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The Kitchen Table

Phrase of the day 2/13

jim_1 (Zone 5B)

3 years ago

Swan song

The legend that every swan sings one glorious song just before death is about as old as recorded legend goeth. The fact of the matter is that a swan never sings. But a romantic legend dies hard, especially when poets such as Shakespeare, Coleridge and Spenser hymn it in verse. Nowadays we often refer to the last great work of a creative artist, be he poet, writer, painter or musician as his swan song.

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Comments (3)

chisue
3 years ago
I'm not sure that something couldn't exist just because I never observed it. Maybe I wouldn't have recognized it. Also, as the useage indicates, the 'song' isn't necessarily a sound...but is a farewell.
Yayagal
3 years ago
That was so worth reading. T.Y.
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Phrase of the day 1/3
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Jim, that's an excellent suggestion. My dad's not in memory care yet, but we've attended (pre-Covid) a few sing-alongs in the memory unit. Just an amateur with her guitar, but it connects the men and women with their old selves for a little while. Maybe with vaccinations coming along, volunteering will be possible in another few months. I can't sing worth a darn, but I can read :-)
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Phrase of the day 2/2
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Well, I have a Hobson's choice! There was some tinkering with my computer and my login info to the Kitchen Table was deleted and now I can't get back in under my Stacey_mb user name. So either I don't participate on this site at all or, Hobson's choice, I do participate but no choice but to accept the anonymous numbered identity Houzz has assigned to me instead of my own name.
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Stacey_mb I worked in a government library, and didn't know the formal definition of a white paper until now! ETA: name.
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Phrase of the day 3/13
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Huh, I never made the connection! It's plausible, but were there really no fabrics decorated with circles before ~1900? ... maybe not ...!
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maire_cate
3 years ago
'Swan Song' is a fairly common phrase yet I never bothered to really pay attention. So your post this morning inspired me to look up Swans on the Cornell web site and I found a lot of information.

Thank you, Maire

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