Then you already know this is the biggest thing happening in Longview:

The 800-member strike had been a long time coming, and it came on a day I was filling in as city editor. I’ll just say that so far we’ve done a fair and thorough job.

And as the news gods would have it, on Day 1 of the strike the City Council voted to move forward on a new water system, taking the first $300,000 step of what could be a $30 million to $55 million bid to replace a fully functional water system with a little too much silica.

Summer — the season of slow news days — is over.

But it did give me time to do some big-picture stories.

One of my favorite things to report on is ideas. To start a conversation, surprise readers and affect policy. That’s the dream, right?

For example, one idea to reduce the ballooning costs of public defense is to decriminalize driving with a suspended license.

And I took a look at one idea that’s been coming up again and again — body cameras for police officers. Here’s why a quarter of the country’s police forces use them and just five percent of Washington state’s do.

On the justice beat, this murderer’s sentencing was heart-wrenching, and the courtroom was tense over the sentencing of a drunk driver who almost killed two young women and himself in a head-on crash.

Oh, and the sheriff of quaint Wahkiakum County took in a box of plastic explosives from a woman who found them in a storage unit.

On the feature front, I chronicled the drag-racing Gorans family, who took one last trip down the blacktop this month.

I’ll leave you with this photo of a small brush fire north of town while sending thoughts to the firefighters and families affected by the record-breaking fires in this parched state.