I don’t get to spend as much time in train stations as I like—ah, the romance of travel—but last week I had occasion to pass through South Station, the main commuter-rail/Amtrak hub in Boston. And there’s an odd bit of sound design that’s been built into the place.

If you’re reasonably old, you remember the kinds of schedule boards they used to have in train stations, the ones where locations and numbers are printed on tiles that spin around whenever the sign is updated. They’re like giant versions of pre-LED digital alarm clocks. (The technical name for them is a “split-flap” display.) South Station still has a couple of those boards, but they’re not in use, having been replaced by a giant digital LED board.

But this is what’s weird—there’s a speaker mounted near the board, and every time it (silently) updates, the speaker pipes in the clacking sound of the rotating tiles on an old-fashioned board. (It turns out the Globe reported on this feature back in 2006—as far as I know, it’s still unique.) If you grew up with the old boards, you hear the sound, you look up to see what’s changed. But we’re now into generations that will be mystified as to why board updates are announced with this strange rattle of percussion. (There weren’t that many of the old generations, actually—split-flap signs didn’t become common until the 1950s.)

There is, I imagine, an entire category of sounds like this, technically obsolete but still hanging on (for another example, I can set my mobile phone ringtone to a recording of an old-time telephone bell). I wonder if these sounds will become the aural equivalent of particularly obscure sayings or turns of phrase, where the colloquial meaning still remains widely intelligible even as the literal meaning becomes increasingly baffling.

The big time-sink news this week was that Google has begun to digitize the Life magazine photo archive. Will this result in anything actually productive? Well, it does allow us to catch a diva in a little white lie….

From Anna Moffo’s New York Times obituary:

Ms. Moffo caused a scandal in Italy when she appeared to be nude in a scene in the film “Una Storia d’Amore.” In later years she insisted that she had not been totally unclothed.

Oh, really? Link NSFW, unless you’ve fallen through a wormhole into Alma Mahler’s house. Which reminds me—Alma Mahler!

Ah, memes—the selfish genes of the digital genome. The current entry:

The rules:
1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog. I was tagged by Lisa Hirsch and Dick Strawser.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog – some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. If you don’t have 7 blog friends, or if someone else already took dibs, then tag some unsuspecting strangers.

Given that the very fabric of the blogosphere is held together by over-sharing, I think seven unknown random facts is a pretty ambitious request. But here goes:

1. I know way more about T. E. Lawrence than I’ll ever have any chance to use.

2. I once played one of the Three Slaves in a production of Die Zauberflöte that left in all the dialogue for the Three Slaves. I think the director regretted it.

3. I can raise one eyebrow. I taught myself to do this because my dad can do it. He still does it better than me.

4. Instruments I have played in public at one time or another, all badly:

• Harp
• Double bass
• Alto saxophone
• Xylophone
• Guitar (in character, as Friedrich von Trapp)

5. I once dropped Lucy Shelton on the floor while swing dancing.

6. On a family trip to Washington, D.C., I was the only one who took the Pentagon tour.

7. I cut my own hair.

Tag seven people? Man, this meme is a lot of work. OK—Kyle, Molly, Darcy, Hester, Mark, Andrew, and Richard: you’re it.

Some cold-war era cheerful absurdity as I psych myself up for a long working weekend: Bill Haley and the Comets with their 1954 last-male-survivor-of-a-nuclear-blast masterpiece “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town).” (Amazingly, “Rock Around the Clock” was originally released as the B-side to “Thirteen Women.”)

If you’re one of those that enjoys the stately passing of the seasons, likes to take the time to appreciate each unique moment, believes in each day having its own dignity, &c.—in other words, if you’re like me, and think that a certain December holiday’s backwards creep into more and more of the calendar is an abomination, you might remember to send a fruitcake to the good officers at the Boston Police Department, who share your pain.

At about 4:04 am, on Saturday, November 8, 2008, officers from Area C-6 (South Boston) responded to a radio call for loud music in the area of 5 Shepton Terrace. On arrival, officers spoke to several residents who stated that one of the tenants was playing his music much too loud. As officers approached the location in question, officers could hear Christmas music being played at an unnecessarily loud level. When the tenant answered the door, officers instructed him to lower the music due to calls made to 9-1-1. Officers further advised the tenant that people were having difficulty sleeping due the loud Christmas music. With the music turned down, officers left the location. However, a short time later, officers were called back to the same address for the same reason (noise complaint). Upon arrival, officers were able to hear the loud Christmas music. When officers knocked on the door, the tenant answered the door and began swearing at the officers.

November 8, mind you. He can’t even make the Russian old calendar/new calendar argument.

Maybe there’s actually a rhythmic lesson here. If you’re right in the groove (carols on December 25th), it’s OK; if you’re sufficiently behind the beat (Christmas in July), it’s a pleasant syncopation. But forty-seven three-hundred-sixty-fifths of a beat early? Throws everything off.

The last Christmas party at our home was that of 1916. Then in 1917 Walker was training at Camp Dix and we all went out with his mother and spent Christmas Day at an inn near by to which he could come. There was rumor everywhere that his regiment was to embark for overseas in a few days, although he really did not sail until May. We all did our best to make it gay in that hotel dining-room, the rain falling dismally. We were so proud of our young khaki-uniformed lieutenant! My Polly played and played, rags, anything and everything, on the old hotel piano. We did not know it was to be our last happy Christmas together, but war had already given to joy a kind of yearning anguish.

My nephew was killed on the 18th of the following September, 1918, at Saint-Mihiel. Reconnoitring to assure the safety of his men, he leaped a fence to join three fellow officers. A shell tore them to pieces. This was in the early afternoon. Walker was taken to a field hospital and died at eleven that night.

—Walter Damrosch, My Musical Life (1923)

Damrosch’s nephew was Walker Blaine Beale, grandson of former Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Damrosch spent the summer of 1918 in France as a war worker under the auspices of the YMCA, conducting orchestral concerts as an outgrowth of his presidency of the American Friends of Musicians in France, and, at the instigation of General Charles Dawes, advising General Pershing on the development of Army bands.

Music news from the multiply-employed:

Physicist/composer Paul Sutton hears a particularly important song newly recorded.

A nice profile of Israeli organist/composer/trash collector Roman Krasnovsky.

Over the weekend, musician/trainer Enzo Calzaghe saw his best pupil, his son Joe, win quite possibly his last fight, a unanimous decision against Roy Jones Jr. to retain the Ring Light Heavyweight title and improve to 46-0 as a professional boxer.

And R.I.P. to the legendary singer/activist Miriam Makeba, who passed away yesterday after suffering a heart attack at the end of a concert performance. Here she is in Stockholm in 1966, singing “When I’ve Passed On.” (With the incomparable Sivuca on accordion.)

For the record: the New York City Opera-Gerard Mortier saga, in relation to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (Click to enlarge.)