DYB-Mike

Baloos Bugle offers several Cubmasters Minutes each month. http://www.usscouts.org/bbugle.asp Use the monthly Core Value that is the theme of each pack meeting as a source of inspiration YIS Mike.

I bent my brain trying to figure out how to fill up an hour Ahh Scoutfish, it sounds like you didnt heed the advice given in earlier threads PLAN and OVERPLAN! As others have pointed out, the pack meeting is your domain as Cubmaster and you are responsible for planning and implementing the festivities. Our first Pack Meeting is this coming Sunday and as Cubmaster Ive been busy. To prepare I researched games that fit this months Core Value Cooperation and assembled an agenda of the order of activities that I have distributed to the Den Leaders. Responsibility for the Opening C

VigilEagle04, are you saying the title of your uniform session was The BSA Uniform: Sexy and Cool? YIS Mike

Sexy and cool - maybe this is an angle Nationals marketing folks should explore. Then again, my wife thinks I look like a dweeb in my uniform. Of course, Im not the strapping young man Horizons son most likely is. YIS Mike

Acco, I see Ms. Brandi Carlile is working on her Bear rank between concert dates. Definitely more easy on the eyes than our friend from Americas Got Talent. YIS Mike

Posted by moosetracker: but when in MA & NH it was definitely Soda. AH! It depends where you were in MA. In the Boston area its tonic, or at least it was when my wife and I were growing up. I still encounter a few tonic drinkers but the usage seems to be fading. My wife and I are fighting a loosing battle with our kids who insist on using soda despite our influence. Ive now found myself slipping and using soda more often these days.

I dont know if any of you scouters out there were following Americas Got Talent on TV. My wife was so I caught a few of the episodes. Last night was the Grand Finale. In addition to the finalists they had a variety of acts, one of which was a medley done by previous contestants who (obviously) didnt make the cut. One of these acts was an overweight guy in short shorts (or something) who did cartwheels and jumped around the stage amongst the other former contestants. What this guys talent was was beyond me and it was perfectly clear why he wasnt in the finals. Something caught

Weve used liter and half liter plastic bottles for targets. They make a nice thump sound when hit and if you set them up right you can knock a bunch down at once. You could call it Sling Shot Bowling. You could also decorate the bottles as zombies (battling zombie hordes appears to be very popular these days) or other monsters. If you have the caps you might want to put a little water in for weight. The only drawback is you have to stop the action every so often to set the targets back up. The kids dont seem to mind. For ammo weve used 1 superballs with a tarp as a backdrop to slow

Good luck Lisa. Let us know how things go. YIS Mike

Schiff, thanks for the info. I didnt know the USPS had that no organizations commemorative policy. Still, the design seems disconnected from the groups and sentiment mentioned in the article. Maybe depicting some youth (boys and girls) sitting around a campfire or hiking with backpacks would have been a better generic design? The thing that galls me the most about the design is the hat. Now if it were a campaign hat the stamp would be more palatable to me, somewhat resembling the Baden Powell drawing of the crouching Scout that one often sees. Again, were not commemorating Baden

I agree that the stamp design leaves a lot to be desired. I disliked it so much that I only reluctantly bought a pane just to mail letters and Im a stamp collector! Contrast the stamp with the commemorative US dollar issued a few months previous. It is clearly a BSA design, with a Cub Scout, Boy Scout, and female Venturer saluting on the obverse and a big bold, BSA emblem on the reverse. Its a nice design and I made sure I obtained a proof copy from the mint. All this is to say that, given the dollars design, I dont think politics influenced the design of the stamp. What they wer

Hi Tiger Lisa, If the weather report is so ominous that it is giving you pause then I would cancel the event. While the safety concerns are paramount, theres another angle to consider: a miserable, wet campout may turn off inexperienced Cub Scouts and also many parents, leading perhaps to some drop-outs. Do you have any money invested in food? If you have a good sized meeting space maybe you could do a camp-in. If you have food that needs to be grilled you could borrow a couple of grills and let those hearty committee folks stand out in the rain and cook. YIS Mike

Im not assuming anything. I guess for some of us its just a knee-jerk reaction that it would have been more appropriate to have boys competing, not the adult leaders. We don't know what happened in the back where the shirt was launched. You raise an interesting point with that. Id hate to think that the adult dove into the midst of a group of boys to secure the shirt. YIS Mike

Basementdweller, I thought the exact same thing about the scouter who participated in the guitar playoff. I also attended a Shining Light simulcast (or whatever you call it) with Cub Scout son and I leaned over to him and said He should have given that shirt to one of the boys. He lost serves him right. I didnt know what to expect from the show a large-scale campfire with skits and songs? I thought it was pretty impressive, a good mix of scouty, patriotic stuff offset by the contemporary bands and Mike Rowes great bit. I thought the Scout Camp dance was a hoot as well. Was Tayl

