Norteast* (for Northeast*)

I cataloged an audit report recently for a town in New York called North East. And as if the name itself weren't amusing enough, Wikipedia tells us, under "Communities and locations in North East," that Northeast (one word, a different place) is "a location southwest of Northeast Center" and that Northeast Center is "a hamlet southwest of Millerton." Okaaay. As a coworker wryly observed: "You can't get there from here." All of these vaguely northeastern-y southwestern-ish places are situated in Dutchess County, a lovely section of upstate New York, including Hyde Park, the home of FDR, and Poughkeepsie at its center. The town of North East is apparently, at least in some directions, a little fancier than one might expect, given its cut-rate sounding name and higglety-pigglety seeming geographic positioning. This picture shows where the rich folk appear to reside, in the town's "historic district." I'm not sure I could locate North East if I had a compass taped to my forehead, but I did find six cases of today's typo in the OhioLINK database, and 124 in WorldCat.

(Hiddenhurst estate, a contributing property to the Coleman Station Historic District in the Town of North East, south of Millerton, NY, 2008, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid