fgoodwin

I don't have my SM HB handy, but I thought a Scout could request a SM conference (SMC) at any time. Assuming the SM and the Scout can come to a reasonable accomodation, I don't see a problem with that. But in our troop, SMCs for advancement purposes can be scheduled ONLY during a monthly campout. The Scout must appear in full class A uniform from head to toe, including MB sash, or the SM can (according to our troop's policy) refuse the Scout's request for an SMC. I think limiting advancement SMCs to campouts only is a not-so-subtle form of adding to the requirements -- nowhere do I read that such SMCs must necessarily be limited to a campout. In fact, if a Scout is otherwise qualified to advance, but misses a campout, is it appropriate to withold the SMC for another month (or more) until the Scout makes it to another campout? How do your troops handle this? If an otherwise qualified Scout is denied an advancement SMC, and advancement is thus withheld, what would your Council or National say if that decision were appealed?

Scout suffers severe burns http://tinyurl.com/2my9qa 08/09/2007 By Josh Krysak , Herald-Standard WHARTON TWP. - A Maryland boy is recovering in a Pittsburgh hospital after suffering severe burns in an accident on a Boy Scouts camping trip Wednesday in Farmington. Emergency officials said the 13-year-old Gaithersburg, Md., boy sustained second- and third-degree burns on more than 50 percent of his body. Rick Adobato, director of Fayette EMS, said the teen was apparently boiling water to wash dishes when the accident occurred just after 8:30 a.m. The boy's identity was not released. According to Adobato, emergency crews were called to Heritage Reservation on Heritage Road for a report of a boy burned while washing dishes. Adobato said crews found the boy with severe burns to his face and other areas of his body. He said it appeared the teen and other Boy Scouts were working to heat a large pot of water over a campfire to clean dishes with. Adobato said the teen lifted the pot from the flames, took a step backward and then stumbled, spilling the scalding water on his face and body. Emergency crews from Fayette EMS and Farmington Volunteer Fire Department prepared to set up a landing zone near the campground for a medical helicopter, but stormy weather forced personnel to drive the boy to Uniontown Hospital, Adobato said. He was then flown from Uniontown to the West Penn Hospital Burn Center for treatment. Information about his condition was not available. Heritage Reservation is described on the Pittsburgh Council of the Boy Scouts of America Web site as the "crowning jewel" of Boy Scout facilities in the northeastern U.S. The reservation, which includes three camping areas, meeting facilities and nine permanent shelters also is home the 270-acre Lake Courage.

Everyone needs to find meaning in their lives -- sounds like Mr. Croft has decided to find his by becoming a modern day Saul of Tarsus . . .

