Today, Hawaiʻi celebrates 50 years of statehood. Lawrence Downes writes in the New York Times:

Hawaii has given a lot to the Union. It got its own native-son president in January. Only 21 states are in that club. The guy who really invented baseball is buried in Honolulu. And if you could go to any of the 50 states right now, which would it be?

That list could be much, much longer, but the item I’d like to add is that Hawaiʻi is also the most Buddhist state! To be precise, Buddhists make up a greater proportion of the Aloha State than any other in the Union (in contrast, my home state has the largest number of Buddhists). In the United States, Buddhism is strongest in the West—its frontier is in the East.