Eamonn

Are you saying that there was "True Reason" behind this ? Eamonn Maybe I'm trying to be a critic.

Last time that I was "Home" the Scout Association was getting ready for a major overhaul of the British Scouting program. Prior to the Advanced Party Report in 1969 there was: Wolf Cubs. Boy Scouts. Senior Scouts. Rovers. These became: Cub Scouts. Scouts. Venture Scouts. Which was a co-ed program. Over the years the Scout Group (A Scout Group was/is a pack a troop and a venture unit.) could opt to become co-ed. Sometime in the late 80's Beavers were added which seem to be very much like our Tigers only again if the group is co-ed girls can join. The new program has: Beaver Scouts. Young people can join in the 3 months leading up to their 6th birthday. They can move up to Cub Scouts from age 8 to age 8 1/2. Scouts start at age 10 1/2 and run to age 15 1/2. This is the final part of the Scout Group. Explorer Scouts, which is new and has replaced Venture Scouts runs from age 14 - 18. While it can be part of a traditional Scout group many are part of a district or are formed with a certain area of interest. Scout Network is also new it is open to all members of the Scout Association aged from 18 -25. While you can just be a Network member you can also be a leader or a member in any other capacity. From what I have seen while it is all very loose and while there is the opportunity to complete some awards and some of the groups are doing some neat stuff it is more about keeping people in the program then anything else. Eamonn

The last Pow Wow that I chaired we had "Let The Games Begin" as the theme. This gave us the international sporting events of the Olympics, team games as well as the more thinking type games such as chess and word games. Part of the Pow Wow book was a section on Scout type games and we of course tied it all in with the Game with a purpose. We have used "Lights- Camera- Action" Which was a movie theme. I made a really dashing 007!! One that I really likes was "Character under Construction" Everyone wore hard hats and the patch was a little Lad with a trowel building a brick wall. As I say these were all used for Cub Scouting events, but they could be made to fit. Eamonn

Many years back when I was a young boy in London the high point of the week was the day the comics arrived with the daily newspaper. Comics are almost like a kids newspaper only most of the stories are told in drawings with captions in balloons. In my day there was The Beno which had the Bash Street Kids, the Dandy with Kory The Cat then there were the older boy comics Valiant and Hotspur which told tales of soldiers and heroism. While I have nothing to back it up, I kind of think that these comics were mostly a very British thing. I have often wondered if when Scouting For Boys arrived in its bi-weekly format if the kids/boys looked forward to it in the same way as I did to our weekly comics. A few weeks back my son informed me that he no longer wanted to get Boys' Life Magazine. I was shocked. My heart missed a few beats !! In fact I was flabbergasted - How could I live without Boys' Life? For almost ten years it has arrived in my mail box. I read it from cover to cover - Even the classified ads.I retell the jokes break the puzzles. I would be lost. The past few issues have had a new feel to them the colors are brighter and there is a lot more non-Scout stuff in there which is OK, it is after all a magazine not just for Scouts but for boys. We as a family have never been that big on video games in fact we never went any further then Nintendo 64, still I read about all the games for Play station and X-Box I think because it is there. I have seen that subscriptions for the magazine are down by almost four and a half percent which is about the same number as the Cub Scout section is down. I have no idea what the sales figures for other magazines are but I tend to think that with sales of over 1,250,000 our magazine is doing OK. When I'm done with our copy I leave it in our Doctors office. I spoke with OJ's Scoutmaster, he informed me that the troop is a 100% Boys' Life troop so I didn't have to worry. I sleep a lot better. Eamonn

Be very careful about them there Foreign Staff members - Some of them come back and never go home !! It does need to go through the Council, who will need to apply to the International Divison. The hard thing is the visa that is needed. It has been a long time since I was the International Counsoler and we have as a council had a few over the past five or six years. I don't know how much choice the Council has about who you get. We had one chap from Korea that didn't speak a word of English. But HECK when I came here I didn't speak a word of American - Some say that I still don't. I would think that you have left it too late for 2004. But you might want to call the Internation Division in Texas. Eamonn

