In honor of Matt’s safe return from the heart of darkness, and in lieu of an actual blog post, I thought I would display my geographical experience of America:
bold the states you’ve been to, underline the states you’ve lived in and italicize the state you’re in now…
Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /
Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.
My fudge is that I say I lived in Virginia. I never had a residence there. But I worked in Virginia for three years, and spent as much time there as Maryland or DC during that time. Of course DC isn’t a state. But you knew that.
Cool. I haven’t been to six states.
I was shocked to read that that was Matt’s first visit to a red state – I figured a Harvard undergrad, journalist type would have traveled more. And then I realized that although I’ve been to 33 states, out of the 17 I haven’t been to, only Hawaii is unambiguously non-red, and New Mexico and Iowa are ambiguous at best. And when I’ve been to red states, it’s been to generally non-red parts – eg, Moab, UT; Terre Haute, IN; Orlando, FL; Myrtle Beach, SC. And I’ll continue that trend with my first trip to Texas in May, when I go to a conference in Austin.
The best explanation I can come up with is that city folk like to go to cities (I’d like to say that cities are the sorts of things that draw people in general, but I’ll restrict my claim to just blue-staters) and that blue states (and blue parts of red states) have most of the cities. But I guess that doesn’t explain my presence in Vermont, Maine, or New Hampshire.
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Cool. I haven’t been to six states.
I was shocked to read that that was Matt’s first visit to a red state – I figured a Harvard undergrad, journalist type would have traveled more. And then I realized that although I’ve been to 33 states, out of the 17 I haven’t been to, only Hawaii is unambiguously non-red, and New Mexico and Iowa are ambiguous at best. And when I’ve been to red states, it’s been to generally non-red parts – eg, Moab, UT; Terre Haute, IN; Orlando, FL; Myrtle Beach, SC. And I’ll continue that trend with my first trip to Texas in May, when I go to a conference in Austin.
The best explanation I can come up with is that city folk like to go to cities (I’d like to say that cities are the sorts of things that draw people in general, but I’ll restrict my claim to just blue-staters) and that blue states (and blue parts of red states) have most of the cities. But I guess that doesn’t explain my presence in Vermont, Maine, or New Hampshire.