How To Make It Work. How To Make It Fail.

Thomas Edison said: "I have not failed I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Kipling said: "If we can meet tragedy and triumph and treat those two impostors just the same". Upon marrying his second wife, though he still love his first truly but not as a wife he said: "Thank goodness after 15 years together that marriage failed" And here my bride and I celebrate 10 years together. One time we failed to follow a path correctly and got lost. And in that "lost" stumbled upon a new path that was more beautiful. One time six boats were lined up to run the mightiest rapid in all of North America (Lava Falls in the Grand Canyon) five boats hit the run perfectly and flipped and lost cargo and passengers. The sixth was a rookie and missed the cut. And yours truly did not flip or get damaged.

Eric was born a bastard and illegitimate. A very bad thing in the 1950's. Yet he was adopted into a perfect family. Just the other morning a couple was moving from one apartment to another. The danged elevator failed to work. The couple failed to move on schedule being stuck in the elevator for quite some time. So they were moving a bed on a sidewalk about 40 minutes late. They had failed at their time line. A toddler fell out of a window 3 stories up and landed safely on the mattress.

Who among us has not left late, failed to be on time to work, and seen the deadly accident on the road that happened at our normal time of being there?

The author has one child born after 20 hours of water breaking. 3 trips to the hospital. And she was born "blue" but the timing had us miss the worst gayle force winds in our county for 100 years. Another child was an emergency "C" section. That revealed an easily extracted tumor in the mom that could have meant her death if not detected early.

One time the author skied off a huge mountain cliff, just as a wind sheer hit the mountain killing three but blowing the author sideways enough to get across a gorge and land in a snowbank 100 yards away.

Somethings were meant to fail.

But do we keep our eyes open to a failure that just might surpass our original goals. One of the most amazing failures of the last century was the American "loss" in Vietnam. It was a truly and amazing thing for such a small country to defeat such a huge super power. America was looking to stop communism dead in it's tracks. South Vietnamese opposed the Northern concept of communism. Earlier Ho Chi Minh had begged Roosevelt and the Truman to help them, the Vietnamese in establishing a country free from Chinese overlords, the requests were denied. Ho Chi Minh adopted a declaration of independence that looked just like Mexico's which in fact was just like the United States of America's. In fact there were some really messed up deals with the French that dictated much of the efforts.

But here is the truth 40+ years later. Vietnam is stable. Vietnam is the fastest growing free enterprise economy in the world. It still has communist roots but those are eroding fast that butter in a hot frying pan. It is really awesome to see the development and growth in really cool directions. For capitalists, Vietnam was a failure. And that is the biggest line of BS that could not be further from the truth.

The idea that Ho Chi Minh had and the powers to be could not grasp was that an agrarian country could not be socialist until the had the industrial revolution. Well poor old Uncle Ho. It failed. And now the country is embracing prosperity. And that is so cool.

A boy goes to sleep each night with a few songs in his head. His favorite song of all is "Lemon Tree" of course over forty years of singing lullabies the father/singer has modified the song much.

Generally the words are as such:

When I was just a lad of ten, my father said to me,
"Come here and take a lesson from the lovely lemon tree."
"Don't put your faith in love, my boy", my father said to me,
"I fear you'll find that love is like the lovely lemon tree."

Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.

One day beneath the lemon tree, my love and I did lie
A girl so sweet that when she smiled the stars rose in the sky.
We passed that summer lost in love beneath the lemon tree
The music of her laughter hid my father's words from me:

Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.

One day she left without a word. She took away the sun.
And in the dark she left behind, I knew what she had done.
She'd left me for another, it's a common tale but true.
A sadder man but wiser now I sing these words to you:

Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.

But in that this is the 8th child the pappa has sung it to, it is a little different. Oh make no doubt the pappa had it sung to him as a child and danced a "Ramba" with his older 5 siblings as his father taught them how to dance and play instruments under candlelight and fireplace and kerosene lanterns.

Make no doubt that the the boy learns the song wrong and that his father has failed to teach him the proper words.

The song goes to the same rhythm and rhyme. But it has bee tweeked to a life of good things coming.

Lemon tree oh so pretty and that lemon flower is sweet

But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat

When I was just a little boy my father said to me,

come and take a lesson from the lovely lemon tree.

You see the lemon tree is pretty and that lemon flower is sweet

But they say that the fruit is impossible to eat.

Lemon tree oh so pretty and the lemon flower is sweet

Now add a little sugar and the fruit is good to eat

Lemonade oh so refreshing and so very good for you

Lemon tree I am thankful for all that you do.

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Strange but this author was actually hired a few time to pick citrus. It was back in the day when only real aficionados new their organics and such. I was a 14 year old skinny lanky 6ft kid with no fear and I would crawl up there with no fear. At the end of the day I would bring home a large basket of fruit that our family friends would have given us anyway. But I was allowed to believe it my pay to help feed our family. That is just how we rolled back in my youth.

Failure is a term reserved for our human expectations. Failure is in the eye of the beholder. Failure is in biting down on a lemon and wanting it to taste like a peach.

This author knows more failure than one can think of. The business of the author is "problem resolutions" problems to the author are like the light bulb to a moth.

There is just no better poetic way to say it: When you got lemons make lemonade!