A pretty spectacular month! The April scorecard: D.C., West Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico, Minnesota, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Missouri.

West Virginia, Hawaii, or Mississippi! Any one of the three would be cause for celebration, but all three in one month? I didn’t see either Hawaii or Mississippi in all of 2018. With them and North Dakota all in the bag by the end of April makes me dare to hope that at the end of 2019 the whole map may be green.

Michigan usually isn’t all that hard to get, and Alabama has showed up every year for the last several, so I’ve got high hopes for them. Moving west, Iowa is a regular and Arkansas and Louisiana generally show up, though not without producing some suspense before they do. We shall see . . .

By the way, I spotted both Hawaii and Minnesota while holding a sign in support of striking workers at the Edgartown Stop & Shop. (The strike was settled after about 10 days.)

Mississippi turned up in Oak Bluffs, near the Council on Aging on Wamsutta Ave., where I’d just attended dog trainer Karen Ogden’s hour-long presentation “Raising a RockStar Puppy.” Yeah, that’s a big hint. The cat, so to speak, is coming out of the bag. Watch this space.