (sort of); and Seattle’s (and the U.S. Northwest’s) real birthday.