fgoodwin

Fire away, county tells Scouts: Temporary permit for shooting range OK'd over protests http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5625406,00.html http://tinyurl.com/2zzzs6 By Ivan Moreno, Rocky Mountain News July 12, 2007 KIOWA - Elbert County commissioners on Wednesday gave Boy Scouts the go-ahead to host two weekend shooting-range events, to the dismay of neighbors who say the shotguns are too loud. The commissioners' decision went against the recommendation of their planning director and the county sheriff. They granted a temporary permit, on the condition that the Scouts conduct noise tests, limit shooting hours and give neighbors notice of their shoot-a-thons, which raise funds. "It was something that both sides kind of agreed to," said Suzie Graeff, commission chairwoman. But Jay Enyart, who lives across the street from the Scouts' Peaceful Valley Ranch, said after the meeting he was disappointed. "I feel like this was a political solution where the county commissioners wanted to cut the baby in half and what they gave us was the short end of the stick," he said. Enyart was among the residents who live near the ranch who testified before commissioners, asking them to deny the Scouts the opportunity to use a new clay shooting range. Adults dish out thousands of dollars to participate in the shoots. The watershed moment for neighbors was May 19 and 20, when neighbors said Boy Scouts held an event without warning. "It was like World War III had started, and I was on the front lines," Enyart said. The Brighton-based Colorado Clays club was soon advertising the new shooting range on the Scouts' ranch and had posted upcoming events there on its Web site, making neighbors of the ranch nervous about more noise. A Jewish summer camp, J BAR CC Ranch Camp, which is across from the Scouts' ranch, also has expressed concern about the expanded shooting range, saying the noise will interfere with religious services. The Scouts said all the money raised goes to improve and maintain camp facilities. Jeff Herman, executive director of the Denver Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, said last week the May event raised more than $200,000. The commissioners approved the temporary permit for the clay shooting range for events on July 20 and 21 and Aug. 4. The Boy Scouts must give one week's notice to neighbors within 500 feet of the event, only shoot between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and conduct noise tests on sites approved by nearby residents. The Boy Scouts will have 30 days from Wednesday to apply for a permanent permit, when another hearing will be conducted. "I guarantee you I don't need a noise study," Enyart told commissioners. "I was there, I lived through it." -- morenoi@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2895

Good luck finding one -- the Insignia Guide says adults wear the universal hatpin on the campaign hat; it should be available at your local scout shop, or online at Scoutstuff.org (part #50150) for $3.49

