A few weeks ago, when I was feeling particularly nerdy and obsessive, I looked up the analysis of this website and found that I had readers in all the American states except one – Vermont. It spurred me into action and I started reading and writing about Vermont. One of the things that I found out was that it was a major producer of marble, the biggest in the States, and when I went on holiday to the Greek island of Paros, also a marble centre, I was equipped with a surprizingly wide range of information about marble cutting even though I never got round to writing about the Vermont marble industry…..maybe one day.

After a week of Vermont-related issues, Vermont readers came flooding in ( I now have eleven readers!) and, opening a bottle of virtual champagne, I can now celebrate having followers in every American state. So here’s a toast to the citizens of America…..thanks for tuning in.

I was in a similar mood of obsessive list-making yesterday so I have compiled a top 51 (well I included District of Columbia as a state) in order of numbers of readers. A big, nay gigantic, vote of thanks to the people of New York, California and Pensylvannia who top the poll overwhelmingly but I would also like to say a personal “hi!” to my one reader in North Dakota…thanks for being different!

Hmmm……I need to look into North Dakota.

So here is the list….and all you people included within it, you are more than statistics to me:

1. New York

2. California

3. Pennsylvania

4. North Carolina

5. Florida

6. Massachusetts

7. Oregon

8. New Jersey

9. Texas

10. Illinois

11. Virginia

12. Georgia

13. Arizona

14. Colorado

15. Maryland

16. Ohio

17. Tennessee

18. Michigan

19. Washington

20. Minnesota

21. Missouri

22. Connecticut

23. New Hampshire

24. Kansas

25. Indiana

26. Wisconsin

27. Vermont

28. Kentucky

29. Nebraska

30. New Mexico

31. Alabama

32. District of Columbia

33. Utah

34. Oklahoma

35. Nevada

36. Louisiana

37. South Carolina

38. Rhode Island

39. Idaho

40. Mississippi

41. Maine

42. Arkansas

43. Iowa

44. South Dakota

45. Hawaii

46. Montana

47. Delaware

48. Wyoming

49. West Virginia

50. Alaska

51. North Dakota

The United States comes second (after my homeland in the United Kingdom) in the top twenty out of 95 wolfiewolfgang-reading countries world-wide. I am with Thomas Paine though and think of us all as “Citizens of the World” and I feel honoured to have you all here.

1. United Kingdom

2. United States

3. Hungary

4. Germany

5. Canada

6. Denmark

7. Australia

8. France

9. India

10. Italy

11. Netherlands

12. Czech Republic

13. Austria

14. Sweden

15. Brazil

16. Poland

17. Ireland

18. Spain

19. Norway

20. Greece

So thanks everyone…..I will publish the whole list when I reach the magic 100 nations moment – just 5 to go. In the meanwhile here is a little song to celebrate:

The post I have at least one friend in every American State. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I have been thinking about Vermont a lot recently and, whatever else you may say about it, it sure does a great Fall with all those Sugar Maple Trees with their multi-coloured leaves which, apparently, are particularly magnificent in Vermont because of the soil rather than the trees but, Vermont also has a heck of a lot of trees too.

In fact 77 % of this, the second smallest state (after Rhode Island but that is tiny) in the United States, is forested. The rest, I am told is swamp…woops, sorry, I was joking. There are a lot of lakes and puddles though. With America’s smallest largest city, Burlington and smallest capital city, Montpelier. How wonderful for an American state to celebrate having the smallest biggest anything – I admire their confidence.

I have never been to Vermont but it must be a wonderful place to spend an Autumn Break….Fall Break has other connotations in East-of-the-Atlantic English.

All those Sugar Maple Trees produce maple syrup, of course and that too is one of my early images of the USA. On my first morning in the States, I was sitting in a hotel restuarant in downtown San Francisco and had my very first pancake with maple syrup for breakfast. I was told, with a fair amount of American pride, that this particular syrup was called Vermont Fancy. It was, and is, wonderful. Vermont is the country’s largest Maple Syrup manufacturer, a tradition that goes back to the Algonguin Native Americans who first learnt how to tap the sap from these beautiful trees.

So thanks Vermont for your beauty and your syrup. Thanks also for being the first American state to abolish slavery in your constitution and to supply during the American Civil War a very handy sugar replacement when sugar cane farming was part of the slave trade.

Thank you also for being a major manufacturer of one of my other favourite things – the teddy bear.

Vermont has the second lowest population in the USA, 621,270 and the second lowest birthrate but the population is growing elsewhere with dramatic results. Every year, the Vermont Teddy Bear Company creates 500,000 teddy bears…soon they will swamp human inhabitants by a very large margin. I cannot think of living anywhere better than a land flowing with teddies and syrup.

Vermont teddies are also very, very cute and I want one now – especially one of the Star Trek series.

No one is perfect though, not even the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. On Valentine’s Day in 2005, they unveiled the “Crazy For You Bear” who was trussed up in a straightjacket and sold complete with certification documents. It caused an uproar amongst mental health professionals and after it was sold out, no more were produced. Now, of course, they are highly sort after by collectors.

As a Recovering Brain Injury Survivor, I can see why anyone who has suffered from mental illness might take offence. There is still a lot of stigma attached to mental health and a bit of sympathetic understanding would make a lot of lives less difficult. It is careless language I suppose to say “I am crazy about you” but I think it is a shame if such a descriptive and romantic phrase has to be out-lawed. “Take These Chains From My Heart” could be banned too if we look too closely into some of the darker uses of chains.

So, it is probably a good thing that the Vermont straightjacket teddy has become a limited edition, you can still find them on eBay if you want one, but the Anti-Vermont Teddy people who came up with this next image, took things much too far. I am all for releasing teddy from his bondage but decapitation is just plain wrong. Vermont really does disapprove of capital punishment – it is a beautiful, sweet-tasting and kind-hearted place.

No, let’s not take it out on Teddy – my only gripe about Vermont is that, still, it is the only state in the USA that has no wolfiewolfgang readers. Come on citizens, we are made for each other. I love forests, syrup and bears and I am the smallest big wolf in Britain.

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