Good to be home

As regular readers of this blog likely remember, I check out the local newspapers when I travel, not for the usual AP/Reuters stuff that I'd read anywhere else in the world, of course, but for the local stories.

As might be expected, in San Francisco over the last few days the BIG story has been the devastation in the southern part of their state, with some obvious local angles -- the bay area fire departments are sending assistance to their brethren, etc.

Less, predictably, a front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle Saturday said that there may be a serial killer preying on the homeless who camp out in Gold Gate Park. There have been three recent homicides there in recent weeks -- September 4 and 8, and October 16. Tensions with neighbors who see the homeless not as harmless eccentrics but as somewhere between a nuisance and a danger has been runing high at any rate. Some of the interviewees thought that might be behind the killings. But that seems implausible to the experts interviewed, who think there ismore likely a connection to the lively crack-cocaine traffic in the area.

A much lighter story inside the same paper, same day, concerned the consolations to be found in moving out of a home one owns, especially in an overpriced area, into a rental situation. The reporter, Susan Fornodd, and her husband, moved to a rental house less than a mile from one they used to own.

Still too serious a subject for you? In implication if not in tine? there's one even further inside the paper about collectors of Halloween kitsch, who are apparently excited now about Tiffany plates with pumpkin illustrations.

I did a lot of thinking during my travels about my own blogging future, and I'll bring you all into my confidence tomorrow.