George and Dora in Philadelphia

Great Aunt Dora was one of the most gracious ladies that I knew in my childhood. She was the longtime Dean of Women at Alfred University when that role also included playing hostess to esteemed guests of the university. Her first husband was George C.R. Degen, a stockbroker, and they lived in Philadelphia for most of the first couple decades of the twentieth century. They also lived for a while in New York City; I have seen a photo of their NYC apartment which shows a bit of the cherry dining table that became part of my furnishings for much of my adult life. That table came back to the family house in Alfred, New York, in 1995 when I moved from Texas to my studio apartment in New York City.

Aunt Dora came back to the family house in Alfred, New York, after the death of her husband in the early 1920s. She married J. Nelson Norwood, also widowed, in 1954 and they lived upstairs in the family house. Uncle Nelson had been president of Alfred University. This picture shows Aunt Dora and Uncle Nelson in 1936, both officers of the university and probably part of the centennial celebrations that year. They were not yet married but are standing in front of the family house.

The reason I have been thinking about all this history is a coincidence in the most recent book I finished reading. The book was French Braid by Anne Tyler. Most of the characters and action are set in Baltimore. The mother of the family, Mercy Garrett, mentions at one point that she went to visit her friends George and Dora in Philadelphia. Nothing about the two, no relevant twist of the plot, nothing. Just George and Dora in Philadelphia.

Connecticuters in LCDGT

I am a bit skeptical about the value of the Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms vocabulary (LCDGT). While there are demographic terms like Nebraskans and Californians that are widely used to describe people from those places, some of the terms being proposed for the vocabulary seem like a stretch, for example, Albanians (New York State) for the residents of Albany, New York. And then I saw an article in today's New York Times about Connecticut doing a rebranding. The governor and others are worried that people see Connecticut as a somewhat boring waystation between New York City and Boston. The author of the article opines that residents do not even know what to call themselves. Are they Connecticuters? Connecticutians? Connecticutites? So I checked LCDGT and the preferred term is Connecticut residents. The LCDGT record has references from Connecticuters, Connecticotians, and Connecticutensians, as well as from Nutmeggers, from the state nickname, The Nutmeg State.

Photo taken in Albany, N.Y., by an Alfredian

the subject of the Artle work

Marie Harriman, 1903-1970, gallerist and second wife of W. Averill Harriman, is the subject of the portrait in today's Artle. The portrait, in the National Gallery of Art, does not seem to me like a predictable work by the artist. Joe Biden borrowed the painting to hang in his Vice Presidential office in the Old Executive Office Building from 2009-2015, according to the NGA exhibition information on the page for the painting.

Marie Harriman's Wikipedia page is a master lesson in name dropping: Averill Harriman, Peter Duchin, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney (son of Harry Payne Whitney and Gertrude Vanderbilt), Hall Roosevelt (brother of Eleanor), Babe Paley, Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward, Randolph Churchill (son of Winston), Leland Hayward, and Miss Spence's School. I guess this is what happens when you are in the New York upper crust.