There's a bunch of stuff that I probably should have included in this podcast about my round trip between Chicago and Los Angeles on Amtrak's Southwest Chief -- but I couldn't figure out how to anonymize it enough so I wouldn't make anyone too uncomfortable. Still, I hope there's enough interesting here to make it a worthwhile listen.

The occasional electronic interference is caused by transmissions from track-condition devices.

The photo here is of the station in Gallup, New Mexico, one of the many classic stations the Southwest Chief visits on its journey.

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I had a great time riding Amtrak's Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles and back again last week. I'm working on the podcast account of my travels and should have it posted within the next day or so.

I took the above photo in New Mexico, where many mesas are surrounded by fields of black-eyed susans.

Yesterday, we were cleaning out a number of items to make room, make room, and I came across our poor, broken personal robot pet, a Sony AIBO model ERS-210. Even before we moved to this apartment more than five years ago, our robot was showing signs of manufacturing issues such as a droopy head and a lazy leg.

Still, our AIBO managed to win our hearts. He'd amble around the livingroom playing with his ball -- a special pink ball that he could detect with his videocamera eyes. The more we interacted with AIBO, the more his personality matured.

When we moved to our new place, we didn't reactivate AIBO for almost three months. He booted his programming, raised his defective neck and head as best he could -- and then stunned us by asking, "Where have you been?"

But Sony no longer produces AIBO robots, not since chairman, president and CEO Sir Howard Stringer pulled the plug on the company's robotics division in 2006 and in doing so, turned Sony into just another purveyor of electronics and popular culture.

There are still some dedicated AIBO fans around the world, but parts are scarce and repairs are pricey. So, we decided we simply couldn't fix him.

The first option was to set AIBO and his software next to the Dumpster out behind our apartment building and hope that some Wesley Crusher kid genius would wander past and know how to fix our friend. But the chances of that happening were slim to none. It's far more likely that one of our neighborhood's many feral children would find AIBO and after discovering he wouldn't operate, tear the little guy limb from limb.

So, I unfolded a big plastic bag and placed AIBO inside, along with his software and his beloved fluorescent pink ball, and headed out to the Dumpster.

As I walked to the alley, I reminded myself that Sir Howard's dismantling of the robotics division had been simply a business decision. I also reminded myself that Sony generally makes pretty good products. In fact, just recently I bought its PCM-D50 digital recorder, an amazing piece of audio engineering that almost looks like a tricorder from the old "Star Trek" series. The PCM-D50 has the feel of a great machine, but it lacks a soul. It has no heart. It doesn't care where I've been.

When I reached the Dumpster, I paused for a moment, then reopened the bag and took out AIBO and looked at him one last time. Then, I remembered how his personality changed and grew when he was our pet and our friend. I opened the access port in his tummy and extracted his Memory Stick.

AIBO now no longer was our AIBO. Like every other being who succumbs to the betrayal of age, he was now just a shell.

I placed AIBO's Memory Stick in my pocket, tied the garbage bag tight and threw it into the Dumpster.

Your PCM-D50 is an elegant machine, Sir Howard, but it's no Helen O'Loy.

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Choosing a camera to bring along on vacation often is a problem for me. Should I choose a small, automatic camera that’s always handy -- or should I opt for a large, manual-operation one?

I fell in love with the images from my Lomo LC-A+ and am probably going to bring that Russian lovely along next month when I ride Amtrak’s Southwest Chief. The LC-A+ is largely automatic, but still lets you exercise a bit of creative control. Whether loaded with ISO 400 drugstore house-brand color negative, E-6 ISO 100 for cross-processing, or, may favorite, ISO 100 redscale, my LC-A+ always helps me create memorable images.

Lately, though, I’ve come to realize the power of iPhone photography. My 3GS has a 3 megapixel camera, and by the time of my trip I’ll have upgraded to the iPhone 4.