Tough Cookies: Girl Scouts launch a nationwide offensive against a spreading bully culture among young girls http://tinyurl.com/2jjl8y BY JESSICA REAVES July 22, 2007 My personal experience with the Girl Scouts is, at best, limited. None of my friends was a member, so there were no uniforms to covet. Exactly once a year I became sharply aware of the Scouts' existence--during the annual cookie sale, when Thin Mints were briefly elevated to food-group status. Otherwise, I dimly (and imprudently) acknowledged them as a relic of the 1950s, caught up in dated gender roles and archaic activities. Perhaps that's my loss. The Girl Scouts, it turns out, might have kept me from answering the siren call of the Mean Girl: Once upon a time, I was one of Them. It wasn't a conscious thing; I didn't wake up one day and think, "Gosh, today I'd like to make another girl's life really, really miserable by saying cruel things about her shoes and then ignoring her on the playground." It just kind of happened. I wasn't looking to be mean; I was trying to maintain my tenuous grasp on my place in the social pecking order, and the only way my 9-year-old brain knew how to do that was by calling another girl, whose social standing was even more tenuous than mine, "a big nerd." And then I told her she had ugly hair and that her shoes smelled. I wasn't the only one who made this girl's life unbearable. The 4th grade was teeming with Mean Girls, each of us more insecure than the next. And so, like carrion birds, we circled our weakest member and pecked the living daylights out of her. I can't recall this phase of my life without blushing with shame. I'm a feminist, after all, raised by feminist parents and, like a lot of girls today, carefully schooled in the philosophy of inclusion, tolerance and generally not being awful to other people. And still, I turned into a vicious little person for a full school year. There's cold comfort in the knowledge that I'm not alone. Name-calling and sudden, inexplicable banishment to social Siberia play out across the country every day. In classrooms, at birthday parties, at summer camps, on sports teams, girls are constantly sharpening their interpersonal claws, seeking new ways to exclude and manipulate each other. Despite mounting anecdotal evidence--as well as movies, songs and books dedicated to the topic of Mean Girls--there is no scientific consensus on whether girls have actually undergone a gender-wide, biological shift toward cruelty. It's possible they are simply responding, superficially, to a less generous, faster-paced, more cutthroat society by disposing of long-standing social expectations ("sugar and spice and all things nice") and behaving more like . . . boys. Or maybe worse than boys. Rosalind Wiseman, author of the best-selling "Queen Bees and Wannabes," is unconvinced that girls are much different today than they were 50 or even 100 years ago. "Girls have always been relationally aggressive," Wiseman says. She believes parents, many of whom are geared up to see danger or threats wherever they look, are more willing than ever to excuse hostile behavior in their children. One thing is certain: Over the past decade, the ubiquity of e-mail, instant messaging and cell phones has made things far easier for bullies who use words and innuendo as their weapons. And even as girls make spectacular strides in academics, eclipsing their male classmates on tests and in the college-admissions game, they're surpassing boys in other ways that none of the "Reviving Ophelia" crowd could have expected, or certainly would have hoped for. Girls, according to a Clemson University study, are nearly twice as likely to bully or be bullied electronically than boys; another long-term study shows girls are responsible for 61 percent of reported in-person bullying incidents. Making matters worse, physical violence, once the domain of boys, has thoroughly infiltrated girl culture. The U.S. Justice Department reports that between 1992 and 2003, the number of girls arrested for assault rose by 41 percent. Among boys, the increase was 4.3 percent. Clearly, girls and the people who love them are facing a crisis. Physical, emotional or psychological injuries can end a friendship, ruin a school year or, in extreme circumstances, prompt a suicide attempt. Parents and teachers are at wits' end. What can we do to curb, or reverse, the disturbing rise of the Mean Girl? Enter the Girl Scouts. When Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts in 1912, she envisioned an organization that would provide girls "an alternative to being either married or in the factories." One of the country's first female aviators, Low wasn't interested in promoting traditional roles for girls or women. One of the first merit badges available to a Girl Scout was not sewing or baking or any of the other "womanly arts," but for telegraphy. Nearly a century later, Low's progressive fervor has largely been forgotten by the non-Scouting public. "We have a certain image," concedes Brooke Wiseman (no relation to Rosalind Wiseman), former CEO of the Girl Scouts of Chicago and current CEO of Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana, acknowledging the old-fashioned, goody-two-shoes stereotype that still haunts today's Scouts. "We're working hard to counteract it. We want to be recognized for what we really do. We're building girls of courage, confidence and character." That has meant facing up to some hard truths. Though membership has held steady over the years at about 3.6 million in the U.S., many Scout leaders felt the organization was losing touch with members who needed it most and losing relevance in the eyes of potential members. The results of a two-year study completed in 2003 by the Girl Scouts Research Institute confirmed the concerns: A majority of girls said adults weren't acknowledging some of their greatest fears, and two of the top three were verbal bullying and teasing. The numbers propelled the issue to the top of the Girl Scouts' to-do list. "Girls told us they weren't feeling physically unsafe, but emotionally unsafe, and that adult supervision was nowhere to be found," says Courtney Shore, vice president of communications for Girl Scouts of the USA. "We're trying to raise awareness among adults so they can recognize signs of bullying and step in." The Girl Scouts, with their large national presence, are in a prime position to challenge the Mean Girl paradigm. They aren't the only ones who've noticed a surge in bad-girl behavior; scores of workshops and events, including the Empower Program at Mt. Holyoke College, created by "Odd Girl Out" author Rachel Simmons, are popping up across the country. But as the Girl Scouts leadership sees it, their curricula have the potential to make an entire generation of girls more aware of teasing and bullying and, in theory, give them the tools to stop it from doing any more harm. For Chicago Girl Scouts, that means identifying and contending with the social habits of the 13,500 Girl Scouts who make up the area's 800 troops, the largest council in the country. Most people remember high school as the most socially loaded years of their lives (The lunch table dramas! The sting of dateless proms! The nerds being stuffed into lockers!). But today the most aggressive ostracizing and clique-forming begins in middle school. According to the Girl Scouts Research study, pre-teen girls ages 8 to 12, or Juniors in Girl Scouts parlance, named "being teased or made fun of" as their top concern. "Our program is age-differentiated, which is very deliberate," says Shore. "We . . . need to make sure our messages are relevant in their lives, that they're not being treated like little girls when they're in middle school." Anti-teasing and bully-prevention programs are geared to each of the five Scout levels. For example, programs for older Scouts (Cadettes, ages 11-14 and Seniors, 14-17) include "Take Charge," a violence-prevention program, and "Uniquely Me," which aims to bolster self-esteem and tolerance of differences. The younger Scouts (Daisies, who are 5 and 6; Brownies, ages 6-8; and Juniors, who use a combination of the curricula for older and younger girls) are steered toward "Why Tease?," a glossy, 12-page picture book produced in 2002 by four Chicago Senior Scouts. It tells the story of Mousy, whose quiet demeanor puts off the other kids, until one of them realizes they can, in fact, all play together. Julie Piwowarczyk is one of the authors of "Why Tease?," which earned her a Gold Award, an elite designation similar to Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts. Piwowarczyk, who graduated this spring from Marquette University, remembers sitting down with her co-writers, trying to come up with a subject worth tackling. "We were talking about school shootings, and someone mentioned that the shooters had been bullied or teased a lot," she says. "Someone very close to me was bullied by other boys for a couple of years." Eventually, the teasing got to a point that her friend had to transfer schools. "I felt really strongly about teaching kids that teasing isn't funny, that it can be really serious." The topic proved a natural fit for the Gold Award project. "Teasing is something we'd all dealt with and could relate to," explains Piwowarczyk. Their group leader suggested they make a book and a Girl Scout patch to go with it. Patches, like badges, are a major part of the Scout experience, but unlike badges, which members earn by accomplishing specific tasks and acquiring new skills, patches are given for more subjective learning activities. To earn the "Why Tease?" patch, girls must address a series of talking points, such as, "In the Girl Scout Law it says that you promise to be a 'sister to every Girl Scout.' Does this apply only to other Girl Scouts? What would you do to make sure that you are being a sister to everyone on the playground?" "Draw a picture of your friends. Name one person not in your picture that you will try to include during recess or free time." The exercise is self-administered, Piwowarczyk says. "We want members to reflect on the issues and answer questions for themselves." But tying social conduct to quantitative rewards like patches raises the question of how a leader knows if someone "gets it," or is simply parroting back "correct" responses. Unlike other patch-worthy achievements, like building a Web page, mastering the "Why Tease?" message is hard to measure. How a girl responds in real life, experts say, when they're surrounded by friends and classmates, not teachers and Scout leaders, is the only test of a program's success. "This can't be about getting a patch. It needs to be about learning behaviors," says Rosalind Wiseman. She generally applauds the Girl Scouts' efforts, but warns against the temptation to rely on formulaic, one-size-fits-all "solutions." Of course, whether from personal experience or watching Lindsay Lohan's hapless outsider in the film "Mean Girls" suffer humiliation at the hands of the "Plastics," or cringing as the high school in "Heathers" descends into anarchy, any girl knows that changing behaviors isn't easy when you believe your very existence depends on acting a certain way. In reporting this story, I asked a wide variety of girls about teasing and being mean. As I listened to their stories, which ranged from horrific to merely annoying experiences, a common thread emerged: It's rare for any girl to spend her entire school career as prey or predator. Kids grow up, allegiances shift, and this year's Mean Girl is a hair's breadth away from becoming the next victim, cowed by the vicious pronouncements of the latest ruler of the Girl Realm. Dianna Daniel, a soft-faced 19-year-old who spent 12 years in the Girl Scouts, is now a junior leader for a troop of 8-to-11-year-olds. Articulate and soft-spoken, the North Side native will begin her second year at Truman College this fall. She wears her brown hair pulled into a ponytail and her left ear is lined with jewelry; a tongue stud flashes as she speaks. "I think the teasing starts in 3rd grade," she says. "I was guilty of bullying when I was in the 3rd grade because I looked up to my older sister, and she knew what was cool and what wasn't. So I figured I knew everything." And she let everyone know it. By the time Daniel got to Lake View High School, the tables had turned. "I was a special-education student, so I got a lot of teasing and bullying because of that," she says. "I never felt safe, no matter how much security was there. I'm 18, I'm in college, and I still deal with people making comments and bullying." Her new defense is silence: Just ignore it, because letting it get to you is what the bullies want. As a junior leader, Daniel does her best to pass along her hard-earned wisdom to the girls in her troop. She says she's astonished by how mean the teasing can be, even among girls as young as 8. "I don't remember there being as much teasing when I was that age," Daniel says. "Even during our meetings, some girls will tease each other, and you have to pull them aside and tell them, 'You can't do that. This is supposed to be a safe place.' " What do the girls tease each other about? Everything and nothing, Daniel says. Everything from wardrobe choices to crayon technique is fair game. Some of it is just kids jostling for attention, she says, but some of it is "definitely meant to be mean," and some of the interactions are tinged with something more menacing than spite. "They're a lot more aggressive." Daniel says. "I remember when I was in school, someone would make fun of me in a normal-sounding voice. But now you can tell there's a lot of anger there." Daniel pauses, and shakes her head. "It's scary to me." Daniel and others interviewed declined to elaborate on the taunts and threats they'd received or overhead. But a quick troll through several Web logs reveals a fairly universal Mean Girl language, which occasionally flirts with real viciousness or threats of violence, but usually sticks close to a prearranged script. From the message boards of YM magazine: "like i'll just be minding my own business and her and her stupid friends come up right beside me and be like omg, shes so ugly. omg, look at her clothes. omg, this. omg that. i kinda want to punch them in their faces. cause no one looks perfect every freaking day. its been going on for like 2 years now." Thirteen-year-old Kelly Sineni could be a poster child for well-adjusted adolescence. A Girl Scout and 8th grader at Smyser School on the Northwest Side, Sineni represents a tiny sub-category of middle-school girls. Although acutely aware of Mean Girls and their methods, she seems to be remarkably unaffected by them. "It all started in the 5th grade," she says. "Girls started saying mean things about each other, starting rumors talking about what people were wearing." While boys' fights quickly turn physical, "Girls seem to hold grudges and want to get revenge." Asked if she ever confronted bullying, Sineni pauses to think. "I used to go to day camp," she recalls. "One girl would say these really mean things to another girl, who was quiet. I just told her to stop picking on her. I stood up." Was she scared? "No, not really," says Sineni. "I knew the [mean] girl." She also knew how to express herself without escalating the situation, a skill she says she learned from the Girl Scouts. "I'll always go to my Girl Scout leaders," when overwhelmed by an interpersonal problem, Sineni says. "They help us resolve things. Or I'd talk to my best friends, and they're all in Girl Scouts." Demographically, the Girl Scouts organization