The Pope and the Boy Scouts http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11718 By Hal G.P. Colebatch Published 7/12/2007 12:07:22 AM It was good to read that Pope Benedict sent a message of support to the Scout movement on the occasion of its 100th anniversary. August 1 marks the centenary of the first Scout camp, organized by Sir Robert (later Lord) Baden-Powell on the island of Brownsea, in England. Popes and Scouting do not seem to have a great deal in common at first glance. But Popes, especially Popes as formidably intellectual as Benedict, do not make statements on a whim. This pronouncement may be seen as part of the Pope's ongoing campaign against moral relativism, a campaign which he appears to have identified as the most important cause to be fought in the modern age, and a campaign part of whose target is inevitably Western decadence. Boy Scouts, and the values which the Scouting movement inculcates, have attracted the admiration of great men from the movement's earliest days. Its beginnings were Edwardian, and it has preserved much of the best of that sunny and admirable period of Western civilization. Baden-Powell, though not a senior commander, had become a popular hero by his skillful defense of Mafeking during the Boer War with about 800 men when it was besieged by a force twelve times that number. He had made searchlights from tin cans and soup from locusts, and resurrected an ancient muzzle-loading cannon being used a gate-post and pressed it into service to supplement his scanty artillery. With his many earlier adventures as a soldier and spy in wild parts of the world, and his relish for such sports as pig-sticking and hog-hunting, he was a living advertisement for the fact that West could beat the rest at their own games. Kipling was closely associated with publicizing Scouting in its first days, though he seemed to see it as a military organization or a training-school for junior spies. Winston Churchill paid tribute to Scouting in 1938, saying: The three most famous generals I have known in my life won no great battles over the foreign foe. Yet their names, which all begin with a B, are household words. They are General Booth, General Botha and General Baden-Powell. To General Booth we owe the Salvation Army; to General Botha, United South Africa; and to General Baden-Powell, the Boy Scout Movement. In this uncertain world one cannot be sure of much. But it seems probable that one or two hundred years hence, or it may be more, these three monuments that we have seen set up in our lifetime will still proclaim the fame of their founders, not in the silent testimony of bronze or stone, but as institutions guiding and shaping the lives and thoughts of men. In a letter addressed to Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, president of the French bishops' conference, Pope Benedict stated: For one century, through play, action, adventure, contact with nature, life as a team and in service to others, you offer an integral formation to anyone who joins the Scouts. Inspired by the Gospels, scouting is not only a place for authentic human growth, but also a place of strong Christian values and true moral and spiritual growth, as with any authentic way of holiness. The sense of responsibility that permeates Scout education leads to a life of charity and the desire to serve one's neighbor, in the image of Christ the servant, based on the grace offered by Christ, in a special way through the sacraments of the Eucharist and forgiveness. The Pontiff encouraged the brotherhood of the Scouts, "which is a part of its original ideal and makes up, above all for young generations, a witness of that which is the body of Christ, within which, according to the image of St. Paul, all are called to fulfill a mission wherever they are, to rejoice in another's progress and to support their brothers in times of difficulty. I thank the Lord for all the fruits that, throughout these last 100 years, the Scouts have offered." He encouraged Catholic Scouts to go forward on their path, offering "to boys and girls of today an education that forms them with a strong personality, based on Christ and willing to live for the high ideals of faith and human solidarity." Benedict XVI's message ends with advice from Baden-Powell: "Be faithful to your Scout promise, even when you are no longer young, and may God help you to do so! "When man seeks to be faithful to his promises, the Lord himself strengthens his steps." I WAS NEVER A SCOUT myself, but I was active in a rather similar youth organization, and can testify that the value to me and those I knew was incalculably great. As well as teaching valuable aspects of character such as teamwork, self-reliance and friendship, scouting skills and discipline have saved many lives and enriched many more. As early as the First World War, Boy Scouts in Britain were serving as air-raid wardens, and Sea-Scouts are said to have manned some of the boats that went to Dunkirk. They were promoting environmental conservation decades before Greens were heard of. I don't know if John Smeaton, the Glasgow airport baggage-handler who tacked the burning Jeepster Jihadist and later issued the memorable warning to terrorists: "Coom ta Glasgie an' we'll set aboot ye!" was a former Scout, but I am sure that Baden-Powell would have approved of him heartily. It is an interesting exercise to imagine the attitude of latter-day world leaders to Scouting. I don't mean just in regard to the obvious Scouting requirement of being clean in thought, word and deed, which might trip up Bill Clinton and certain other politicians, but in terms of an overarching attitude of mind, a kind of innocent adventurousness and idealism. Ronald Reagan, I think, in some ways -- the best of ways -- never stopped being a Scout. I can imagine Australian Prime Minister John Howard taking an interest, even accepting honoury Scouting positions and occasionally donning the uniform. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is much harder to imagine in the role -- he was too concerned with an up-to-date image, and discreet dinner-parties for the likes of "Sir" Mick Jagger were more his speed. Present British Prime Minister Gordon Brown seems too dour (Baden-Powell hated those he described as "Swots," which seems a reasonable description of Brown). George Bush? There is something Boy Scout-like about him, and I don't mean this as a derogation. Vladimir Putin? No chance, I think. -- Hal G. P. Colebatch, a lawyer and author, has lectured in International Law and International Relations at Notre Dame University and Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and worked on the staff of two Australian Federal Ministers.

It gets worse: Helicopter Parents Now Hover at the Office http://www.careerjournal.com/columnists/workfamily/20060317-workfamily.html http://tinyurl.com/2w3xuh

Has anyone seen Corey Feldman's "Edge of Honor" (1991)? Here's the link to IMDB: http://imdb.com/title/tt0101797/ The movie is very violent, with scenes that are not suitable for children (the movie is rated "R" due to violence and language; there is no sex). W/o giving away the plot, suffice it to say the movie is about a bunch of boys ("Northwest Wilderness Explorers") who stumble upon some stolen weapons hidden in a shack in the woods of the Olympic peninsula in Washington. The movie follows the boys as they try to escape from the bad guys, and how they finally deal with them, with a little help from an unexpected source. The uniforms look a lot like Boy Scouts, but I don't think the term "Boy Scouts" is ever actually applied to the boys (or the larger group they are camping with). The boys do eventually use some of the pioneering skills they learned in "Explorers". I don't think BSA supported the movie in any official way, but I note that the production company was called "Merit Badge Productions". Does anyone know if Corey Feldman was a Scout?