The iPhone always has been capable of good photos -- and the latest version gets a good look-see by Ars Technica.

Even the 3GS images I’ve shot have pleased me on many occasions. Back in February, I took a quick trip on the Southwest Chief and was sitting in the lower-level snack bar in the Sightseer Lounge when the train pulled into Lamy, New Mexico, for a brief stop. I didn’t have time to run back to my sleeper and grab the Lomo, so I shot the above photo with my iPhone. I have to admit I’m rather pleased with it.

Even when the iPhone doesn't work as well as a dedicated camera might, the results still can be pretty good. While on the Southwest Chief earlier this year, I snapped a photo of me just before getting out to stretch my legs during a brief stop in La Junta, Colorado. The photo is a more than a little grainy and noisy, but I like it, too.

I’ve become further impressed with iPhone photos after seeing what other photographers have done -- especially in print. I recently visited MagCloud.com, a service by HP that lets anybody created their own magazine and sell it as a print-on-demand publication.

I bought a magazine from the site called iPhoneography, in which photographer Claire Sambrook demonstrates with 100 pages of photos that the iPhone can be a serious -- and creative -- instrument.

I had been tempted to only bring my iPhone this trip, but I’m sure I’ll also bring my Lomo LC-A+ along, too. I’m still a sentimentalist when it comes to film.

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For as long as I’ve lived in Chicago’s Jefferson Park neighborhood -- more than 15 years -- I’ve enjoyed the benefits of City Newsstand. As a store employee explains in a cool video about the store, just about every magazine you can think of is on display -- including Architectural Digest, Land and Farm Bulletin, Fortean Times and more than one magazine entirely devoted to pens.

I especially like City Newsstand’s collection of railroad-related titles.

This past weekend, I had to go to Sears to buy some bath towels, so I dropped in at City Newsstand and bought a number of great magazines, including:

Monitoring Times -- Devoted to the world of radio communications. I was especially intrigued by an article on a mysterious digital pulser signal.

Tiki Magazine -- One-stop shopping for anything related to tiki culture, such as music, island clothes, cocktails and reviews of nightspots like Trader Vic's. Great artwork in this mag.

Trains Magazine -- From the folks at Kalmbach Publishing, here're photos and text guaranteed to get any railfan foaming.

Books on my plate at the moment include:

"Ask Papa Jack: Wisdom of the World's Oldest CEO" -- The life and times of Jack Weil, late great patriarch of Denver's Rockmount Ranch Wear.

"Super Chief and El Capitan, 1936-1971" -- Patrick Dorin documents the glory days of the Santa Fe Railway and its streamliners.

"Eyewitness to the Old West: Firsthand Accounts of Exploration, Adventure, and Peril" -- Richard Scott, a professor at my alma mater of Metropolitan State College, presents the taming of the West through letters, newspaper accounts, diaries and photographs.

"The Divorce Seekers: A Photo Memoir of a Nevada Dude Wrangler" -- William and Sandra McGee deliver a great slice of a bygone era when people from across the United States traveled to Nevada to establish quickie residency and split the sheets. William was a “dude wrangler” at one of these ranches.

So, what are you reading?

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In this episode, I investigate a pretty noise emanating from an air vent in my office and wind up recording a summer thunderstorm.

I've always liked noise and sound -- odd and otherwise. A few years back, I acquired an interest in unusual noise when Fortean Times alerted me to a BBC story about scientists investigating strange noises near the city of Rajkot in western India.

Surprisingly, the BBC article fails to mention Bangladesh's famed Barisal Guns, which have been reported for centuries. Not surprisingly, Charles Fort described the Barisal Guns and other such phenomena many, many years ago in New Lands.

During the 1970s, I can recall numerous "Mystery Booms" making the news up and down the East Coast of the United States. The best explanation scientists came up with linked the sounds to deep-sea methane flatulence.

