As Mother’s Day approaches, staff writer Megan Burbank thanks her mother for instilling in her a love for screwball heroines, old movies and strong female role models.

With social distancing efforts (or just distance) keeping many families apart for Mother's Day, our features staffers share how they'll be celebrating their moms this weekend. Happy Mother's Day!

RAVE to the Washington State Employment Security Department. I had never submitted an unemployment claim before and wasn’t sure what to expect, particularly as I am self-employed. The process was explained clearly and took about 25 minutes. The money was in my account in two days. I am so grateful that I plan to contribute […]

Throughout Friday, on this page, we’ll be posting updates from Seattle Times journalists and others on the pandemic and its effects on the Seattle area, the Pacific Northwest and the world.

Gov. Kate Brown announced earlier this week that some outdoor recreation activities can resume as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

Five TSA employees nationwide have died of COVID-19, and 516 employees have tested positive, including seven at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

RANT to families that are not social distancing their kids from others. Including those families from Western Washington that come to weekend homes in Central and Eastern Washington and don’t wear masks or social distance. RAVE to the O’Reilly employee who not only helped me, but took the time to teach me how to change […]

While this year’s Mother’s Day weekend promises warm weather, Seattle officials are restricting hours in city parks out of fears that large crowds hoping to enjoy the sun could further spread the novel coronavirus. A recent report shows the COVID-19 transmission rate in Western Washington may be steadily increasing, suggesting that the number of virus cases […]

Who needs a yard sale? In an effort to get rid of stuff before moving to a smaller house, this couple came up with a novel way to purge: let people in and tell them to take whatever they want.

The architect and the homeowner/artist have this remodel down to a fine art.

When Alyssa LeMay heard the strange music and sounds coming from her bedroom, she walked in expecting to find one of her sisters. But the room was empty. Then, as the 8-year-old wandered around her room alone, the mysterious song abruptly stopped. “Hello there,” a man’s voice said. It wasn’t Alyssa’s father, who was elsewhere […]

The Snohomish blogger and Instagram influencer shares warm and cozy holiday decorating tips from her new book.

Armed with a $450,000 budget and a dream that wouldn’t sink, Sarah J. Haggard joined the HGTV show “Home Afloat” and shared her water-life wishlist.

“OUR STORY WITH this house is kind of a long one,” says Megan, standing in the warm, wide-open kitchen of the modern new home she shares with her husband, Will; their two young daughters; and their 80-pound Labrador doggy, Steve. The fact that Megan is standing, smiling, in this warm, wide-open kitchen pretty clearly telegraphs […]

THE FIRST THING you notice about Bonnie Berk and Larry Kessler’s property in the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle is the formidable retaining wall. Accentuated with terra-cotta tiles and red brick, the wall provides double-sided access to the property via stairs, and was part of the original home design by Arthur Loveless. It’s a grand […]

Sarah Hurt started her International District business two or so years ago, “with two goals in mind,” she says: “to advocate for local artists, and to provide a curated collection of art that was ready for any interior design project.”

SO MUCH IS so sweet here — with virtually zero DIY experience, but decades of memories and dreams (and only two trips to the ER), Ty Warren successfully pulled off the lovely-on-many-levels remodel of his childhood home in Kenmore — but the sweetest might be how we learned of this sentimental act of derring-do-it-himself in […]

From baking a Japanese-style souffle cheesecake to making trivets out of wine corks, here's what our features staffers recently learned from YouTube videos.

GREAT BLUE HERONS alight — a lot — along this glistening stretch of Lake Union. Could be the impressive fishers simply have landed on the perfect, protected perch for that statue-standing thing they do — right up until they lightning-strike. Could be they’re doing that inquisitive-bird “Are You My Mother?” thing, imprinting on the mesmerizing […]

KEVIN AND KAREN had lots to look at when they were moving to Seattle from Bellevue. They looked in Madrona. They looked on Queen Anne. But Madison Park looked different. “We were drawn first and foremost to the neighborhood,” Kevin says. “Specifically, the Canterbury neighborhood. It’s really close to the lake, and has longtime residents. […]

NEW YORK (AP) — On most days since the coronavirus spread through Manhattan, Robert Caro has held to a familiar routine. He rises early, walks to his office down the street, spends hours on the fifth and final volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography and enjoys a late-day stroll in Central Park with his wife, […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Tony Vaccaro’s mother died in childbirth, and at a tender age he also lost his father to tuberculosis. By age 5, he was an orphan in Italy, enduring beatings from an uncle. As an American GI during World War II, he survived the Battle of Normandy. Now, a celebrated wartime and […]

