elfdream

I found one of my ancestoral names among the sept names. Lawson. Who knew!

And let's not forget the personal life. Since you are gone most nites and alot of weekends it is very stressful. I had one coworker, a pro with 15 years, who was on wife #3. Two of my coworkers had their wives leave them, and my wife threatened to divorce me after 3 months of marriage. Further as a volunteer, I've seen 2 additional DEs' marriages end, including one of our camp directors. And let's not forget that your Aqautics boss in '96 also got a divorce when he was a pro. LOTS of stress. I'm the wife of a DE. He's in charge of a rural district and is gone several nights a week AND

I'm with you on the National Anthem.

Oh dear. Our youngest is working hard to 'Eagle Out' in the spring. I guess my husband will just have to give it all up when that happens.

The only 'real' problem I have had with the LDS was one time we had a young man on summer camp staff who happened to belong to that church. That was an interesting summer..we had a Buddhist, a Jewish staffer and at least two Catholics and everyone else was either mainline Protestant or evangelical Protestant. For the most part he was a great worker and very popular with the other staffers and campers alike but he was the one with the agenda to 'convert'. He would manage to somehow steer every conversation toward his religion. There were complaints. The Camp Director saw what he was doing and

We have a lot of OOC troops at our camp. We have a small council and a small camp but we apparently have established a good enough reputation to bring these people in. In fact we had some reps from a neighboring council show up to see what it was that we were doing that made their troops want to come here. The thing is we don't go 'looking' for OOC troops. They just show up. We also get the 'We go to an out of council camp every other year and we picked you this year" kind of traffic and we have a few troops in our council that do the same thing. They seem to balance each other out.

We do the paper bracelet thing for ALL visitors to camp...male or female.

All I know is on Saturday of the Second Week-end the SM said that if he didn't make it there by the end of the day he would have to repeat it all again next year. My Husband had to miss part of the first Saturday morning for an unbreakable appointment (court date..no, it wasn't about anything he had done and they allowed him to return but then again he is also a District Exec.

Let's see, a bear poked his nose into one of the tents in the campsite just up from us..and it belonged to a woman who was a brand new Pack leader and the campsite down from us sent their lone woman up to ask us for a left handed smoke shifter. We sent her back with the air horn that we had used for our skit. The resort campground a mile away had an all night music festival but all we heard was the bass lines and the drums. We were awakened in the night thinking it was some kind of weird secret WB ceremony that had somehow not leaked out... Then our Troop Guide who happened to work

There have been several versions of this over the years. I do remember one that stated that Mel Gibson would be tried for treason (I'm assuming over Brave Heart and The Patriot) but that one quietly disappeared when it was pointed out that he is in fact an American. The Spellchecker thing is a real pain to a lot of my Anglosphere friends. I LIKE having spelling that is unique and different from the rest of the English speaking world and they shouldn't feel forced to adapt to it.(This message has been edited by elfdream)

At our camp we have under 18 year olds teach classes (my son was among them) and the 18 year olds sign the cards. They keep the level of teaching up by giving small rewards to those who had high evaluation marks at the end of the week. Some don't approve of this method but it worked. We also had a teacher trainer come in during staff week to give a seminar on 'how to teach a merit badge class'. It helped us to find new ways to teach Citizenship in the World! We had complaints about this and that but few about the actual teaching. I was Handicraft Director one summer and all my staff was u

When all else fails blame the women. Seriously has anyone noticed a change in the Scouts themselves? At our camp the first time campers traditionally took this long hike up a small ridge where they could look down and get a wonderful view of the camp and the surrounding area. As time has gone by fewer and fewer campers have been doing this. At times the medic calls it off because of extreme weather. Leaders have grumbled that when they were kids they always did it anyway no matter what the weather. The medic (a guy) said that with all the allergies and asthma around these days kids are ju

I think the movies are going to stop with this one. If I remember correctly it didn't make enough money to justify doing the other two but I might be wrong.

I'm not a history major but I seem to remember being told that Lee never actually owned slaves himself...that the slaves were owned by his wife. I also remember reading that he freed all of them before he accepted a commission in the Confederate army in order to send the message that he was not fighting for slavery. Is this true or are these just historical urban legends?

The controversy came when the author himself spoke of having an agenda when writing these books. He was an open atheist who wrote these books to be a sort of "Anti-Narnia-anti C.S. Lewis' thesis. You can find this documented in just about any interview he gave. In the movie the anti-religious elements were watered down considerably. In time though the original intent of the author will be forgotten. Who remembers what the book Bambi was really about? Hint...it wasn't about deer frolicking the forests. There were deeper social metaphors at work there but now its a Disney movie. I've had f

Palin must have some tiny bit of foreign experience. After all her state is located between Canada and Russia. Yes..I'm being facetious.

I also heard the thing about the West Virginia coal miners and the red bandannas. This was to identify them during the Battle of Blair Mountain. I always thought that would make a good movie.

FOX ROCKS OUTSIDE THE BOX! Hey..it made sense to us!

She was a distraction for the high strung group of guys I was with. No ne ever crossed a line in front of her, but there were certainly comments made behind her back. I can only imagine the problems that a female life guard would present. That was basically my point. When there are already girls on the camp staff the guys are not as 'high strung'. They are used to the presence of females and its no big thing. Its when they remove the girls that is when the guys start acting goofy around girls. However once again that is just my experience. I've seen many of our male staff membe

I've served on camp staff on and off for about 10 years and we have almost always had girls under 18 on staff. I found that they are a distraction for about two weeks and then after the routine of the camp is in full swing all of that dies down. A camaraderie develops (and no its not the same as male only camaraderie..its different but it still exists). Its probably because they are working together toward a shared goal and that comes from good leadership at the top. We rarely have a problem with someone sneaking into the quarters of the opposite sex because the girls are on the other side of

If I remember correctly the camp director/Scout Exec told us that the 'relaxed' fit had more room in the hip area and was supposed to be more suitable for women while the 'classic' was more for men because it had more room in the waist. I don't know what happens to the women who gain weight only in their waist area and so on. I assume you just keep trying them on until you find something that fits. So I guess the answer is no...the pants will not fit everyone equally in the hip/waist.

Our camp staff is a 'real' Venturing Crew that has several outings during the off-season and they also work on advancement. The Advisors are the Director, the Program Director and various other adults who serve on summer staff.

I'm also from a 'rival' camp. A lot of the National Cap scouts come to our camp not because its any better but simply because its closer. We didn't have the time or the resources to go down there and mess with their food. However after the camp closed we had a couple of Goshen refugeees show up on our doorstep and we took them in.

We became interested in Scouting when my husband applied to work at Summer Camp as the archery director some 10 years ago. We had never been involved before but soon our son was in a troop and after some intense training husband was a Scoutmaster and I was a Committe member. He graduated to being the Shooting Sports director and eventually stepped up to be Program Director at camp. Son and I were also working at camp and this lasted until son turned 18. He is now proudly serving in the US Air Force and told us that being in Scouts helped him greatly during his survival training. We took a fi

We got to see a preview of the new uniform at camp last week. The camp director (who is also a District Exec) attended the National Leadership Conference in Nashville and brought some back with him. His son wore one. He said the fabric was very very comfortable but he wasn't sure about the pockets as of yet. There is a button under the front pocket flap for the 'dangly' patches and a place for your pen. He liked being able to roll up the sleeves. He didn't have an opportunity to have the patches put on yet so we have yet to know about the difficulty level of that. All I can say is that he li