I feel almost certain that the raffle would not go along with BSA rules. Sad as it is everyone is trying to get money for "Their" thing. Last year "My Thing" was training. I was asked by the Vice President (Program) to come up with a wish list in order of priority. The list was discussed with the District Training Chairs. In the end it totaled almost $5,000. We didn't get any of the things on the list in fact with money being so tight we didn't get anything. The Budget in our council is made by the Scout Exec. and then discussed and passed by the Executive Board. Revisions can be made. When it became clear that we were not going to get "Our" stuff we went to plan "B" The Order Of The Arrow in most councils does make a big donation, we got them to spend $2,500 on training.(It helps to have a son who is a Vice Chief.) We then asked if some of the things that we wanted could be put on the DE's Project Sale List. This is where rather then asking for money which would go into the general fund we ask for things that we would have to buy any way. We found a hospital that was replacing all their TV's so we took them and a few of us kicked in a few bucks and bought cheap VCR's. We also managed to get two really great photocopiers, when we got a chap who owns a company that sells business machines to become a board member. Your Scout Exec. Might have tried to put the equipment that is required for COPE in the budget, but it might not have got through the board. I would talk to the OA and while it would be wrong to ask the corporate users of the course for money a few hints about donations of equipment might just happen to fall from your lips. Good Luck. Eamonn

I don't spend too much time at the National site. I know at one time they did have some of the newspaper ads that they were using. However I'm not sure if they are still there. As a Council we do use newspaper ads around School Sign Up time more to remind people of the day then the event. The event is marketed to the youth in school presentations. We also use billboards a lot. In fact one member of the Council who owns a advertising agency won some big advertising competition for an ad which showed all the knots that are required for first class tied in rope with the caption "Scouting We Teach Kids The Ropes." At the Council level we do have two people in charge of marketing they more or less advise the District Marketing people how to get stuff in the media. We on our District Committee do have a person in charge of marketing. She gets the papers involved in stuff that the district is doing and has put together a booklet on who to contact in all the local media. It of course goes without saying that Scouting happens in the unit, many church newsletters and newsletters that the chartered organizations put out do have information about the units that they charter in them. We have used some of the TV ads that National has when the local cable company has donated the time. The sad thing about advertising in the media is that it is so expensive. I don't think that unless a big company sponsors the ad that we will ever see Scouting ads during the Super Bowl. I'm not sure if we want to compete with a horse that has gas? Eamonn

I'm a Sagittarius. Born in the mid 50's. At Parsons Green in London. Last time I was there the place that I was born is now a family planning clinic. I must have left a legacy? Or had some sort of impact!! Eamonn PS. Hope you both have a great birthday.

As I posted in the thread about mandatory training I am not for it. You state that the other leaders are doing the bare minimum? I am not sure what you mean by "Bare Minimum ?" If these leaders have taken the Specific and the outdoor training or the Committee training they can wear the Trained Patch with pride. Of course training never ends and it would be great to see 100% of our leaders attending all sorts of supplemental trainings and attend every Round-table, Pow Wow, Wood Badge Course and the list goes on. Sad to say I can never see this happening. Not everyone shares the same commitment to the program, some view training much the same as a root channel!! We can try and promote training make it as user friendly as possible. Still at the end of the day we still have the old "Horse To Water.." In my view and as an Ex- Training Chair. I am all for training and trained leaders, we do have to be careful not to be in a rush to judge those who don't go further then they think that they have to or need to. I have been very lucky in that Her Who Must Be Obeyed, while she does have the odd moan and groan does support me and my "Scouting Habit." I only have one child a son who has the Scouting bug. Life would be very different (Well maybe?) If I had half a dozen girls. Eamonn

I happen to love Foie Gras. There is some new modern culinary idea of serving it warm, or slightly sauted in butter. I happen to like it chilled with warm toast points. While the treatment of some of the geese that provide any liver type pate is not very nice it doesn't happen to all the geese. I was in the same boat as the Gentleman from New Jersey only in my case it was a sister. It worked out very well as after she had completed her law degree she took of for India to "Find Herself." So not eating meat was not a hardship. Patty, my sister worked on a development project for six months. She said the bathroom was just a hole and things were very primitive. At the time she left Punk was real big in the UK.She never went as far as having safety pins or other foreign items stuck through her nose but her hair when she left was tufted ? and at least three different colors. When she got there it was so darn hot she took to wearing mens cotton pajamas and as there were no cars she rode a very ancient mans bicycle. She was only the second White person that the natives had ever met. I can just imagine what they must have thought. Patty has now seen the light and last time we had lunch at the Old Bailey, she was seen munching on a very humanely slaughtered Pork Pie and a glass of wine. Eamonn

I agree that with training an Axe is a useful tool. I happen to prefer a bow-saw for most wood cutting jobs at camp. Bob White does make a good point about splitting. Back in England a Scout would learn how to use a Hand Axe in the Scout Standard and then how to use a felling Axe for the Advanced Scout Standard. For the Scout Standard he had to name all the parts of an Axe, cover all the safety rules and use it correctly. While we did cover the use of the Felling Axe, to be very honest we never really got that much chance to use it, unless we were doing some sort of a service project. The PLC did decide that they didn't want axes in their camp patrol boxes instead they opted for a small pruning type saw. The QM did have axes in the troop store and they could get one or two when they wanted one. I think the reason for taking them out of the boxes was that one patrol at a patrol camp out got in hot water with a camp warden when he found that someone had wounded a live tree. We did find that most of the Scouts were happier with 3/4 sized felling axe. Eamonn