is undergoing seismic shifts, creating a new audience for its programs and extending the organization's reach well beyond its roots in white, middle-class suburbia. The Chicago Scouts, for example, are an impressively diverse group. According to 2005 figures, membership is 38 percent white, 38 percent black and 1 percent Asian. At least 20 percent of members did not report their race. Within those numbers, another trend is emerging. Latina membership in the Girl Scouts surged 22 percent between 2003 and 2006. It's not surprising, then, that the Chicago Girl Scouts would find a warm welcome at Eli Whitney Elementary School. The Scouts have worked with the school, in the Little Village neighborhood, for 17 years. Whitney's student population is 99 percent Hispanic, and some of the youngest kids don't speak much English. Four evenings a week, as many as 100 girls, ages 5 to 13, come to the school for lectures, activities and games. These meetings, like those in 23 other Chicago Public Schools, represent a partnership between local community groups and the Girl Scouts, which brings after-school programs, including Scouting, to some 900 girls in Chicago's low-income, under-served communities. Simone Alexander, a coordinator for the Little Village Community Development Corporation, oversees the scouting activities at Whitney. The impact of the program on bullying and teasing is hard to measure, she says, but she has seen progress at the grade-school level. "I'd say the program functions best for the younger girls, those in 1st to 5th grades. By the time girls are in 6th grade, they relate differently to each other." The 100-year-old school building, which anchors a neighborhood dotted with bodegas and streets lined with neat, single-family homes, is clearly showing its age. The cheerful decorations and bright murals can't quite dispel the dreariness of the Whitney basement, the fluorescent lights and the dampness hovering over the carefully aligned lunch tables where 50 girls are seated, talking and giggling. Some of the younger kids are drawing, carefully plucking crayons from a pile in the middle of their table. This is the Girl Scout troop for some 100 girls, all students at Eli Whitney, many of them referred to the program by their principal, Dr. Miguel Velazquez. Renee Knight, 45, has been working with the Scouts for three years and has seen every variety of bullying, teasing and name-calling. "It starts young," she says, shaking her head. "One girl said something mean to another girl, who started crying. They were in kindergarten." Among the youngest girls, Knight says, the bullying is completely arbitrary ("She's my friend, not yours"; "You can't use that color, because that's my color."). It's an accurate predictor of the capricious, unpredictable rules of social survival that govern the middle-school years. ("You can only wear jeans on Monday"; "Ponytails are only for Thursdays.") As Knight hurries off to secure the peace and the evening's activities continue, a few girls approach me. Some, like 12-year-old Yesenia Savanas and Stephanie Moncayo, 13, both 7th-graders at Eli Whitney, are eager to chat. I ask them if they see bullying at their school. They both nod. "There's punching, and name-calling," Yesenia says. "The girls call each other bad names and talk about each other." What about the boys? "Boys hit each other, because they think it's an easier way to solve a problem," says Stephanie. The girls took part in the Take Charge! program run by the Girl Scouts of Chicago and the Chicago Bar Association. Designed to promote non-violent conflict resolution, the joint venture targeted girls in middle and high schools on the city's Near West Side, Garfield Park, Lawndale and Lower West Side. Stephanie said it provided a forum for a difficult subject. "Sometimes it's hard to talk to friends about [bullying and teasing] because they don't understand." Nine-year-old Ashley Chavez, a quiet girl who smiles from under a thick veil of dark hair, says that "when girls get mad they use bad words. And sometimes they will sit at a different lunch table even though they were best friends." Has she ever been bullied? She nods. "When I was in preschool," she begins in her soft voice, "there was a girl who was taller than me, and she told me I was too little to hang out with her." Ashley stops, looking up at me to make sure I'm listening. "So I told her that everyone is small sometimes, and who cares if people are big or small, they're still our friends." Along with other 8-to-12-year-old girls, Ashley took part in the Girl Scouts' "Uniquely Me" program, which tries to promotes self-esteem. The theory is that high self-esteem is a useful tool in counteracting bullying behavior and makes girls less likely to be bullies themselves. Self-esteem is a kind of Holy Grail of Scouting and similar organizations. Which is great, up to a point, says Rosalind Wiseman, the author. "We all want strong daughters," she affirms, "but there are a lot of mean, mean girls who have incredibly high self-esteem. I tell girls I talk to that I don't care if they're friends with each other, but they have a responsibility to treat each other with dignity." At Whitney and other schools nationwide, a now-familiar threat to civility has emerged: Cell phones, ubiquitous and, increasingly, infinitesimal, can be smuggled into just about any classroom or meeting. Set on silent mode, they're nearly impossible to ferret out. That's also bad news for teachers, who can hardly expect their lesson plans to compete with riveting text-message discussions of Amanda's new hair color, or how hot Ben is or how, like, heinous Sara's skirt looks. It's also bad news for girls, according to one recent study by the University of California-Davis, which found female bullies were increasingly using text messaging--more than the Internet or physical confrontations--to torment their victims. And then there's the siren song of the incoming call. "Talking on the phone has become a real issue," Renee Knight says. "In the middle of class or a meeting, a phone will vibrate. They'll always say they 'have to' answer it but I tell them, if it's between 6 and 8 p.m. [meeting time] and it's not an emergency, they don't answer it." Meanwhile, text-messaging has eliminated any need to answer the phone, she notes wryly. "They text the boys during the meetings," Knight shakes her head. "Just letting them know who's here and who's not." Cyber-bullying has expanded the reach of Mean Girls exponentially, agrees Courtney Shore. "Even if phones are off while they're in a classroom, they can still be used as cameras," she says. "And it's become the norm among kids to put up fake MySpace pages to make fun of other kids. "Odd Girl Out" author Rachel Simmons is the director of The Girls' Leadership Institute and the Empower Program, which runs workshops for girls and their mothers. Their motto: "Violence shouldn't be a rite of passage." Simmons' expertise on the topic isn't entirely academic. When she was 8, her friends started telling lies about her and ran away from her, and she had no one to sit with at lunch. Later, she stood on the other side of the bullying fence. "At 14, I was a total wannabe," she recalls. "I was popular but always on the margins. I hurt a friend of mine," in cahoots with another girl, "by ending our friendship. This caused her so much pain that she left the school." She notes that before the wired age, a student could write something on the bathroom wall and perhaps 10 people would see it before it got washed off. "Today," she says, "you can spread a rumor or a picture with the press of a button. Delete buttons and cache-clearing erase all signs of a bully's handiwork after the damage is done." "It's this invisible force," says Courtney Shore. "Kids don't know who or what to fight back against." The Internet also has introduced a lack of impulse control when it comes to bullying, says Simmons. "You can't see anyone's face as you're typing. So you have this immediate gratification of satisfying your instincts" without having to deal with the real-time consequences. Rosalind Wiseman believes that cyber-bullying is sometimes exacerbated by parents' good intentions. "Parents are giving their children cell phones because they want them to be safe. They think the world is this really scary place." But rather than keep girls safe, she says, the phones provide "a way for girls to destroy or be destroyed. Girls take pictures of a girl they hate in the locker room after gym class, and text them to all her friends with these really vicious messages, like 'You're a big fat skank and everyone hates you.' " But in some cases, blogs and online message boards are used to challenge the supremacy of Mean Girls. Message boards at call4ally.com, a blog staffed by a girl named Ally and her mother, a former marketing executive, included this post from LuckyCharm: "I was thinking . . . who put mean girls in charge? I'm so tierd [sic] of them getting what they want! Why do we let them rule? How can we stop them? What if nice girls ruled vs. mean girls? How can we make that happen? Am I dreaming? Got any ideas on how to stop mean girls?" A response from TexasIdeas: "Sure. Surefire solutions? Not so much." Everyone, including the Girl Scout leadership, agrees that solutions are not in the cards right now. There are too many variables at play--including race, class, age, geography--in the Mean Girl epidemic for there to be a single cure. But there are innovative, independent programs springing up all over the country, including "Chicks and Cliques," in the D.C. suburb of Park Lawn, and Simmons' Empower Program. And that's as it should be, according to Scouts leader Shore: "We're studying this issue as we go. We're not saying we have the answers." She'll get no argument from author and educator Wiseman, who views the Scouts' programs favorably but offers a few caveats. First, she says, it's important for the Scouts to be aware that their own leaders are susceptible to this Mean Girl behavior. "The dynamic of the Girl Scouts makes this a particular issue. Some troops have co-leaders, which can lead to difficult power struggles, and then there are mothers who lead troops that include their daughters." That's a situation, she contends, that can lead to preferential treatment--"Queen Bee" Moms enabling their "Queen Bee" daughters--or sweeping problems under the rug. Parents in general, she notes, want to believe that "[They] have these perfect children who are so nice and want to be friends" with everyone, and most parents will defend their children against every accusation, no matter what evidence they're presented with. "Just as it's 100 percent predictable that parents will disbelieve other adults who talk about their kids, it's 100 percent predictable that parents will believe their children more than any claim against them." The lesson for parents, she says, is that they have to be good models. "Otherwise, girls are going to say, 'Yeah, yeah, we're supposed to be nice to each other, but look at the way the adults are acting.' The same goes for teachers in schools." And, of course, troop leaders. To those Girl Scout leaders, Wiseman offers this advice: Stay engaged in the day-to-day challenges, however harsh, in girls' lives. "I've worked with the Girl Scouts," she says. "I'm very challenging with them about creating substantive programs." She worries that, despite the talk of age-appropriateness and relevancy, the Scouts, like any other large organization, run the risk of implementing programs that are too broad or not geared specifically enough to the realities of members' lives. Meanwhile, I've resigned myself to the fact that Mean Girls will never disappear completely. Social Darwinism, which is simply a fancy term for people walking all over each other, may be, for better or worse, intrinsic to the human condition. But that's not to say I don't think things can't get better. If the Girl Scouts, or any other organization brave enough to take on the problem, can keep one girl from teasing, taunting or picking on another, they'll have my deepest admiration. As well as the gratitude of millions of little girls who are just now testing the social waters of elementary school, blithely unaware of the piranhas lurking just below the surface. -- TIPS FOR PARENTS Whether you're worried about your daughter's behavior, or just want to keep an eye on her group's delicate social dynamics, the key is to stay involved, listen and keep the lines of communication open. But when is it time to call in professional help? Dr. Suzanne McNeill (PhD), a clinical psychologist in Chicago with a private practice specializing in adolescents, offers parents this advice: Q: What are some signs that my daughter is being teased or bullied? A: If you notice your daughter starting to avoid social situations or not wanting to go to school, those are pretty clear indications that something's going on. Also, look out for new physical complaints with no clear underlying physical problem, such as stomachaches. Also nightmares and loss of concentration. Sometimes girls who are being bullied start to tease or bully their younger siblings or start talking to their parents in bullying tones. Q: What can I do to help her? A: One of the difficulties in addressing bullying or teasing with your daughter is that when girls are being victimized, their sense of shame and humiliation is so enormous that they will often deny any problem. Usually by the time they volunteer any information, they're so injured and mortified that parents need to react quickly, first by reassuring their child that the bullying isn't about them--it's about the insecurities of the bully. It often helps if parents can look back on their own experiences with bullies, especially if a mom can say, "I remember this happening to me." It can really help to know that people do get through this. I tend to caution moms that while you feel sad and angry, and you want to show your daughter that you empathize, you don't want her to feel that she has upset you by revealing what's going on in her life. Q: What behaviors can I chalk up as "normal," and when is it time to call in a professional, for example a psychologist or therapist? The difference between "normal" behavior and behavior that needs to be addressed lies in whether anyone is getting hurt. If that's the case, therapy can be helpful in that, by telling their story over and over, girls often find the words become less painful, less raw. There's a certain power in telling someone what's happening to you and having them empathize and support your reaction. Q: Should I contact someone at my daughter's school--an administrator or teacher--if I suspect bullying is going on there? Yes, if teasing and bullying are going on, the school should know about it. But you need to tell a counselor or administrator or a teacher who can deal with it without identifying the bully. That's just going to make the target more vulnerable. Q: What are some signs my daughter has become a Mean Girl? How should I deal with this behavior? Parents might hear from other parents or from the school that their daughter is bullying someone. Girls who are bullies are often socially savvy enough to behave in a certain way around adults, so you may not see anything firsthand. Often, kids who are bullies are depressed or angry, just like their targets. If your daughter is victimizing someone, you need to be clear with her that the bullying behavior is disappointing and unacceptable, and that you're not going to tolerate her treating someone badly. -- jreaves@tribune.com

