aerial views for Earth Day

The image to accompany today's Google Doodle in honor of Earth Day is glorious. The weather here in Alfred, New York, is also pretty glorious this morning. 

We deserve sunshine.

birthed, schooled, thrifted, farmed

Oy, another word has gotten verbed or adjectived. A pet peeve of mine is "gift" and "gifted" when "give" or "gave" would be just fine.

"They home-birthed and home-schooled eight children, wore thrifted clothes, drove a rusty car and farmed." (a homesteading family profiled in "They're living off the land and preparing for disaster" by Anemona Hartocollis in the New York Times, April 12, 2026, page 13 in the national edition)

It's "thrifted" that especially stuck in my craw .... since it rhymes with "gifted"?

piuttosto

Mentioning contrapposto in a post a couple-three days ago reminded me of piuttosto, a word meaning rather or quite in Italian. I had first noted it in a daily word in Italian email list I used to see but haven't paid attention to lately. The message sent you a word every day, in a sentence, audio file at normal pace, slowed-down audio version. It's partly the doubling of the consonants in both contrapposto and piuttosto that tickle me.

When I googled piuttosto, I discovered it was sometimes but not always interchangeable with abbastanza, again with doubled consonant. You can google it yourself or click on piuttosto at the beginning of this post. The bit of text that showed in the search included "piuttosto la morte! = I'd rather die." More words that took me back to Heated Rivalry in which Yuna replies "I'd rather die!" when Shane asks her if she ever lets his dad win at cards. 

contrapposto

Donatello / David / Bargello

By Rabe! - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98318744

Connor Storrie

@rivalryarchive

YouTube

https://youtube.com/shorts/Vehyh19SkGQ?si=Na_HlYjA9zclxyfD

1835-1910

When today's Artle artist biography came up, the life dates -- 1835-1910 -- looked familiar. We catalogers get to recognize life dates of people that come up repeatedly in our work. The artist was pretty well known but I just knew there was some other famous person that also had those life dates. Not only that, the person that popped into my head was Mark Twain. His dates are indeed 1835-1910 but it may be the social media trolling around "markwayne" that prompted thinking of Mark Twain. 

https://www.nga.gov/artworks/72856-lesson-study-jersey-coast