While things weren't working I had a long tale about troop 164. A unit that I helped get off the ground a few years back and how they had struggled. The first Scoutmaster died and then we managed to get a "Temp". The "Temp" just signed up for Wood Badge and the troop just won the First Aid meet. But I'm too lazy to rewrite it. Our Man Of Steele makes a good point that most of our good news is not about the big things it is in fact about many small things which might only make one person feel good. Not that there is anything bad about the big things. At time I do wish that we did a better job of letting everyone know about the good things that we do.As a District we are trying to make this happen. Eamonn

There is way too much love in this thread. I wish that I could put my hand on my heart and swear that everything that I have done,and do always has the end user at the forefront. Sad to report this is not the case. One of the "Perks" of donating at a certain level is that I attend a really good dinner with a lot of people that I like to spend time with. I suppose I could say that the cost of the dinner could be put back in the pot but I have a good time and dare I say it - I have fun. When I took the family out to Philmont -Sure it was good for the district but I had my own reasons for going along. I have never taken the Powder Horn Training, but have either taken or presented most of the other BSA trainings. I don't give a tinkers about the knot but try and sell me a course by telling me that it will be long, boring, no fun and you will have a real hard time getting me there. Just about all the good stuff that we do is for the youth that we serve, I do it because it is fun for me. - When it stops being mostly fun I will know that it is time to quit. There are no cookie cutter reasons why anyone does what they do.I don't think that it is any of my business to ask, in most cases I am just happy that they are doing it. Eamonn

I thought that I was yet again doing something wrong. Not that it would be the first /last time ? Eamonn

Sign me up with Barry!! Cub Scouting is great FUN - Thanks to the efforts that You and so many other great leaders put in. It sounds as if you really have it together. When I was Cubmaster we held an annual picnic. It was easy as I have an enormous back yard. It was just a round robin with the boys moving from station to station. I made sure that I kept myself free in order to "Work On The Parents" Recruiting them for the pack committee or as a Den Leader. It was hard for them to say no when they were looking at their son having so much fun. Please don't tell anyone but to this day I enjoy Cub Scout round table more then the Boy Scout one!! I think Cub Scouters are great. Eamonn

Of course each and everyone of us has pet peeves and areas that in our opinion need to be improved and there is not a thing in the world wrong with expressing them here in this forum. However at times especially lately in the forum it seems to me (And I could be way off base?) that there are a few who do not share the love of Scouting and as for wanting what is best for Scouting? I just shudder to think. While at times we can agree to disagree on some of the not so important matters. There are times when I am left wondering if I belong to the same organization as some of the people who post. I just can't help thinking that they have never read the mission of the BSA, let alone understand it!! It could be that I'm reading too much into some of the stuff, particularly this stuff about Scouting making men out of boys. Boys become men with or without the Boy Scouts Of America. We are in the business of helping them make ethical choices over the course of their lifetime, we do the same thing for the females in our program, yet I have never seen or heard: Scouting makes a girl into a woman !! Why? Maybe it just doesn't have the same ring to it. This past few weeks there have been several postings saying that "We have to stop being so PC." Is it "PC" becase they just disagree? What is wrong with being "PC"? As I asked "Am I missing something Eamonn Note To Proud Eagle: I "stole" Caring Adult from the Venturing Training.

By Jove, I think I've got it. Many Thanks For All The Help. I can now become a rating demon Eamonn!! Eamonn

By Jove, I think I've got it. Many Thanks For All The Help. I can now become a rating demon Eamonn!! Eamonn

