"Smart" (A Leadership Primer?)

My librarian friend Dana is anxious to help me be a smarter and better self-actualized legislator, so she shared this with me:

My dad gave me one dollar bill
'Cause I'm his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
'Cause two is more than one!

And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes-I guess he don't know
That three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just 'cause he can't see
He gave me four Nickles for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
And the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!

And then I went and showed my dad,
And he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head-
Too proud of me to speak!


-from "Where the sidewalk ends", Shel Silverstein, "Scholastic" (October ,1996)


Postscript: On the other hand, are the above stanzas any goofier than the policies and practices of some of our leaders?

About John Franklin Kump

My Great Great Grandfather John Franklin Kump was born in or near Chambersburg, in Franklin County, Pennsylvania

His father David gave him the middle name of Franklin because of his birth in that county.

 (David S. Kump was the Master Mason who supervised the building of the huge stone bridge that still stands today and spans the Susquehanna River into the Pennsylvania State Capitol of Harrisburg. Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were baptized in the same river, albeit far upstream)

John was a young boy when the Confederate Army under Robert E. Lee captured Chambersburg, on the way to the battle of Gettysburg, and threatened to burn it to the ground if the town leaders did not pay a ransom to supply Lee's troops. Chambersburg refused and Lee had the town burned to the ground, except for a square block around the Masonic Temple (both Lee as well as Joseph Smith were Masons).

John was caught by the confederate troops and pressed into service by them to gather firewood for the camp cooks. Each day he went farther out and took longer, explaining that firewood was harder to find. Finally, he just kept on going and escaped.

He had a beautiful tenor voice and often was asked to sing "The Old Rugged Cross", solo and without musical instrumental back-up, at family gatherings.

He wore a beard all of his adult life, except once when his beloved wife once told him that she thought he would look better without it. He didn't say a word, but then shaved it off the next day while he was a work as a surprise for his wife.

When he came home, she was in the kitchen and he crept up behind her and nuzzled her neck. Startled and knowing that her husband was not clean shaven, she screamed and struck him as she turned.

Weeping, she then made him promise never to shave off his beard again.

Years later, as an extremely elderly widower, he was dying in a Chambersburg hospital bed (why is another story, related to his Germanic heritage of stubbornness). His beard was stained from a lifetime of tobacco chewing, and the nurse told him that it must be shaved off. Weeping, he told the nurse that he had promised his wife that he never again would shave and never had broken that promise.

And so it was that that sweet nurse spent hours gently washing his beard until it was snow white.

John died soon afterwards.

I previously have had his and all my other kindred dead's LDS Temple ordinances and sealings completed.
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Many times, especially in the Temple, I have felt the presence of my kindred dead and that they have been reaching out to help remove stumbling blocks in my path.

And so it goes.

Dearly Beloved Quasimoto Family Photo

  Go away Mr. Grinch!
  (That's Cindy Lou Who in the background)