Just the thought of any of this or even seeing a scouting symbol or looking at my scouting stuff I worked so hard on for the fall makes me ill. leader1118, I know youve been through the mill and are disheartened and, dare I say, disgusted by what youve experienced, but please rethink on disassociating yourself with Scouting and helping your son along. Sure, there are a lot of jerks out there, but there are also a lot of great volunteers with their hearts in the right place. In my small experience as a scout leader Ive had my share of frustrations and run-ins with the jerks. All thi

I dont know how disappointed my son (who is at Jambo) is that the President is not speaking in the flesh, but he was happy to hear that Taylor Swift will be there! I personally am disappointed with the Presidents decision. I agree with the comment that the concerns about security are hogwash its a military base after all, far more secure than Bar Harbor, and he would be speaking to Boy Scouts. As a former community organizer you would think that speaking to members of an organization of which service is one of its core principles would be appealing to the President. One would think th

Funny, I was just discussing this very thing with a scouter friend the other day. While Im proud of my Tiger and Cub Scout Den Leader knots (I certainly earned them!), the patch that means the most to me is my old Explorer patch with the big funky E outline with the flag of the Explorers Club on New York within the E at the bottom. Im a little hazy on the details, but apparently the Explorers Club of New York sponsored Boy Scout Explorers posts back in the early 1970s (maybe they still do). The focus was on science and as I had indicated an interest in archaeology on a high school q

They might sign their sons up, but consider the structure too cliqueish and complicated to get involved in themselves. Ive heard from acquaintances who are members of the committee that runs one of the youth baseball leagues in town that things can get pretty complicated and heated there are well. I guess the scouting observation that its all fun until the adults get involved holds true in youth sports as well. BP, I wouldn't brush sports off so quickly as not playing some factor. Youth sports have become far more expansive than they were back in the day. Kids start younger, there

Based on my personal experience, the biggest problem for our Pack is organized sports. We have become a society fixated on professional sports and its highly paid heroes and that fixation has trickled down to the local level. Sports are a year-round activity and even when you think the season is over there are travel teams and camps. In addition to the staples (baseball, football, basketball and hockey), soccer, lacrosse, and flag football have taken off around here. Other posters have mentioned folks not wanting to commit the time and money, but I dont necessarily buy that as I see a

Scoutfish, when I read the topic I thought your Pack imploded or some such other disaster, but its a GOOD THING! Congratulations, you will have a blast! Like you, I started out as the helpful parent when my oldest son joined the Pack as a Bear. I found that I was having as much fun as he was so when I was offered the position of ACM at the end of his Webelos I year, I jumped on it no sales pitch needed. Two years later, after my oldest son crossed over to the Troop and my youngest joined and completed his Tiger Rank (I serve as his Den Leader as well), I found myself in the po

My Aunt Came Back made me think of another good one: The Cat Came Back. I had not heard of the Aunt song and thought it might be a variation of the Cat song, but they are very different. Google The Cat Came Back for the lyrics. Da Moose, Da Moose is a real favorite of mine and the lyrics can be found by Googling them. YIS, Mike

Mini-hijack Unfortunately, they never got to the point that there was a functioning committee, so the Cubmaster ended up doing almost everything. When he started working longer hours, events didn't get planned properly, and things got disorganized. No one was there to back him up. Over the summer, several families were frustrated with the lack of organization and decided it was easiest to move to the very large pack nearby where they wouldn't have to get involved. That is really sad. The Cubmaster works his butt off for the kids of parents who are too lazy to get off theirs and

I think were all in the same boat Engineer61. I think the posters, myself included, noted token respect based on rank or age. The difference is what would you do for a boss who you didnt respect? Clearly you would do your job as defined, but would you do any more than that? Would you watch that persons back? If you respected your boss, and he/she demonstrated respect for you, would you be motivated to go above and beyond your job description (self-serving reasons aside)? Would you be inclined to look after that persons interests as you would your own? YIS Mike

"How do I MAKE scouts respect me, and how do I punish them if they don't?" Your question should be: I feel I dont have the respect of my scouts. How do I go about earning that respect? Its really an introspective question. What am I doing as a leader that is not encouraging respect? Perhaps your (and Im referring to our hypothetical leader) method of leading does not include mutual respect and trust? While reading these respect threads the words of the Roman Emperor Tiberius kept coming to mind: let them hate me, so long as they fear me. Respect is a two way street.

Pack212Scouter, thanks for trying to clarify things, but I still dont see much difference, with the exception of maybe resident camp. I have not had any Cub Scout resident camp experience as yet so Im not sure how that works. From your post it appears that parents are required to accompany their scouts to resident camps as well? YIS Mike