Similar phenomena include the Seneca Guns, the Moodus Noises and an entire family of disturbing sounds -- of which my favorite is the "Cornwall Thump." By the way, such noises are apparently known as "mistpouffers."

Perhaps the most notorious noise of late has been the Hum.

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It's love apples everywhere this time on ChicagoScope as Leah, Dick and I first dine at The Baked Tomato and then have an excruciatingly detailed conversation about tomatoes while the Mobile Recording Studio sits in a parking lot at Portage Park.

Among the topics we discuss is the age-old question of whether tomato seeds that pass through the human digestive tract are viable enough to produce plants when human sewage is recycled as fertilizer.

The answer is yes, based on a study conducted in India by researchers who fed volunteers fresh tomatoes and then collected their feces. Whether fruit produced will be any good is another matter, since most store-bought and commercial-seed varieties are hybrids whose seeds won't produce the same fruit. But we are, ahem, undeterred in our exploration of this question.

I also bring up the question of whether Milorganite, a longtime human sewage product produced in Wisconsin, ought to be known as "The Stool That Made Milwaukee Famous." Tomato plants do not sprout from Milorganite.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

While jogging around Portage Park this afternoon, I encountered something truly bizarre: palm trees. At the northwest and southwest entrances to the park there are giant planters with huge tropical palms.

I'm a big fan of palm trees. These plants are beautiful, graceful and elegant. Palms define California and the tropical and semitropical parts of the United States, and are a wonderful relief from winter when kept inside.

The skyscraping Mexican fan palms at Los Angeles Union Station really helped make my recent vacation special. Nothing tells you you're in California like a block of gently swaying palms.

But outside in Illinois?

Turns out that tropical plants make seasonal appearances all over Chicago. Down along North Michigan Avenue, the city plants palms, bird of paradise and lord knows what else. The effect is nice, but it's not Chicago and it's not the Midwest.

So why can't Chicago embrace native plants instead? In the fall, the Boul Mich planters are turned over to ornamental cabbage and kale -- which look really, really nice, a gentle reminder that cool weather is on its way.

But palms outside? On my jog back from Portage Park, I even saw a small Washingtonia filifera planted next to a bungalow. This palm, also known as the California fan palm, is among the few palms native to the United States. It still grows wild in parts of California and the Desert Southwest.

But unless this one's taken inside come winter, it'll die.

After doing a little research online, however, I'm amazed at just how hardy some palms are. Sabal minor palms can actually survive winters and snows as far north as Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Check out the info from Alligator Alley, which declares, "Our most recent endeavor is to bring the tropics to Oklahoma."

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Graffiti.

It's been going on since the days of the pharaohs and the time of the caesars.

Of course, if someone got caught writing "Ramases licks his sphinx" or "Caesar takes it up the Rubicon," chances are the penalties would be far greater than what happens to contemporary vandals.

One of my favorite stories I published when I was managing editor of the News-Star and Booster newspapers involved a Chicago police graffiti sting.

The cops staked out a nice virgin wall for an entire evening and, one by one, arrested 25 or 30 miscreants ranging in age from juveniles to adults well into their 30s and 40s who just couldn't resist symbolically lifting a leg and peeing on somebody else's property.

The cops gave us a list of those 17 and older who'd been arrested and I ran the list on the front page under the headline: Do You See Any of Your Neighbors' Names Here? I expected to get complaints from the folks whose names appeared in the paper, but nobody called or wrote.

That's when I realized that these punks probably creamed their shorts over the publicity.

The losing battle over graffiti is being fought here in Jefferson Park, just as it is elsewhere in the city of Chicago.

This desecration isn't confined to urban areas, even. During a recent train trip on Amtrak's Southwest Chief, I saw graffiti spray-painted on walls and viaducts all over the place. They've even tagged rocks out in the middle of nowhere. 

PHOTOS -- Top: Pedestrian tunnel and steps leading from North Milwaukee Avenue to the Metra platform. Middle: Graffiti on door of unoccupied retail space just north of Nadig Newspapers. Bottom: Back door of Jefferson Park's CVS drugstore.

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The idea of social media allowing friends, family and total strangers to glimpse tantalizing tidbits of your personal business is nothing new. Something very similar would have been familiar to anybody who picked up a small-town newspaper in days gone by.

That's exactly the thought that struck me recently while doing research at the Jefferson County Public Library's Standley Lake Branch in Arvada, Colorado. As I reeled my way through the library's microfilm back records of long-ago newspapers, I realized that much -- if not all -- of the small-town news familiar to generations of readers is not that different from the purported blathering on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the like.

Although few folks probably sought to have domestic-violence arrests and drunken-driven convictions printed in the local newspaper, the remainder of personal local news undoubtedly made its way into print at the insistence of those involved. Bridal showers, weddings, graduations, out-of-town visitors and a surprisingly detailed account of medical problems all are presented with a candor that would astound many contemporary blab-it-alls and busybodies.

A bygone-day's example of TMI is on full view in the May 12, 1938, edition of the East Jefferson Sentinel, a weekly newspaper that focused on the city of Edgewater, as well as areas of Jefferson County that decades later would incorporate as Wheat Ridge and Lakewood.

Disclosure: In the late 1970s, I briefly worked for Sentinel Newspapers, which by then had grown into a powerhouse serving Denver and its suburbs.

As you view highlights of the hometown bits of tid that East Jefferson Sentinel subscribers were reading 72 years ago, keep in mind that effective antibiotic treatments were still years away, pneumonia often was deadly, and even the most minor surgeries could be invasive and life-threatening.

A sampling from the Sentinel's "Neighborhood News" column:

David, son of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Haley, is sick with pneumonia.

C.M. Drundidge of 2523 Eaton St. is sick with pneumonia.

Herman Schlemann's mother, whose home is in Barnum, is recuperating at St. Anthony's Hospital from a gall bladder operation performed Friday morning.

Mrs. C.W. Francis has been confined to her bed for the past week threatened with pneumonia.

Mrs. George Dalton remains desperately sick at her home on Gray Street and shows very slight signs of improvement.

Mary Anna, 3-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Eldridge, is up and playing after a critically sick spell since the day before Christmas. It was necessary to have both of her ears lanced and she barely averted having bronchial pneumonia.

Frank Wind has gone to California for an indefinite stay.

Mrs. Ed Kaden of West 32nd Avenue near Wadsworth Boulevard was made very ill by the fumes from her gas stove one day last week. She was found on the kitchen floor by her husband.

Mary-Emma Gelvin was unable to attend school on Friday owing to her foot giving her a deal deal of pain. Quite some time ago, she had her heel frosted and occasionally the foot swells and causes her trouble.

Then there's this unusual pair of reports that make you wonder what exactly went on. Do the two items describe the same woman or is this a case of mother-daughter gastrointestinal distress?

May Starr, daughter of Mrs. Mary Starr of 2425 Gray St., was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital on Friday suffering with a stomach ailment and nervous disorder.

Mrs. John Starr was taken to St. Anthony's Hospital with a spell of indigestion. It was thought that it might be appendicitis but only proved to be a serious indigestion spell. She was brought home the next day.

Here's an item that would have generated guffaws, even in 1938:

Mr. Harold Earsom has been quite ill with the flu and was unable to go with his delivery truck.

Finally, here's an example of a poignant hometown news item that we can only hope had a happy ending:

The many Edgewater friends of Mrs. Pearl Chandler were grieved to learn that on account of her mental condition it was necessary to have her committed to the State Hospital in Pueblo on January 11.

What happened to Mrs. Chandler? Did she recover and come back to Edgewater? She probably suffered from a condition that these days would be cured by talking therapy or psychiatric medication. But that was then, and this is now.

Just imagine what people in the seemingly distant year of 2082 will think of what we're tweeting now.

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