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — SeaWorld guests could be sitting in every other row of the stadium to watch orca shows when the parks eventually reopen, the company’s CEO said Friday. Interim CEO Marc Swanson gave an update Friday on a coronavirus safety plan under development, but no official reopening dates have been announced, the Orlando […]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man accused of romancing “black-ish” star Jenifer Lewis and three other women to con them out of money for his phony businesses agreed Friday to plead guilty to a federal charge of wire fraud, prosecutors said. Antonio Wilson, 57, of Santa Monica, acknowledged conning the women in the plea agreement […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine lit up social media on Friday, releasing a new song and video created during his home confinement just weeks after being freed from a Manhattan federal lockup over coronavirus fears. In “Gooba,” the multi-tattooed rapper whose real name is Daniel Hernandez puts on a rainbow-colored performance accompanied by […]

Alan Lund taught music in the Bellevue and Highline School Districts, and directed music for the Seattle Opera Chorus, the Eastside’s Cascadian Chorale, the Boeing Chorale and, most notably, the Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Little Richard, one of the chief architects of rock ‘n’ roll whose piercing wail, pounding piano and towering pompadour irrevocably altered popular music while introducing black R&B to white America, died Saturday after battling bone cancer. He was 87. Pastor Bill Minson, a close friend of Little Richard’s, told The Associated […]

Reaction to the death of rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Little Richard, who died Saturday at 87. — “I’m so saddened to hear about the passing of Little Richard, he was the biggest inspiration of my early teens and his music still has the same raw electric energy when you play it now as it did […]

Bill Gates is stepping down from the board of Microsoft Corp., the company he co-founded in 1975.

It was a rocky week on Wall Street, as most securities fell and some saw record declines. Seattle-area companies felt the pain as sharply as any.

Microsoft's executives, with headquarters just a few miles from one of the country’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, were among the first to confront the impact.

In arguably the most ambitious and unique procurement effort in company history, technology giant Microsoft is leveraging its global supply chain to bring tens of thousands of badly-needed medical supplies — including 240,000 N-95 surgical masks — to the Puget Sound in anticipation of coronavirus hospitalizations. Supplies began arriving on Monday.

Affirmed Networks helps build virtual networks for telecom customers using 5G technology.

The company's chief technology officer says early detection of underlying health conditions could not only help treat patients and prevent the spread of future pandemics, but also reduce care costs for Americans

The 317-page report by the inspector general also found that giving the contract to a single company — Microsoft — rather than dividing it among competitors was "consistent with applicable acquisition standards."

Analysts expected as much, and that's one reason Microsoft's stock is closing in on the all-time high it hit in early February.

How citizen ‘reporters’ and marauding coyotes took over the neighborhood ‘news cycle.

Ron Judd re-creates a ‘typical’ exchange, where the case of a missing monkey quickly devolves into less-than-neighborly snark.

As in many smaller Northwest towns, things are changing rapidly here.

As a historically seafaring town that’s also way ahead of its time, picturesque Port Townsend hopes to grow respectfully, responsibly and authentically offbeat.

NO CITY OR region gets to choose what it’s best known for. That, alas, typically is an artifice assembled over time, often by scribes, compilers of baseless listicles, guidebook authors, societal observers and other self-appointed pundits, usually from far-afield havens of misinformation (such as the East Coast). Those depictions of place — for current purposes, […]

IT BEGAN HUMBLY, as a small seed, nearly three decades ago, in the mind of a local wood and metal patternmaker. The germ of Jeff Carnevali’s idea — a round, elastomeric rubber ball, surrounded by a spring-loaded, double-armed metal clamp to form a grippy, orbital socket capable of mounting countless devices to solid surfaces — […]

HISTORICAL RESEARCH at times truly feels like a time warp. For me, that’s been the case for almost five years, since I launched a thesis-level study of what at first seemed a small, never-fully-explained outbreak of arch-conservative political radicalism in a Northwest town (the Charles H. Fisher affair in Bellingham, at what’s now Western Washington […]

Before plunging into our own likely decade of consequence, take a shallow dive into the gene pool of Northwest civilization at the dawn of the last '20s.

TODAY WE PAUSE briefly to tip the cap to Mother Earth — or, more specifically, to the people plugging away at the day-to-day jobs of saving her life. People in the Northwest have a particular stake in Earth Day, a now-global event celebrating its 50th anniversary this month. The very first one was organized by […]

Amazon-owned Whole Foods will provide grocery shoppers with free single-use masks at all its stores beginning this week, in keeping with the chain's "request" that all shoppers wear masks.

Thinness and wellness aren’t synonymous, and neither are obesity and illness. It’s time to question outdated notions of body size and health.

Packing your own lunch is an excellent way to guarantee a fulfilling meal that benefits both your health and your wallet.

Despite the wind, rain, fog and cold, there are plenty of Seattle-area hikers who love to get outdoors during the inclement weather of winter. Here are their tips for enjoying Washington's trails, no matter the season.

NEW YORK (AP) — Almonds used to have about 170 calories per serving. Then researchers said it was really more like 130. A little later, they said the nuts may have even less. Calorie counting can be a simple way to help maintain a healthy weight — don’t eat and drink more than you burn. […]