John's Blog

The world’s loudest music without amplification from a non-musical instrument
Holy crap! I had almost forgotten about this strange local tradition until I stumbled upon this as I was perusing my RSS feeds. Every Christmas Eve, they use the factory steam whistle to play Christmas carols. Sounds quaint, no? In theory, sure. But the reality of the event is that if you didn't know that someone was attempting to play music, you might think that some wounded cat had come back from beyond the grave to scare the living. When this year's show was cancelled due to a boiler malfunction, some said "it hurts not to hear it" but as I recall it usually hurt me to listen.