Jambo, I don't know what experiences you had personally with UCs, but as a UC myself, I can assure you I (and most every UC I know) didn't take the job for ceremonial purposes -- I geniunely want to help units outside of my own (and yes, I'm also very active as an ASM in my son's troop). Its possible there are people out there who take on a UC role for whatever glamour there is (I've found darn little, myself!), but in my experience, those folks don't last long. Yes, my district has non-active UCs, but my DC purged them pretty quickly.

Old fashioned values stand firm in a high tech world http://tinyurl.com/34qcm3 Source: Village Voice Balmain Author: Nicole Hasham Posted: Mon 6 Aug, 2007 In an era when pitching a tent generally means clipping plastic poles to a dome-shaped piece of nylon, knowing how to tie a knot may seem a little quaint. But for the young members of the Leichhardt 1st Scouts group, knowing how to square lash two wooden poles can mean the difference between a good night's sleep and a face full of canvas. "When we camp we use old army tents like they used in World War II," Leichhardt Cub Scouts leader Claudia Gittens said. "They're quite hard to put up, and all the scouts have to be able to do all the knotting, which is pretty skillful stuff". For as the Leichhardt 1st Scouts Group prepares to celebrate 100 years of scouting in Australia in August 2008, the group remains firmly tied to the original vision laid down by Lord Baden Powell a century ago - be prepared, help others, and of course, regularly brave the great outdoors. According to Claudia, the Leichhardt scout group of 1908 did not have to search far for a patch of wilderness, often setting up camp at Ramsay's Bush, in Haberfield. These days, 100 years later, with local bush a little thin on the ground, the scouts must now travel to areas like Pennant Hills and Sutherland to camp. But the fresh-air tradition remains stronger than ever in modern scouting, and can do wonders for city-bred kids, Claudia said. "We always encourage kids to spend a number of nights under canvas each year," she said. "They absolutely love camping - being outdoors away from family and being with other kids. "One eight-year-old kid who didn't say much when he started has just become so much more outgoing. We usually have parents coming on camp with us - but he said he didn't want his parents coming!" But it's not just a commitment to camping that has remained constant over the years. At weekly meetings, scouts of all ages play games and learn practical skills that would not have been out of place a century ago. "At a cub scouts meeting we have opening parade, where we greet everyone, get kids to salute the flag and say 'Do your best', then play various traditional games like cat and mouse and poison ball," Claudia said. "We discuss things like what goes into a first aid kit, and what to do if someone gets bitten by a snake, or gets a bleeding nose, how to tie bandages, or sometimes we do science experiments." In the era of computer games and television, she believes it is this adherence to old-fashioned values that has allowed scouting to retain its relevance in modern urban life. "People realise it's important that kids have different experiences," she says. "Scouting pushes kids a little bit beyond their boundaries. It helps them grow up and learn leadership and responsibility, and it's great training for later life." Claudia said the experiences shared by former scouts at the group's 90th anniversary celebrations showed just how much the inner west had evolved since the movement's early days. "Kids used to walk to the [scout] hall from Balmain to Leichhardt because no-one had cars - it must have been the 1920s," she says. "One old bloke, he must have been about 94, remembered when they used to drive sheep down Balmain Road to the railways where Darling Harbour is now - it's absolutely amazing." Seeking former scouts for centenary Leichhardt 1st Scouts Group is seeking former members from Leichhardt, Rozelle Annandale, Glebe and surrounding areas to get in touch ahead of a 100th anniversary luncheon to be held in August 2008, when scouts of all ages will gather to share stories and enjoy a century of scouting memorabilia. Please contact Claudia Gittens on 9660 4069 for further information.

The importance of 'danger' in boyhood http://tinyurl.com/yputd4 Curiosity and self-reliance are essential to challenge the nanny state in which children are growing up today. By Dan Hall from the August 8, 2007 edition Canandaigua, N.Y. - In 1958, when my pal Glenn and I were 13, our fathers dropped us off at Limekiln Lake near Detroit and left us there with a pile of food, camping gear, fishing poles, and a rowboat. For the next four days, Glenn and I were Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn floating down the Mississippi. We had a great time swimming, catching and cooking fish, and telling each other lies. At night we sat by our campfire while I played my harmonica, which I was lousy at. It drove Glenn crazy, but I thought that was what folks were supposed to do around a campfire. Being city kids, we lost a little sleep listening nervously to the sounds of the night, but we never considered walking to the pay phone a mile down the road and having our parents come and get us. Limekiln Lake came to mind again the other day when I bought a copy of Conn and Hal Iggulden's bestseller, "The Dangerous Book for Boys." "Dangerous" is a challenge to the nanny state in which children are growing up today. Something has gone terribly wrong in a society in which you rarely see kids at a park or a soccer field unless their parents are there too, serving as umpires or coaches or just cheering wildly whenever their kid kicks a goal. When are kids supposed to learn a little self-reliance? Perhaps the experience Glenn and I had at Limekiln Lake was a little unusual for 13-year-olds even in 1958. But at least our fathers had no fear that someone might charge them with child neglect. For the two of us, it was a memorable step on our road to adulthood. "Dangerous" is similar in many ways to the "Handbook for Boys," the old Boy Scout guide that went out of print in 1959. It taught us how to build a campfire; follow a compass; and above all to be brave, clean, and reverent. I don't know that my friends or I necessarily held those three qualities to any greater extent than do kids today, but we sure were more independent. So, I bought "Dangerous" to save until a favorite nephew turns old enough. The book can be read in fragments, in no particular order, and it covers a remarkable range of topics. Predictably, that includes such subjects as detailed instructions on how to hunt, kill, gut, and cook a rabbit; learning to juggle; building a tree fort; a variety of short adventure tales; and advice on getting along with girls. Less predictably, it also includes chapters on history, science, poetry, writing, and grammar. My favorite is a piece of instruction showing how modern translations of the Bible lack the grandeur and power of the King James Version. It is no hardship to "walk through a dark valley," the authors point out. "The valley of the shadow of death" is a different matter. Will any kid take a second look at such stuff when he does not have to? Well, when I was in ninth or 10th grade, my Uncle Bob gave me a copy of what is arguably the best guide to grammar and writing ever written, Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style." From it, I learned that trying to write without knowing the rules is like trying to build a house without knowing anything about laying a foundation. My uncle's gift was one of the seeds from which grew my 40 years as a newspaper writer. That is what is "dangerous" about this book: the possibility that a boy just leafing through it may happen upon some nugget that will one day prompt him to fly. The authors are right: Over the past few decades, we have focused on the dark side of masculinity: aggression, the tendency to take dumb risks, false machismo. Perhaps that is one reason boys are falling behind girls on any number of social and academic measures. Their book points to a brighter side: self-discipline, wry humor, quiet determination, and curiosity about everything. Let's send the pendulum swinging back in that direction. -- Dan Hall is a freelance writer in Canandaigua, N.Y.

Dad crusades against God in school http://tinyurl.com/36vjya Fight against moment of silence goes to court today 11:23 AM CDT on Tuesday, August 7, 2007 By KATHERINE LEAL UNMUTH / The Dallas Morning News kunmuth@dallasnews.com Among many parents at Rosemeade Elementary, he is viewed as a nuisance. But David Wallace Croft says he is fighting against the influence of "Judeo-Christian monotheism." He defines himself as an atheist, an "optihumanist" and a Libertarian. Over the past several years, he has fought any signs of religion at the Carrollton school his three children attend. He complained about Boy Scout rallies held during school, fliers sent home about Good News Bible Club meetings and the inclusion of "Silent Night" and a Hanukkah song in holiday concerts. The rallies and fliers stopped, and in some cases the songs were removed or altered, angering other parents. Mr. Croft, 39, often stopped by the campus looking for violations. He took photos as evidence of "In God We Trust" posters hanging on the wall and complained about a teacher wearing an Abilene Christian University shirt. His largest fight to date is set to play out in federal district court in Dallas today. He and his wife, Shannon, are suing Gov. Rick Perry and the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district, arguing that the state's minute of silence, in effect since 2003, is unconstitutional and amounts to state-sanctioned school prayer. The lawsuit says a Rosemeade teacher told Mr. Croft's son that the minute of silence held each morning was specifically for prayer. She then bowed her head, clasped her hands and began to pray. "Moment of silence bills have been popping up in additional states," Mr. Croft wrote on his blog. "To have millions of public school children waste a minute of education each day for a practice that has no secular purpose seems to me like a great sin." The law Legal experts say Mr. Croft has little chance of winning mostly because legislators carefully worded the law to say students could choose whether to "reflect, pray, meditate or engage in any other silent activity." "An accommodation for people who may wish to pray during that time is different from the state encouraging people to pray," said Charles Haynes, a First Amendment scholar with the Freedom Forum. "Legislatures have been careful to say prayer is one of the things you can do during this time." California atheist Michael Newdow, who challenged the Pledge of Allegiance in schools because of the "under God" reference, said he thinks the Texas law is unconstitutional. But he doesn't think Mr. Croft stands a chance in the current political climate. "Why don't they say minute of silence and doing arithmetic or helping the poor?" he said. "The government is giving hints, 'Hey, this is something you should do.' I think it's wrong. But I also think it's not a case you can win." The Supreme Court struck down Alabama's minute-of-silence law in 1985 after lawyers showed strong evidence that legislators had a religious purpose when they passed the law. But when the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against a similar Virginia law, the Supreme Court declined in 2001 to hear the case. State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, said the Virginia case motivated him to propose a law with the same wording. "There has been like a burr under the saddle of a lot of Texans since the Supreme Court said you couldn't pray audibly in schools," he said, referring to a 1962 ruling. Mr. Croft's attorney, Dean Cook, is attempting to show in the lawsuit that Texas legislators introduced the law for religious purposes. He also argues that there is no secular purpose for the Texas law. Mr. Wentworth said the minute is "not designed just for prayer. If a teacher said that, he or she misspoke." Mr. Haynes of the Freedom Forum said the teacher's actions don't mean the law is bad; it means that districts need to educate teachers better. "One of the criticisms of the law is that teachers are going to take advantage of it to promote prayer," he said. "Apparently that's what happened here." The plaintiff Mr. Croft declined to comment for this story. But past interviews and his extensive Web site and blog offer insight into his actions. Growing up in Abilene, a conservative town with three Christian universities, Mr. Croft said he was a "very dedicated" Southern Baptist. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Air Force Academy and a master's from the prestigious California Institute of Technology. After he moved to Carrollton, he enrolled at the University of Texas at Dallas to study for his doctorate in neuroscience and registered CroftSoft, a software development business, with the state. He also taught classes at UTD. Professor Richard Golden called him an "intellectually interesting character." "He's very strong-minded; that's sort of a characteristic of people who are in academia," he said. Mr. Croft ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2002 and for the Texas House in 2004 as a Libertarian, stating that the only legitimate government functions are the military, courts and police. In an interview last year, he said he lost faith in Christianity, what he calls the "supernatural," after reading 1984 in high school. "I don't want my children exposed to people teaching them that the supernatural is real," he said. He has tried unsuccessfully to start online groups relating to atheism. One was called the Cryobaptist Church, which he defined as having "a postmortem baptism in liquid nitrogen," and linked to his belief in "universal immortalism." He and his wife are humanists, which she describes on her blog as "people who believe in the basic goodness of the human spirit without supernaturalism." Joseph Croft of Abilene said he supports his son's stance on the law and the separation of church and state. "It's a waste of valuable classroom time," Mr. Croft said of the state's moment of silence. "I don't share his beliefs, though. I definitely personally believe in the power of prayer and of Jesus Christ." The school Rosemeade Elementary is rated exemplary by the state and has a large and involved Parent Teacher Association. Mrs. Croft, described by parents as quiet and unassuming, is a board member. Her husband's frequent complaints created tension. "Things they had done for many years were being changed because of one family," parent Tammy Dube said. "It was really disappointing that the school gave in to them. We were all very frustrated." Parents also worried about the Croft children being subjected to ridicule. Mr. Croft told them to remain seated during the daily Pledge of Allegiance, prompting questions from classmates. In 2005, Mr. Croft's then-10-year-old daughter posted a comment online about religious songs in the holiday program. "I talked to the music teacher and I asked her if she could knock out all the songs with religous beleifs [sic] and at the end of the day. She gave me a note that said that she knocked out the songs," she wrote. "It's all my family has wanted and it happened! Me and my brothers were rewarded with candy, pizza, cinnamon sticks, and French fries." The blog entry became infamous among parents and teachers who circulated the Web site's address. Soon after, a classmate posted this response: "I know that your family doesn't believe in God, that's your choice, but why does Rosemeade have to stop singing religious songs for you?" she wrote. "I like you a lot and you are a really nice girl but it's not fair what you are doing to Rosemeade." Charles Cole, assistant superintendent of the Carrollton-Farmers Branch district, said principals are given leeway on decisions. Religious songs are allowed because they are a part of American cultural tradition, and all clubs, including Good News, can meet at school because of a Supreme Court ruling, he said. "The real issue is equal access and that there is not any discrimination against any group based on their beliefs," Dr. Cole said. "We are a very diverse community, and we need to be respectful and fair to everyone." Parent Mary Bresnahan said the conflict has done some good. "We had to teach our kids you have to stand up in what you believe in, that we're going to fight," she said, noting "Silent Night" was added back to some programs after parents complained. Asked about other parents' views, Mr. Croft said he understood. "I used to be one of them," he said. "I appreciate where they're coming from, but I'm not of their same opinion anymore." Anna McCrummen, a parent and the teacher sponsor for the Good News club, said her church at one time considered inviting Mr. Croft to speak because the Christian parents didn't understand where he was coming from. The invitation never came, but Ms. McCrummen said the Crofts are often on her mind. She wrote their names on a prayer wall at church. "I pray for him and his family every day," she said. History of complaints David Wallace Croft kept a detailed timeline on his Web site about perceived violations of church-state separation at Rosemeade Elementary School in Carrollton, where his three children attend. Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district officials would not confirm the information. A request to the district for copies of e-mails and other correspondence with Mr. Croft was denied. Here are highlights from Mr. Crofts 19-page timeline: Aug. 18, 2003: Mr. Croft requests to the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board that his children be excused from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance because of its reference to "one nation under God." Sept. 18, 2003: Mr. Croft asks the school board to stop allowing the Cub Scouts to hold recruiting rallies during school because the group excludes atheists. He also complains about a flier his 8-year-old daughter received about Good News Bible Club meetings after school. Dec. 3, 2003: Mr. Croft e-mails the school board to complain about his daughter being taught to sing "Silent Night" and do it in sign language. He asks that children be taught secular songs. Oct. 5 2004: Mr. Croft complains to the school board that his son will be singing "God Bless the USA" for a school program. Oct. 12, 2004: Mr. Croft's son is pulled from the performance and watches his class from the audience. Oct. 13, 2004: Mr. Croft requests that his children be removed from any room where they could be exposed to religious songs. Dec. 9, 2004: Mr. Croft appears before the school board and deems the music and song "God Bless the USA" as prayer in school. "Ask yourself how those parents of the majority religion would react if they discovered that their children were being made to sing a patriotic and religious song about Allah, Satan, the Goddess, the Gods, or the Outer Space Aliens. Those songs would be inappropriate, and so is this one." Oct. 18, 2005: Mr. Croft notes signs on campus that say "The Good News Bible Club meets here weekly" and a poster saying "In God We Trust." Nov. 20, 2005: Mr. Croft discovers a Hanukkah song in a holiday musical program and tells his daughter she cannot sing it. Nov. 30, 2005: Mr. Croft learns the song is dropped from the program. His daughter reports she didn't say the Pledge that day. Dec. 12, 2005: Mr. Croft learns that a student is circulating a petition trying to get the song "Silent Night" back into the holiday program. Dec. 20, 2005: The Croft children do not attend school the day of the performance and class parties. Jan. 20, 2006: Mr. Croft's daughter cries after a teacher tells her in front of other students to stand for the Pledge. Mr. Croft recalls telling her "she stands up by not standing up." March 4, 2006: Mr. Croft's son says his teacher told children to be quiet during the moment of silence because it's for prayer. He says the teacher then bowed her head and clasped her hands in prayer. March 10, 2006: Mr. Croft and his wife, Shannon, file suit in federal district court against Gov. Rick Perry and the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district challenging the state's minute-of-silence law.