Nature makes a comeback: In a techno world, traditional camps flourish http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/07/07/nature_makes_a_comeback/ http://tinyurl.com/yqka5s By Jenna Russell, Globe Staff | July 7, 2007 BELGRADE LAKES, Maine -- At Pine Island Camp, a narrow ribbon of green in a picturesque Maine lake, boys ages 9 to 15 live in tents with no electricity. They leap into the chilly lake first thing every morning, and fall asleep at night to the eerie call of loons. There are no TVs, video games, or computers, and counselors keep the only cellphone on the island hidden away for emergencies. Six weeks of this might sound like punishment for the average boy today, who lives with his iPod in his ear and talks to his friends in text messages. Yet this year, for the first time in recent memory, Pine Island sold out for the season six months before it opened. It is one of a number of rustic wilderness camps in New England that are seeing a surge in their popularity , at a time when parents and educators are increasingly concerned that children do not spend enough time in the natural world. For the 86 boys on Pine Island, there is no escape from nature, and no choice but to learn to entertain themselves. Every night of the summer, campers and counselors dance, sing, and role-play for an hour at the evening campfire. One recent evening, as sparks crackled and flames shot into the pink twilight, they sang a song about a "crazy moose" who "drank a lot of juice," cheered wildly as campers and counselors danced the limbo under a wooden oar on the beach, and laughed at a skit in which one shaggy-haired counselor with a fake Australian accent imitated the late wildlife expert Steve Irwin. Finally, everyone stood and gathered close around the fire, their faces orange in the light, to sing a last song quietly, together. "We entertain ourselves every night, and it becomes more amazing all the time, because people don't know how to entertain themselves anymore," said Ben Swan , the camp's director, whose father and grandfather ran the camp before him. Traditional summer camps in the woods became popular a century ago, in response to concerns about urbanization and the effects of city life on children. They thrived in the 1920s, offering youngsters from cities and suburbs a chance to experience nature and develop wilderness skills: building a fire; reading a compass; paddling a canoe. But beginning in the 1970s, the rise of technology, more protective parenting, and other societal changes threatened traditional camps. When Swan took over as director in 1989, enrollment at Pine Island had dwindled from 85 to 45 boys. The proliferation of specialized camps, where children hone their skills in soccer or computer programming, also pulled campers away from the woods. To compete, older camps have adopted cutting-edge recruitment techniques. Swan has hired a full-time assistant director to criss-cross the country, stirring up interest. He also established a new group of parents and alumni, known as the Gateleaders, to cultivate friends and neighbors. At the same time, camps have made allowances for changing times. Pine Island campers are allowed to listen to their iPods at night in their bunks. At nearby Camp Runoia, a 100-year-old girls' camp , where enrollments have doubled since 1990, parents are allowed to send e-mails, which are printed out by staff and delivered with the campers' other mail, director Pam Cobb said. At Flying Moose Lodge, another traditional boys camp in East Orland, Maine, director Christopher Price split the summer into two sessions for the first time last year to appease those scared by the thought of seven weeks in the woods. Traditional camps may be acquiring a new appeal, as an antidote to the trend described two years ago by writer Richard Louv in his book "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder." The book linked the move to indoor play to other problems, such as childhood obesity and attention deficit disorder, and set off a national movement to reconnect children with nature, known as the "No Child Left Inside" campaign. The American Camp Association, which accredits and promotes camps, recently announced plans to use Louv's message for recruitment, said Bette Bussel, director of the camp association's New England office in Lexington, Mass. Parents who send their children to traditional camps say they instill something vital but hard to find elsewhere. "If you live in an air-conditioned world, going from house to car to mall, you have no understanding of nature, so why do you need to care about the environment?" said Andrea Raisfeld of Bedford, N.Y., who sends her two boys to Pine Island. "When they go to camp and see moose, eagles, and osprey, it's teaching them about the glory of nature." Nature and its glories do not come cheap. A summer at Pine Island, Camp Runoia, or Flying Moose Lodge costs between $5,800 and $6,500 per child. And face to face with nature, a few campers wrestle with homesickness or confusion. On a recent morning, after a night of noisy loon calls, one new Pine Island camper asked his counselor if wolves live on the island. At Pine Island, an acre of land in the middle of Great Pond, about 55 boys stay on the island at on time. The other 30 boys fan out across New England on hiking and boating trips that include climbs up Mount Katahdin in Maine and Mount Washington in New Hampshire. On the island, campers are awakened just after 7 a.m. and are encouraged to take a morning plunge into the lake. (Those who plunge daily make it into the "100 Percent Club.") After a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs and blueberry muffins one recent morning, boys choose their own daily activities from a list that includes sailing, kayaking, canoeing, archery, riflery, and woodworking. Those who clear tables at breakfast get to choose first. After breakfast, the boys make their beds, sweep their tents, and tidy their trunks. Then they assemble in Honk Hall, where a moose head hangs above a stone fireplace, for a short inspirational speech. One recent morning, counselor David Lombardo leaned over a tree-stump podium and told of his own transformation at camp from a boy who avoided the water to a confident swimmer who "loved the feeling of weightlessness in the glowing green space of Great Pond." In interviews, other former campers also described how Pine Island changed them. Matt Bradley , a counselor, recalled attending another camp one summer where boys spent hours indoors playing video games. "I was like, 'Xbox? Are you serious? You should be outside,' " he said. "It seemed so weird. It wasn't summery." As the temperature crept past 90 degrees late last month, boys lined up at an old-fashioned metal hand pump to fill water bottles. There are no showers at camp, and boys bathe in the lake using organic soap. During the quiet rest hour after lunch, two barefoot boys played "Battleship" in the camp library, as a steady breeze rustled the leaves of birch trees outside. Down by the dock, camper Eddie Stewart sat by the lake with a notebook in his lap. He said he was writing a book "about what might happen to the world if we keep going like we are now." Stewart, 13, of Washington, D.C., said he doesn't miss TV at camp, "because nothing good is on in the summer anyway," and he only misses the Internet when he wants to research something. "It's too much fun here, and you're too busy, or too tired, to miss those things," he said. Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com