I have been in Scouting for a long time. A little over 40 years as both a boy and as an adult. I joined because it was fun. I remain because I still have a lot of fun and like most of the people that I meet in Scouting.I have never spend a lot of time thinking about why this is. In the odd moment that I have given it the odd thought I have come up with the idea that these people and I share very similar values. In most cases we get on well with kids and are doing what we can to help them become caring adults. I am by no means a "Super Scout" and I know at times that I'm not even nice to be near. While I am not that political now I once was. This may have some bearing on the person that I am today but it has no bearing on my involvement in Scouting. While at times some of the adults that I see in Scouting may express a political opinion or tell a joke about a political figure. I don't see their political conviction as playing any part in their involvement in Scouting. Any more then me being a Catholic and them being something else does. We all have failings, none of us are perfect and at the end of the day we try to do our best to serve the kids that we happen to like and some we don't even know. There are some things in the BSA that I think could or should be changed or improved and I have the choice that I can play by the rules and hope that one day they might change or I can leave. At present I have opted to remain and will play the game by the rules. I have never viewed the Scout Oath and Law as being politically correct. In fact I not so sure what politically correct really means. If it means going out of your way to try not to upset or offend someone - Please Sign me up. I was of the opinion that the Scout Oath and Law had that covered. The kids/youth that I am serving are living in todays world. They learn in a different way then I was taught, they see things on TV and the Internet that I never seen. Their parents have different standards then my parents and maybe I have. Their hair may be too long or too short or even multi colored but these are the kids that I serve. I happen to like them and like them a lot. Over the past weeks there seems to be a lot of people questioning the rules. My answer is if you don't like the rules - Leave. People who don't like the Kids. If that is the case you are in the wrong organization. This is supposed to be a "Jolly Game" If you can't be jolly without shoving your politics in my face then please don't be upset if I blow you a king sized raspberry in yours (I did say that I wasn't perfect.) Yes the game has a purpose the purpose is to help these young people become caring adults. Eamonn

When I try the "Rank" or the "Rate" I end up at my profile. What am I doing wrong? Eamonn

Sorry I don't see your point. I have never looked at Scouting as training boys to be men. Even as a Scout Leader in Baden Powell's back yard we looked at Scouting as: The mental, Physical and spiritual development of the young person to become a worthwhile member of Society. Eamonn

Pam our DE is not a computer whiz. In fact she only bought a computer within the last year or so. She really likes it. When she found it had a CD burner she spent many happy hours copying her music CD's for me. Last week she informed me that she had a new CD from national and was going to copy it for me. A few days later she was upset that the darn thing wouldn't copy. She has several pals that work in the national office so she informed them about her plight. Telling them that there was no use in sending her just one copy that couldn't be copied. Good thing that the chap she was talking to is a pal as from what she says she gave him a good ear bashing. She got really mad when he laughed at her. He then told her it was DVD!! Pam doesn't have a DVD burner. She doesn't have a DVD player. The DVD is interactive and titled Meetings Of The District. It covers all the meetings of the District. I have only viewed it once, but plan to use parts of it as training for the District Committee. (I will use my laptop and a LCD projector) There is a lot of material out there for use by the key3. I will locate what I have and post the bin #. Your profile doesn't say what position you hold, but the fact that you say that there is many fires burning makes me wonder if maybe you might be doing too much? Last year I was District Chair. Along with Council Training Chair. And it was fine and dandy or so I thought. This year even with joining the Area Committee which so far doesn't entail me doing very much (It will once plans for the World Jamboree get really under way - But by then I will no longer be the District Chair.) I find that I have so much more time to devote to the District and I am not only doing a better job but I'm starting to enjoy it more. Do ask yor Scout Exec. about the DVD it is full of good ideas. Eamonn. Pam and I talk everyday but 50% of the time is not about Scouts.

Sad to say I have not been keeping up with all the changes in the Webelos Scout program. In fact I had to look up the Honesty Character Connection. I think it is a great addition. As it was the old requirements that had the filling in of the application for Boy Scouts did make it seem that if the Lad wasn't going to join the troop, he wasn't really worthy of the Arrow Of Light. The ceremony is a ceremony!! It can symbolize what ever the person in charge wants it to. I always thought of it as crossing over from the pack to the troop. However it could just as easily be a symbol of the end of one road and on to the next, with the Troop members waiting for those who opt to take that road and an open road for those that don't. The last thing that we would want to do is see a little fellow have the last day in the pack be one that leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Who knows in the weeks and months that follow he might decide to join the troop.

Hi Sad as it may seem the Jamboree is a Boy Scout event. You can apply to attend as a Staff Member. The best way to find out about Scouting Magazine is through your council registrar. It has to do with what and how you are registered. Hope this helps. Eamonn

The Council send me at my request a list of Webelos Scouts that are in the 5th Grade. There are 128 names on the list. All of the packs recharter in Feb. So I don't know how many of these little fellows are still active. A Webelos Tracking Sheet has been sent out twice. So far only half of them have been sent to the Service Center. I have mailed a letter to all 128 wishing them well and telling them what fun and good times are ahead. The Troops rechartered in Jan. At this time we are down 67 Boy Scouts. History shows that we retain about 70% of the Webelos Scouts. The Membership Committee has a new idea for Boy Scout recruitment that will start in March. The Council is still pushing the build a troop campaign. This is the third year and the Troops don't seem to be buying into it. The District plan centers more on "One on One" recruiting. Eamonn