A week or so ago, I went to a friend’s birthday party. Margaret Josephine (Cameron) Gill turned 100 on March 31. Think about that for a second. She was born March 31, 1915. World War I began in July of the previous year. The first powered flight was 12 years before. Women got the vote when she was five-years-old.

Margaret is a first generation American. Her father came from Scotland at the age of nine and worked in the mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Margaret was born on Coal River near St. Albans. Later, she married David Gill. They eventually moved to Boomer, West Virginia when David went to work for Union Carbide and they moved into company housing. They had four children, 11 grandchildren and 26 great grandchildren. All of that would be a fine life, filled with laughs, hardships and love. But, it’s not the whole story.

At the age of 43, Margaret started working at the Boomer Post Office and continued working for the US Postal Service until she was 75. She was the first woman to become a level 19 postmaster in West Virginia serving in Boomer, Alloy, Eleanor and finishing up her career at the Montgomery Post Office. She also held many state and national offices with the National League of Postmasters and was even selected as the National Postmaster of the Year. Margaret also won national awards while in West Virginia and South Carolina as editor of each state’s League of Postmasters newspaper.

She also fought breast cancer three times. The second time, when her doctor told her she would need to have a unilateral mastectomy, her reply was simple. “Fine, but you have to do it by Tuesday. That gives me two weeks to recover before I leave for Russia with my daughter.” Margaret traveled all over the country and the world. She now lives in South Carolina with her family.

There were 100 or so family and friends at the party. She met everyone at the door and talked and had a great time. The party officially lasted from 6 to 9. I think Margaret left around 10:15 pm, and that was only because her ride was ready to go. She outlasted a fair number of people younger than her. Realistically, though, everyone there was younger than she was.

This was actually the second 100th birthday party I’ve attended. My great grandfather turned 100 when I was a teen. Back then, of course, I knew everything. Now that I’m older, and have teens of my own, I realize just how little I actually do know. I think I have a better appreciation of what it takes to make it to 100. It’s no easy task.

Personally, I hope Margaret is around another 25 years, although she said she doubts that. Talking to her and watching her laugh with her family, it makes me remember what’s really important: laughing, loving, faith, some adventure and having a purpose. Those are the lessons I take from Margaret Gill. And the occasional mixed drink when it’s time to relax….

Without knowing what else is in the paper today, I can’t say if there is an April Fool’s Day story or not. The practice used to be fairly common. Newspapers and other media would run a front page story about some far-fetched topic, mainly to see if anyone would catch the joke. There are cases, more often in college newspapers, where the entire front page is made up.

Today, with the proliferation of fictitious news sources and satirical websites, whose goal is to trick people into believing (and sharing those stories on social media), I think many traditional news sources are afraid to have anyone question their credibility, even for a laugh. (On a related note, when you see a news story that makes you so mad that you can’t believe it and you have to share it on Facebook immediately, please make sure it’s real first. Find a fact checker that you trust and go to that website to make sure it’s not there. Just because it is on the internet, it is not automatically real.)

Even ignoring the satire (which is rarely funny), there is some awful news in the world today. Our leaders don’t lead, seemingly bending to the will of whoever writes the biggest check. There is hate, violence and destruction, all in the name of religion. Many people wonder who is really in charge and doubt that anyone else cares. The humor seems to have gone out of the news. In many ways, that’s sad.

I’ve always been a big believer in laughing at myself. Some days it’s hard, but those are the days it is probably the most important. As far as I’m concerned, you’re not allowed to laugh at anything (or anyone) else if you can’t laugh at yourself first.

The one problem I have with April Fool’s Day is when the “practical jokes” become mean-spirited. (How is that practical, anyway?) One definition for practical jokes is that they cause “the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion or discomfort.” We teach our children to do unto others… so hurting or embarrassing our friends and associates doesn’t make much sense, either. Not that this is anything new. April Fools jokes have been around for centuries.

All this considered, I vote for returning to another name for April Fools: All Fools Day. I think we should all act like fools today and see if we can get someone else to laugh at us. Like I said, you’re not allowed to laugh at anyone else if you can’t laugh at yourself first.

And I can’t think of a better way to reduce the stress and frustration of the middle of the week than everyone acting a fool..

