Unlike the June report, July is being posted in a reasonably timely fashion. It really is August 6.

Compare the top of this map to the top of June’s and you’ll see that July was a very good month: only two states, but they’re both cause for celebration. Not to mention they’re both pretty big, at least compared to Massachusetts, which of course is my benchmark for everything.

I’m rarely in downtown Edgartown, especially in the summer, but the Fourth of July parade lured me thither this year — I was marching with the Democratic Council of Martha’s Vineyard — and that South Dakota plate in a driveway on Cooke Street (or was it Davis Lane?) shouted that I was in the right place at the right time.

The rest of the month was, not surprisingly, a wash. Until near the very end of the month MONTANA appeared, in the parking lot next to the West Tisbury post office of all places. It was outside the West Tisbury church that I spotted Hawaii in May, so let it not be said that all the good stuff is down-island, or in the hospital parking lot.

The count is holding at 38, which isn’t all that great for this time of year. However, some of the missing states, if not exactly common, aren’t all that rare either: looking especially at that vertical line in the country’s midsection, from Iowa south to Louisiana. Idaho and Alabama should be possible too, and where the hell are you, Delaware?

A friend reported NORTH DAKOTA (yeah, you read that right) in the hospital parking lot and posted a photo to prove it. The hospital is a great hunting ground, especially in summer, when travel nurses and doctors come from all over to accommodate our bloated summer population. I fully intended to make a pass through yesterday, but the traffic going into Vineyard Haven was crawling, the temp was in the mid-80s, and I had Tam in the car, so I accomplished my errand — delivering a manuscript on the outskirts of town — and headed home.

But I’m still having North Dakota dreams . . .