Not quite as good as the previous June, when I added five states to the map, or the June before that, when I added six, but four new states ain’t bad, and they’re all good ones: Arizona, Oklahoma, Utah, and Alabama (which got in just under the wire, on the 30th). Oklahoma was a rental truck unloading in Edgartown the day the Spirituals Choir sang at The Anchors, the Edgartown senior center.
The year-to-date total stands at 34, a bit behind schedule. The nation’s midsection looks rather empty, notably that stack with Louisiana on the southern end and Minnesota on the north. It’s time to start hanging out in the hospital parking lot. All sorts of good plates show up there in the summer, including last year (I’m told by a very reliable source) North Dakota.
June was a long, full, and intense month. June 8 was my 65th birthday, so I became a card-carrying Medicare recipient on June 1. By the end of the month I’d sorted it all out — with help from several friends and, especially, from the county’s health care access office — and was also enrolled in a prescription plan and a supplemental (“Medigap”) plan. I’ll be paying roughly three times more for coverage than I was under the Affordable Care Act. That’s a bit of a shock.
Also a bit of a shock was my June 9 dental appointment to have two adjacent teeth filled: turned out I needed a root canal as well. Finished that yesterday. It took three appointments, so I’m really glad I didn’t have to go off-island. (The island’s gentrification carries some benefits for the non-gentry.) It was relatively painless, but I’m bracing for the credit card bill.
Fortunately, June was a very, very busy month workwise. I was so overbooked that I wondered how I’d get through it, but I’ve pretty much managed. July looks busy too — last summer I was scrounging for work, so this is a relief — as were April and May. So I may get those dental bills paid off sooner rather than later.
From the Seasonally Occupied Territories . . . 
Looking at your map it just occurred to me that the tables are turned. I have been to all the states who have visited Maine, but have not visited the middle of our country. Hmmm…
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In the house I grew up in, in Massachusetts, there was a framed map of the U.S. New England was drawn to scale and the West Coast was pretty close. The rest of the country was about three inches wide. The title was A New Englander’s View of the United States. Not all that far off! I don’t remember when the whole huge area between the East and West Coasts started being referred to as “the flyover states,” but the two perspectives have a lot in common. They acknowledge that Chicago is out there somewhere, but that’s about it. (I’m on Martha’s Vineyard, btw. This makes license-plate spotting more challenging because cars have to take a 45-minute ferry ride to get here. They can’t pass through on the way to somewhere else.)
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Great story. Love those maps!
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Hmm… looks like we might start being able to deduce which states are happiest to stay at home from this little experiment! (Sorry about the teeth though…right now it’s a contest between me and the cats to see whose teeth get dental help first! So far the cats are winning 3-0. Fortunately the kidney stones keep my mind off my own mouth.)
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I feed Trav a handful of TD (Tooth Diet) food with every meal. That’s all the dental care he gets. So far it looks as though his fangs are going to outlast him (and possibly me), I’m still looking for a license-plate algorithm that will predict license-plate sightings on Martha’s Vineyard. I’m pretty sure the main variables are a state’s (1) distance from Massachusetts, (2) population, and (3) median income. The less-spotted states are consistently those with relatively small population, relatively low median income, and considerable distance from Massachusetts. The oddest holdout at this point is Minnesota. I’m sure it’s here; I just haven’t seen it yet.
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