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.

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

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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