When the hillside on Keystone Drive came down, most of us sat watching, waiting and wondering what would happen next. Homes and a church were destroyed and families were uprooted. The potential threat of flooding led staff at the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association to order an evacuation of all the animals. The situation was bad enough without losing hundreds of animals to a flood as well.

My wife Beverly called me just before she left work and said “I’m going to stop by there to see if they need help transporting the animals.” A little while later she said she was thinking about fostering a dog. Moments after that I got text saying “I’m bringing one home.”

We have three cats. No dogs. I’ve had dogs all my life, so it wasn’t a stretch to bring one into our house, but we definitely weren’t prepared. While she was picking Vernon up, I was running to the store to get some food and a dog bowl.  (In that rush, I grabbed the wrong food, but that’s a different story.) We ended up with a high-spirited border collie mix who was sweet and loving and energetic. Unfortunately, he and the cats didn’t quite see eye-to-eye. (Not his issue, he was fine with them, it was our cats’ issue.) Since the cats were found abandoned and raised by hand by my wife and step-daughter, we had to take our foster son back to the shelter when they were ready to have him. While he was with us, we did our best to make him feel as loved and as happy as we could.

Like everything, the situation was a learning opportunity for me. At one point, the shelter reported they had fostered 90 dogs and still had 114 at the makeshift home at Camp Virgil Tate. Frankly, I had no idea they had more than 200 dogs there. I knew they weren’t euthanizing animals regularly any more, but I guess it didn’t cross my mind that that meant how many more were on hand at any given time.

While we weren’t able to keep Vernon, I really hope someone with a family can take him. To help out, my wife has paid for Vernon’s adoption fees. We don’t want that cost to be an impediment to his adoption. If Vernon isn’t right for you, go check out his friends. There are lots of them there and they have lots of love to give.

I’ve heard people say “I don’t care what happens as long as the dog lives” when watching a movie. While most of us will never face Hollywood life-or-death situations, you do have the opportunity to make sure the dog lives.

All of them..

Update: this newspaper column was from a week or so ago. It didn’t get posted for various reasons, but I’ve gotten good feedback on it, so decided to post it a bit late. 

I don’t know if it’s the weather, or the fact that the legislature is in session (the session just ended), but I’ve been involved in a number of conversations lately about “what’s wrong with West Virginia.” Of course, the opinions are all over the map with different people making passionate cases for opposite things. I’ve heard people complain about everything from taxation, to the business climate to the education system to political favoritism and drug use. Frankly, it’s probably all of the above.

Most of the time I just listen. Friends of mine will be surprised by that. I remember a good friend, when I was in my early 20s, commenting that it was obvious I wasn’t married because I loved to argue. I don’t know if it’s because of marriage, but I don’t like to “debate” nearly as much as I used to. It seems like I learn a lot more now that I am staying quiet and listening. (I guess wisdom does come with age…)

In one argument, a friend talked about returning to Charleston after a trip to a major city. He said he was reminded of everything we don’t have here: restaurants and culture and arts to name a few things. Of course, we have all of those things, but not on a scale that big cities do and sometimes it’s easy to forget what we do have or miss it if you aren’t paying attention. On the other hand, he said he was comfortable here and didn’t want to live in one of those cities.

The population in the United States has nearly doubled in the last 50 years, while the population in West Virginia slipped slightly. If we’d kept pace with the rest of the country, there would be approximately 3.5 million people in West Virginia.

I see a lot that’s right in West Virginia. And a lot bothers me, too. And I definitely don’t pretend to have the answers. I will say I have a lot more respect for the people who are trying to find ways to “fix” problems rather than just complaining about them.

Researching a new project, I just read a book about the salt industry in the Kanawha Valley in the first half of the 19th century, leading up to the Civil War. It was probably the first extractive industry in the state (although it was western Virginia at the time). Salt was a major reason for logging and coal mining in the area, and led to the chemical industry and oil and natural gas exploration. Interestingly, salt makers faced many of the same issues we do today with boom and bust cycles, favoritism, international competition and distribution issues.

Maybe it’s time to turn our solutions on their head. Not that we shouldn’t take advantage of our God-given gifts and natural resources, but those industries have had problems and been prone to cycles since the beginning. The best resource we have here is our people and the natural beauty that surrounds us. We need to support small businesses and entrepreneurs who can deliver things people are interested in and make our home a place people want to come to live.

With that everything else will come..