Christian Alternative to Secular Girl Scouts Growing, Expanding http://tinyurl.com/36w64j American Heritage Girls (AHG), a Christian alternative to Girl Scouts, has entered a new phase of growth this month with plans to expand to all 50 states by 2008. Fri, Aug. 03, 2007 Posted: 20:14:11 PM EST American Heritage Girls (AHG), a Christian alternative to Girl Scouts, has entered a new phase of growth this month with plans to expand to all 50 states by 2008. The 12-year-old organization offering girls programs that are God-centered has experienced unprecedented growth in recent years while large secular organizations such as t Girl Scouts have declined in membership. "Parents are looking for programs that complement their family's values, not contradict them," said Patti Garibay, executive director of AHG, according to Focus on the Familys CitizenLink. Parents raised concern when the Girl Scouts changed their pledge in 1993, permitting girls to replace "God" with "words they deem more appropriate" while reciting the Girl Scout Promise. Originally, the pledge included "serve God." Girl Scout leaders said the measure "acknowledges growing religious and ethnic diversity" among the millions of Girl Scout members. Membership has dropped from 2.8 million girls in 2002 to 2.7 million in 2006, according to Girl Scouts of America. The national group plans to combat the decline by restructuring and refocusing its mission beginning October 2008. Meanwhile, AHG, which is currently in 33 states with over 6,000 members, continues to grow and aims to build troops in every state and grow to 7,500 members in the next year. The organization is committed to "building women of integrity through service to God, family, community and country." In a culture that has the spotlight on Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears often labeled by media as girls gone wild AHG encourages "women of manners" to unite. "It is time that women with a strong moral compass and high self-respect serve as role models for today's girls, interrupting their lives in a counter-culture fashion," said Garibay in a statement released by AHG. "It is time that we quit shaking our heads in disbelief, hiding our children under our skirts and take action! "Our nation's daughters desperately need to know that they are worthy of respect and need not be slaves of this culture." AHG's growth comes amid a larger movement of young women returning to modesty. Wendy Shalit, author of Girls Gone Mild, calls it a modesty revolution with young women largely driven by their faith. American Heritage Girls was founded in 1995 in West Chester, Ohio, by a group of parents wanting a wholesome scouting program for their daughters. The non-profit organization offers merit badge programs, service projects, girl leadership opportunities and outdoor experiences to its members. -- Audrey Barrick Christian Post Reporter

Map reading proves tough test for Britons http://tinyurl.com/yoyfhc Mon Aug 6, 2007 8:51AM BST London (Reuters) - As many as 11 million British motorists are unable to read a basic road map, according to a survey released on Monday. The poll revealed over three quarters of drivers were unable to identify the motorway map symbol, while only one percent of motorists would pass the Cub Scout Map Reader badge test. "It's pretty embarrassing the majority of Cub Scouts have better map-reading skills than the majority of the adult population," said Colin Batabyal, head of underwriting and business development at eSure, which carried out the survey. Sixteen percent of drivers have become so heavily reliant on satellite navigation systems that they have given up keeping a map in their car. "It's time for motorists to take a refresher in map-reading skills," said Scott Sinclair of national mapping agency Ordnance Survey. "Technology is great but the batteries won't run out on a paper map. "No serious hill walker would rely totally on a GPS device in case the power goes or the signal is lost, so it should be the same for the motorist," added Sinclair. The survey -- based on a poll of 1,000 UK drivers -- estimated Britons' poor map-reading skills resulted in 36 billion wasted miles being driven each year.

'Radioactive Boy Scout' at it again, police say http://tinyurl.com/29o8wr Feds: Stolen smoke alarms intended for nuclear reactor Friday, August 3, 2007 By Mitch Hotts Macomb Daily Staff Writer A Clinton Township man who gained notoriety a decade ago as the so-called "Radioactive Boy Scout" was accused Thursday of stealing numerous smoke detectors in an effort to develop a homemade nuclear reactor. David Charles Hahn, 31, was being held on a $5,000 bond in the Macomb County Jail after he was arraigned in 41B District Court on charges of larceny from a building, a 4-year felony. Investigators said the U.S. Navy veteran was arrested after a maintenance worker at Green Valley Apartments saw him stealing smoke detectors from a common hallway where Hahn was renting an apartment. "Both our department and the FBI have been trying to monitor his movements once we learned he was back in the area," said Clinton Township police Detective Capt. Richard Maierle. Authorities discovered in January that Hahn had returned to Clinton Township after his service in the Navy. He apparently was trying to drum up publicity for a book he has written, according to police. When police arrested Hahn on Wednesday evening, they evacuated the apartment building and called in a Michigan State Police bomb squad to conduct a search of the apartment because of Hahn's background and the chemical items he was known to store in his residence. They found 16 smoke detectors that allegedly had been stolen from buildings in the complex. The suspect apparently was trying to harvest tiny amounts of the radioactive isotope americium-241, a silvery-white metal found in the detectors. The chemical can cause cancerous tumors and damage internal organs. Residents were allowed back into the complex after the police search. Hahn first came to the attention of authorities in 1994 after police stopped him during an investigation into someone stealing tires in a local neighborhood. Inside his car, officers found a sealed toolbox along with 50 foil-wrapped cubes of a gray powder, cylindrical metal objects, a clock face, fireworks and other chemicals and acids. The car was declared a "potential improvised explosive" and police had it towed in for further investigation. It turned out to be a chance encounter as Hahn allegedly had tried to build a reactor and found it was giving off extremely high levels of radiation. When police pulled him over on that night in 1994, he was about to dismantle the device. Police then called in the FBI, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other agencies. The federal government declared Hahn's mother's home in Commerce Township a hazardous materials site and had the structure buried in Utah as a low-level radioactive waste. Hahn was nicknamed "Radioactive Boy Scout" because as a Boy Scout he had earned a merit badge in Atomic Energy and was known to tinker with basement chemistry kits that caused small explosions. While a student at Chippewa Valley High School, he reportedly wrote the Nuclear Regulatory Commission claiming to be a physics instructor and sought tips on obtaining radioactive materials, according to an article in Harper's Magazine. Hahn told the magazine that he was interested in the nuclear field after reading "The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments." He had learned how to make nitroglycerin at the age of 14. The magazine reported that he caused an explosion in his mother's house in the 1990s that rocked the home and left him semiconscious on the floor. Hahn told the magazine he had been exposed to radioactive chemicals but added: "I don't believe I took more than five years off my life."

Forgive me, scoutmom8: welcome to the Forums!

When my wife was DL for my son's Wolf Den, she borrowed this idea from her earlier days as my daughter's Girl Scout Troop Leader: take a big piece of felt, put the den number on it, then let the boys trace their hands on contrasting color felt (both left & right hands). The boys then glued their felt "hands" on the flag, one hand on each side, and wrote their names in glitter-pen. She also scanned their pictures, and they glued their photos on the flag. She still has that flag, five years later, and she cherishes it.

We don't spend troop meeting time on MBs -- the Scouts are expected to work on those on their own, at the direction of their counselors, of course.

Trust me, there's no paradise when lost http://tinyurl.com/36o2pa By Terry Tomalin, Times Outdoors Editor Published August 2, 2007 WITHLACOOCHEE STATE FOREST - Hiking through the pine flatwoods, I had a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was wrong. I looked around the woods - no predators or machete-wielding psychopaths - so I kept walking. But the feeling would not go away. "Wait a minute," I thought to myself. "I haven't seen a trail marker in quite some time." I stopped, did a 360, and came to the conclusion that I had wandered off the trail. My initial reaction was panic. The sun was about to set, and I knew there was no way I would find my way back to camp in the dark. I didn't want to spend a cold night in the woods when I could be sitting next to a warm fire sipping hot chocolate. Then I remembered one of the first lessons I had learned in Boy Scouts. When lost in the woods, S.T.O.P. It is a basic survival skill taught to every Tenderfoot: Stop, Think, Observe and Plan. The worst thing you can do when you've lost your way is to keep walking. All you do is get more lost. So I put down my day pack, ate a granola bar and had a look around. As I stood there chewing I noticed a large pine tree about 50 feet away. It looked vaguely familiar, but I often think that about pine trees. That's when I came up with my plan. Why not walk back to that vaguely familiar-looking pine and look for another landmark, just like Hansel and Gretel did after their dad and wicked stepmother ditched them in the woods. Fifteen minutes of going from spot to spot brought me back to the main trail, which led to the camp. "Where's the firewood?" my friend asked. "Geez," I said. "I knew I forgot something." But that is how it happens. You start daydreaming, lose track of time and next thing you know you are lost. Trust me; I'm an expert. I've lost my way in the mountains of New Zealand, the deserts of Australia, the jungles of South America, the farmlands of Europe and half the states in the union. I remember one particular night, lost and alone in the Everglades (I wasn't totally clueless - I knew I was somewhere in southwest Florida) when I wound up sleeping in my kayak, tied to some mangroves. At least the mosquitoes had a good meal. Over the years, however, I have learned (through trial and error) how to keep those embarrassing, and potentially dangerous, moments to a minimum by practicing my ABCs. A is for ALWAYS tell somebody where you're going and when you'll be back. Before you hit the trail, check in at the ranger station or park office. That way, if they see a strange car parked in the lot after closing, they will send out a search party. B is for BE prepared. This is more than the Boy Scout motto; it is the recipe for survival. That means know where you're going - i.e., look at a map - and have some idea about what to expect when you get there. Don't be like me and head out for a spring hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains in shorts in a T-shirt, get caught in a blizzard, then have to jog 5 miles uphill just to keep from freezing. Being young, strong and stupid will only carry you so far. C is for CARRY a survival kit. It doesn't matter if you are going for a day hike along the Hillsborough River or flying to a field station in the middle of Venezuelan rainforest, bring some emergency gear in case things get ugly. I have two survival kits. One, I call my "little problem" kit. It has a flashlight, matches, compass and whistle. The other I call my "Oh, - - - -!" kit - i.e., the plane crashes in the jungle. It has everything from water purification tablets to a spear point made of Spanish steel, just in case I'm forced to kill a wild pig to feed the tribe. Survival, I tell my Cub Scouts, is all about attitude. The trick is to prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and enjoy everything in between. Times Outdoors Editor Terry Tomalin, the fearless leader of Cub Scout Pack 210, hasn't been lost in the woods for several weeks now. If he's not lost, he can be reached at (727) 893-8808.

Trev speaks the truth -- that's exactly how I got elected. My district service was as a UC to several Cub Packs. I was never a Boy Scout. And although I might have had enough camping nites as an ASM with my son's Troop, they had other more deserving candidates to nominate ahead of me (1 adult per 50 boys I think is right).

Scouting the future http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2158120.ece http://tinyurl.com/2abldd July 29, 2007 Hal Iggulden, co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys, believes the Scouts 100 years after they were founded can solve the crisis in 21st century manhood Roland White In a school playground way back in the 1960s I made the first significant moral choice of my life. My best friend had asked me if Id come to a meeting of his Cub Scout pack: just to see what it was like. On the other hand, a girl in our class also wanted to know whether Id be at all interested in seeing her knickers. There was no time to do both. Im afraid I chose the knickers. Its not that I was all that interested in knickers at the age of nine. I could just tell that Cubs and Scouts did not somehow fit the freewheeling spirit of the Sixties, or at least the faint whiff of the Sixties that had reached the playground at Wookey Hole school, an establishment so conservative that the head teacher once gave us a days holiday to mark a local landowners birthday. Heres what bothered me. The Cubs and Scouts were obviously run by a strict hierarchy, some of whom Akela in particular seemed to have peculiar names. They seemed a little too keen on uniforms and tradition, and a Scouts idea of a solid nights entertainment was a song that started with the words ging gang gooli, which baffles me to this very day. As I saw it back then, all this would soon be swept away by the unstoppable tide of progress: woggles, scarves, ging gang gooli and all. Somehow the Scouts survived my childish disfavour and thrived into the 1980s. But they became distinctly unfashionable in the 1990s, when no parent would dare let children roam free in the woods. The movements promise of a rugged outdoor life gradually lost out to the allure of television and computer games. And in the fevered child protection atmosphere that was just getting a grip, it also became more difficult to find adults prepared to work with children and young people. Yet numbers have risen again over the past two years there are 446,000 Scouts in the UK and there is evidence that Scoutings time might once again have arrived. This weekend 40,000 young people from all over the world have been setting up camp near Chelmsford in Essex for the 21st World Scout Jamboree, which celebrates Scoutings centenary. Dotted with tents, the site looks likes the Glastonbury festival in uniform, although obviously a lot tidier. Its the first time the event has been held in Britain since 1957, and it has pitched up here to mark 100 years since Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts, first took 21 boys on a modest camping trip to Brownsea Island, just off the coast of Dorset. Scouting has changed a lot over the past 100 years, and for the new modern compassionate multicultural Scouts its a big week: their best chance in years to attract a lot of new recruits. One cause for optimism is the popularity of The Dangerous Book for Boys, which has sold nearly 1m copies since it was first published last year with the following message: In this age of video games and mobile phones, there must still be a place for knots, tree houses and stories of incredible courage. Baden-Powell would have approved. The book not only teaches the five knots that every boy should know, but gives instructions on building tree houses, assembling a go-kart, and making a bow and arrow. I walk my dogs in woods and parks all the time and this summer I have seen more tree camps, more bases, more gangs of little boys hiding away in the woods than I can remember, says Hal Iggulden, co-author with his brother Conn of The Dangerous Book for Boys. The feminist onslaught of the past 30 years was good for women but bad for us. I think it had an unseen knock-on effect on men and boys, who became timid. We have a need to do that kind of rough and tumble stuff. Iggulden, 35, joined the Scouts after getting into a fight with a local Scout troop in Ruislip, northwest London. They were doing tree surgery, he recalls. We buzzed them on our BMXs, and they chased us away. A week later we joined that Scout troop. I think we were jealous. They were climbing trees, and we couldnt. With the Scouts he found he could lead the sort of boisterous life that was completely out of the question at school. We went off into the countryside. It was probably just outside London but it seemed like the back of nowhere. A farmer turned up on a quad bike and on the back he had two dead hares, which hed shot. We got to hold and look at the rifle. We skinned them, which was the first time Id ever skinned an animal. We skinned it and we ate it. Just learning those basic things was good. We got to push all our testosterone and aggression into other things. The night games were probably the greatest thing. They were very rough. We divided into two teams. You had to hide a bright light in the darkness which of course you couldnt and you had to capture the opposition light. The Scout leaders would be one team, and we would be the other team. I remember charging in and they would just pick us up and throw us into thorn bushes. I was straddled across a bush, screaming. Because to move at all was to make things worse. It made me tougher to a large degree. I was very proud when I was in the Scouts because I was the patrol leader. You almost had a gang that you could rely on. And as for the canard that Scouting attracts paedophiles, Iggulden remembers: A deacon who was leader for the whole district of London turned out to live three doors down the road from us. It was the first time I got to know an older man on equal terms. I could talk to him in ways I couldnt talk to my parents. He was the most gentle, lovely man youve ever met. Scoutings emphasis on individual responsibility and the outdoor life makes it perfectly poised to take advantage of a backlash against the nanny state and the culture of overweening health and safety. Certainly the philosophy of Scouting is being taken seriously at the top of government for the first time in many years. Gordon Brown has apparently been impressed by research that shows how group activities with a clear structure and well-defined aims help children to develop social and emotional skills. They do even better if members wear a uniform, which emphasises order and discipline. Many well known figures learnt helpful skills with the Scouts. My Scouting days helped me to cope with adversity, says Sir Richard Branson. Ive been pulled out of the sea six times by helicopters, when my balloons and boats either sank or crashed. I once ended up in the Arctic when it was 60C and had to worry about building an igloo. I suspect that without my Scouting background it would have been that much more difficult to survive these adventures. Former US president Bill Clinton was a Scout. Survival specialist Ray Mears, it goes without saying, was a Scout. Yet so were Fat Boy Slim and Jason Donovan. Even Russell Grant and Boy George were Scouts. I really loved being a Boy Scout, says the Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman. I loved the knots, I loved the camping, I loved making things, I loved getting badges. The thing about the Scouts which I thought was so exciting is this opportunity to do things, to make things, to discover things, to explore the natural world and the built world with a sense of social purpose. People might say it is a rather old fashioned idiom and I suppose it is old fashioned. That doesnt mean its not rather attractive and rather worthwhile. The events of the past few days have also shown Scouts at their best. The 3rd Tewkesbury Scout hut was open at 5.30am at the height of the flooding in Gloucestershire, ready to provide hot drinks, food and shelter. Scouts have been out in their communities, helping with tasks such as sandbagging properties and supporting refuge shelters for stranded residents, says a Scout Association spokesman. It certainly brings a woggle-sized lump to your throat, but will it be enough to overcome Scoutings long-term image problem? It has always struggled with its image. Like vicars, there is something intrinsically amusing about Scouts. PG Wodehouse certainly thought so. One of the characters in his first Jeeves and Wooster novel, written in 1923, is an overzealous Scout called Edwin who infuriates Bertie Wooster in his drive to do good deeds. That image certainly put off potential recruits like Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye. I never joined the Scouts, said Hislop after making a BBC programme on the origins of Scouting. I think at that age I was probably too busy making jokes like Baden-Powells scouting for boys, is he? Naughty old Baden-Powell. But I found, rereading Scouting for Boys, it is an extraordinary book. Its very radical and it addresses all sort of issues that we think of as modern: citizenship, what to do with disaffected youth, social responsibility. I talked to some Scouts and felt mildly embarrassed that Id been snotty about it. There were some quite tough lads saying, This is a brilliant thing and its kept me on the straight and narrow, and were very grateful about it. To be honest, the founder of the Scout movement has not helped its image. He was a free thinker: today we might think him an oddball. He was married late in life, to a much younger woman, and then chose to sleep out in all weathers on his balcony. Yet back in the early 1900s he was this countrys greatest military hero since the Duke of Wellington. He made his name in the Boer war when he successfully defended against a 217-day siege of the town of Mafeking. His tactics were a masterpiece of original thinking. To deter the Boers from attacking, he ordered his men to pretend to set out barbed wire and to pretend to dig in mines. To add authenticity, he exploded fireworks from time to time. Short of manpower, he also recruited a cadet force of teenage boys to act as messengers and lookouts: an early version of the Scouts. Baden-Powell returned to England in triumph. Popular songs were written in his honour and his face peered out from china plates and cigarette cards. More important, a military training manual he had written, Aids to Scouting, was a bestseller. It was the success of this book that encouraged him to gather 20 boys from different classes and backgrounds on Brownsea Island. He taught them about animal tracks, first aid, knots, and camping skills. In the evenings they gathered around a camp fire to hear Baden-Powell talk about his adventures in the army. The event was a roaring success and was followed shortly after by the publication of the book that so tickled Ian Hislop, Scouting for Boys. Certainly the book is often comic to the modern reader. Here, for example, is Baden-Powell on the importance of wearing your hat correctly: It is said that you can tell a mans character from the way he wears his hat. If it is slightly on one side, the wearer is supposed to be good natured. If on the back of his head, he is bad at paying his debts. If worn straight on the top, he is probably honest but very dull. Early Scouts had a lot to remember. While keeping a lookout for badly worn hats, they were also under instructions to breathe through their noses, not their mouths, to smile at all times, and never to offer tips in return for service. Yet the central core of Scouting for Boys has a surprisingly modern ring. The importance of equality especially racial and religious equality is written into Scout law. According to the fourth rule of Scouting: A Scout is a friend to all, and a brother to every other Scout, no matter to what country, class or creed the other may belong. Baden-Powell was particularly hard on snobbery. A Scout must never be a snob, he wrote. A snob is one who looks down upon another because he is poorer, or who is poor and resents another man because he is rich. A Scout accepts the other man as he finds him, and makes the best of him. The environment was also important to early Scouts. As a Scout, you are the guardian of the woods, says the book. A Scout never damages a tree by hacking it with his knife or axe. A Scout cuts down a tree for a good reason only. For every tree felled, two should be planted. The problems Baden-Powell was trying to address have a very contemporary ring: he worried that the young people of his day were a wasted generation. He wanted to unite different classes, and to give young people a purpose. Unfortunately, his military style did not always find favour. There was a breakaway Scouting movement in the early 1920s led by a charismatic pacifist, John Hargrave, who had risen to become the movements commissioner for woodcraft and camping and was the Ray Mears of his day. Hargrave was a former soldier, but he had become a pacifist after his experience of the first world war. His new group, the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, was created as a peace movement, but later became known as the Green Shirts uniformed opposition to the fascist Blackshirts. Some members of Kibbo Kift found Hargrave too authoritarian and formed the Woodcraft Folk in 1924. This was Scouting for socialists, and is still going strong today. Judging by its website, the Woodcraft Folk is also struggling under something of an image problem. We do not under normal circumstances hug trees or craft wood, it says. Despite these early divisions, Scouting grew into a worldwide movement, and remains one. During the Lebanese civil war of the 1980s, Scouts drove ambulances. They are now helping to rebuild the country after last years war between Hezbollah and Israel. Scouts in Madagascar are doing their best to raise awareness of Aids, while in the troubled African states of Congo and Rwanda Scouts have been trained as community mediators. This weeks jamboree in Essex is the United Nations general assembly of the Scouting world, where Israeli Scouts set up camp next to Lebanese Scouts, and Greek Cypriots pitch their tents alongside Turkish Cypriots. Todays campers will spend their time doing the usual Scout things: canoeing, building rafts, climbing, doing good deeds, and being prepared. In keeping with modern times, they will also be learning how to reduce their carbon footprint. But perhaps the highlight of the 10 days will be a ceremony at sunrise on Wednesday morning at which the campers will renew their Scouting promise. Holding up their hands in the traditional three-fin-gered salute, they will pipe up together in clear confident voices: On my honour, I promise that I will do my best to do my duty to God and the Queen, to help other people and to keep the Scout law. At least, thats what most of them will say. If they are Muslim or Hindu they can now pledge themselves to Allah and Dharma. Scouts from republics will promise to do their best for their countries. These days you can even be an atheist Scout, promising to live life in good moral standing. As you might expect from an organisation whose motto is Be Prepared, the Scouts and Guides have been modernising ruthlessly to be ready for their moment. Just last week the Guides set out the skills needed by a modern young woman. No longer need they bother with lighting fires, making jam and keeping a scrapbook about a former colony. Instead the modern Brownie (aged 7-10) should be able to name the prime minister, swim 100 metres, care for a pet, and surf the web safely. Meanwhile, Senior Guides should know how to manage their money, produce a first-rate CV, assemble flat-pack furniture, practise safe sex, and perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (very possibly after safe sex). The only hint of the old fashioned Guide movement were the words first rate. Life isnt always so serious, though. My neighbour, who is a district commissioner for Explorer Scouts, has been involved in Scouting for the past 43 years. I dated a Cub mistress for 18 months, he tells me wistfully. I found the women involved in Cubs and Scouts had a lot more about them than anybody I met in nightclubs. He will never speak a truer word. As for that stark choice I was forced to make at the age of nine, I should have gone with my friend to the Cubs because I never saw that girls knickers. To my secret relief, she decided to show them to somebody else instead. A movement born out of British grit against the crafty Afghan The very name scout carries with it, even among civilians, a romantic idea of a man of exceptional courage and resource, while among soldiers the title is so much sought after that small bodies of mounted Volunteers and companies of Light Infantry skirmishers have within recent years demanded to be called scouts. A scout is, nevertheless, a special man, selected for his grit, and trained for one class of work only, and that is reconnaissance. His work is not fighting, but getting information about the country and the enemy. The British scout has, too, to be good beyond all nationalities in every branch of his art, because he is called upon to act not only against civilised enemies in civilised countries, like France and Germany, but he has to take on the crafty Afghan in the mountains, or the fierce Zulu in the open South African downs, the Burmese in his forests, the Soudanese on the Egyptian desert all requiring different methods of working, but their efficiency depending in every case on the same factor, the pluck and ability of the scout himself . . . Many people will tell you that pluck is not a thing that can be taught a man; it is either born in him or he has not got it at all. But I think that, like many other things, it is almost always in a man, though it wants developing and bringing out. The pluck required of a scout is of a very high order. A man who takes part in a Balaclava Charge is talked of as a hero, but he goes in with his comrades all around him and officers directing; he cannot well turn back. How much higher then is the pluck of a single scout who goes on some risky enterprise, alone, on his own account, taking his life in his hands, when it is quite possible for him to turn back without anyone being the wiser. From Baden-Powells military manual Aids to Scouting, which inspired him to start the Boy Scouts

'Utterly cared for': Minister writes of finding peace, link to God in nature http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070726/Lives/707260476/1047/Lives http://tinyurl.com/2uf995 Jul 26, 2007 CHRISTINE COX Tribune Staff Writer John Lionberger, a United Church of Christ minister and religious author, admits there are times when he is tempted to not believe in God. "Faith just isn't a head thing at all. I could talk myself out of God just in a heartbeat," he says in a telephone interview. "But if I listen to my heart, I think that's the truer voice. That's the grounded voice. I guess, the ancient voice." It's a voice he didn't hear growing up in South Bend, the son of a doctor and part of a family that went to church in an era "when it was important to be seen in church." "I just couldn't quite make any sense of it. It looked like God either couldn't control (the world) or gave us just enough rope to hang ourselves and we were doing a pretty good job of it," he says. Fast-forward through college, a master's degree in journalism, marriage, two children and a successful career in broadcasting and the cable industry.In celebration of Lionberger's 50th birthday, his wife, Jane, gives him a seven-day trip with Outward Bound. The participants use cross-country skis to break a trail for a dog-sled team through forests and across frozen lakes in northern Minnesota. The trip is so rigorous, they sleep in the snow under tarps with no tents. It's during a moment when Lionberger is alone on this trip that he feels God. Dark is approaching, and he takes a moment to stretch before rejoining his group. "In that posture, and in that cold, without warning, I am suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that I'm standing in a shower of pure and profound warmth, from the inside out," he writes in his new book "Renewal in the Wilderness: A Spiritual Guide to Connecting With God in the Natural World" (SkyLight Paths Publishing, $16.99). "A sense of peace that's bone-true and javelin-straight floods me, dwarfing any similar sensation I've ever had. My eyes shoot open to see what's causing this sensation of pure warmth, but there is nothing to see except the darkening sky."He feels "utterly cared for." "I want an explanation, but there is none," he writes. "In the back of my mind there's a niggling thought that I quickly shove down ... then shove down again ... and again. Then, despite my severest attempts to trap it, the thought springs full-blown and scary into my consciousness. " 'Could it be God?' " Hell, no, he tells himself. But the peaceful feeling stays, and he searches for answers when he returns home.As he wrestles with his new-found beliefs, God compounds his problem by calling him to ministry. He's in the library when God "ambushes" him as he's thinking about what type of ministry to start. "And the voice of inspiration (God?) answered immediately, something to this effect: 'You are an idiot, aren't you? Take people into the wilderness to find what you found!' " he writes. So in 2002, after finishing a master's degree in divinity from Chicago Theological Seminary, he started Renewal in the Wilderness, a nondenominational ministry. The program takes men and women of all faiths into the wilderness for one day to a week. He averages 4 1/2 trips a year. Why the wilderness? Because throughout time and across religions such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Shintoism, among others, nature has been the place for connecting with God, Lionberger writes. The vastness and unpredictability of the wilderness are reminders that God is a powerful creator and that people need to find God in the places He created. "God is not the God of comfortable places," he writes. "God usually doesn't visit us in life-changing ways at our desks or in our easy chairs. Spiritually or otherwise, places on the edge -- wilderness places (of any kind) -- have much to teach us. It's always been that way."His book, which was released in June, takes the reader with Lionberger as he canoes on the Rio Grande, backpacks in Alaska, mountain-bikes in North Carolina, walks Incan trails in the Andes, and wanders through other wilderness spots in the United States and abroad. Though Lionberger travels far and wide, he makes it clear to readers that there are opportunities for wilderness experiences close to home. "You don't need thousands of miles of open space and a backpack or canoe to move into a natural setting," he writes. "Think local parks, state parks, rivers, ponds, or lakes. Where might you go this week?" The important thing is to "go to those places with awareness, open to surprise" and to live in the moment. Lionberger, who lives in Evanston, Ill., has a master's degree in journalism, and it shows in the heartfelt details of his writing. The book is never pushy or pompous. It doesn't alienate those who don't believe in God or aren't certain about their beliefs. Indeed, Lionberger writes "Even atheists have experiences in the wilderness that transcend the normal boundaries of their lives and move them to believe that they're connected to the larger universe. ... And while they may not call those experiences 'spiritual,' they know they've been touched in ways that defy both reason and explanation." That this experience is universal and age-old never fails to impress him: "The experience has been so similar for so many thousands of years. ... This is stunning. This is just stunning." Staff writer Christine Cox: ccox@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6173

I've seen both sides. Once when selling popcorn in MD, my son (who was a Wolf at the time, 2nd grade) approached a man with an offer to sell him some popcorn. The man yelled loudly back at us "No thanks, I don't support the Hitler Youth". This was in 2001, shortly after the "Dale" decision. I guess I wasn't very Scout-like, but I chased the guy to his car and asked him not to yell at the kids just because he had issues with BSA policy -- they weren't responsible for it. I didn't make a very good impression on him. But the positive experiences have far outweighed the bad. I too, have been stopped in restaurants by people who want to shake my hand and thank me for working with kids. I too hear the war stories when an old-timer was a Scout long ago. I've never had anyone buy me a meal, but I've heard it too often to doubt that it happens frequently. I don't know how people form their opinions of Scouting, but I like to look on the bright side at those who support us, even when we don't know it.

In my story, it was MY car that had the flat. My son and I were just leaving from a week-long day camp, our first after having just moved to Texas from DC. As we left camp, I notice my car was riding kinda funny. I stopped, already knowing what happened. Sure enough, I had a flat. I took off my class A shirt and commenced to changing my tire. It was a chance to show my fourth grade son what to do if he ever found himself with a flat. Despite the father-and-son moment, I was very disappointed that not a single Scouter, of the hundreds attending that day camp, bothered to stop and offer any aid -- not even an offer of a bottle of water! Mind you this was in June in Texas (before the torrential rains) when the temps were 100+! I didn't let that episode sour me on the new Council before I had a chance to get to know the many fine people I would eventually meet -- but I haven't forgotten it, either. About a year later, my son and I had a chance to help change a tire for someone else. As we pulled into the Scout Shop parking lot, an unattended car sat there with a flat tire. We asked around inside about the car, but no one knew anything about it. We left w/o changing the tire, and never having seen the driver. Oh well, at least we tried!

I may be mistaken, but I thought only troops had the option of selecting a troop-hat or troop-neckerchief. I've never read anything that says packs had any option other than the official hats & neckerchiefs. Packs and dens can make their own slides, however.

Man writes original Sherlock Holmes stories for Boy Scouts http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/michigan/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/118460526965600.xml&storylist=newsmichigan http://tinyurl.com/2up3p5 7/16/2007, 12:44 p.m. ET By GARY GOULD The Associated Press CORUNNA, Mich. (AP) When people told Jerry "BP" Riggs his stories were something that should be experienced by a larger audience, the answer for the 57-year-old retired postal worker was elementary. Riggs' stories about the further adventures of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes had become staples of summer camps offered to area Boy Scouts. But to reach more people he decided to have his stories published. Recently, his first book, "The Unusual Sherlock Holmes," was published by Infinity Publishing.com, bringing to print three Riggs stories that for years have encouraged problem solving skills among the Boy Scouts of the Chief Okemos Council. "The methods Holmes used to solve mysteries were methods of observation and the proper use of imagination," Riggs said. "Some of these methods used to be taught to scouts, but now it's gone. But I brought it back." Riggs' stories about Holmes dealt with the principles of S.H.E.R.L.O.C.K. See Hear Examine Read Learn Observe Conclude Know which were an integral part of the training British scouts were put through under Colonel R.S.S. Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell, a colonel with the 5th Dragoon Guards, trained elite British cavalry scouts more than 100 years ago, emphasizing detective skills. Many of those skills were derived from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories about the great detective Sherlock Holmes. "Baden-Powell called it 'Sherlocking,'" Riggs said, noting that his own "BP" nickname comes from the British officer's name. "Police forces back then used it as part of their training, too." Riggs said he has for years told Holmes stories to scouts, but only recently was he urged to put his own scout summer camp tales into book form. "After each session they were supposed to come up with their findings and I found that they all wanted to say that (the murder) was done with a certain weapon, in a specific room by a particular person," Riggs said. "I then realized they were getting their deduction skills from playing the (board) game Clue." Riggs, a Holmes fan since he was a 14-year-old junior high student in Lansing, said deduction and problem solving are lost scouting arts. Riggs said after finding a publisher, he set out to write three of his stories a task made difficult by his limited computer knowledge. He said staff of the Community District Library in Corunna taught him word processing and helped him transform thoughts and handwritten notes into printed words. "I bribed them with a lot of homemade cookies," he said. "I took one of the first copies (of the book) down there, and it's on the library's shelf now." The published stories include an 1879 adventure by a young Sherlock Holmes in the wilds of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, another that investigates a mystery involving the legend of Camelot and another where Holmes and his faithful assistant, Watson, stumble onto a murder while taking in the fall colors in the England countryside. Riggs is already working on a sequel. "Everyone from early readers to adults with a college education have come back and said these stories are good," Riggs said. "It makes me feel good. It's like watching a kid come down to Christmas morning and seeing the reaction on their face. I wish everyone could read my book." -- Information from: The Argus-Press, http://www.argus-press.com

Crossramwedge: You want to know whether or not your son was elected. The answer is, your son needs to ask his SM. Its a bit surprising at this date that your son doesn't know. If he failed, his SM should have told him soon after the election -- to leave him in the dark all this time and expect him to "figure it out" on his own is not being "courteous", IMHO. Fred Goodwin, Brotherhood

Has anyone been to usscouts.org lately? The homepage has been completely reformatted -- it looks good! Fred Goodwin, UC Alamo Area Council

Scouts from Beirut kept out of Sweden http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/07/12/scouts_from_beirut_kept_out_of_sweden/9880/ http://tinyurl.com/2he65e STOCKHOLM, Sweden, July 12 (UPI) -- The Swedish Embassy in Damascus has denied visa applications to a group of Boy Scouts from northern Beirut who wanted to attend a jamboree in Sweden. Sveriges Radio said the decision went against the Swedish Foreign Ministry's request that embassies look favorably on visa applications from scouts intending to take part in the jamboree, the Swedish newspaper The Local reported Wednesday. "I think they are worried that the scouts will arrive in Sweden and decide to stay here rather than travel back home," Johan Strid, head of the Swedish scout movement, told Sveriges Radio.