Check out this website: http://www.joincubscouting.org/ Or you could look in your phone book under "Boy Scouts"; call them and let them know approx. what area you're looking at for a Cub Scout Pack (e.g., near your son's school or near your church). Or you can do a web search under the name of your city and "Scouts" and see what turns up. Good luck!

Hispanics give new life to city's Scouting program http://www.eagletribune.com/punews/local_story_190093837 By Mark E. Vogler, Staff Writer Eagle-Tribune LAWRENCE - This city's once floundering Boy Scout program has been rejuvenated thanks to an outreach effort into the Hispanic community. The number of Scouts in Lawrence has expanded from 53 to 250 over the past two years, making the city a national model on how to spark interest in Scouting programs among Hispanic youths. By way of comparison, Lawrence, with a population of about 72,000, once lagged behind Plaistow, N.H., a town of about 8,000 people, which had 61 Scouts two years ago. Plaistow's membership has increased to 85 over the same to years. "The majority of these new Scouts are Hispanic, and it is important that we understand and respond to the needs of the Latino community," John Skelton, president of the Yankee Clipper Council, said of the membership surge in Lawrence. The Haverhill-based Yankee Clipper Council serves more than 9,000 members ages 6 to 18 in 52 communities in eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. There are still more Scouts registered in Andover (422) and Haverhill (365), communities that experienced modest growth - 9 percent and 12 percent respectively. But Lawrence's enrollment actually overtook North Andover (215) and Methuen (240), both of which experienced more than a 20 percent drop. The strategy to make Scouting more relevant to the Hispanic community involved the creation of a bilingual Web site, program and training materials in Spanish, bilingual leader training, the hiring of bilingual and bicultural employees to address the needs of Latinos, and the appointment of bilingual and bicultural members to the council's executive board. Lawrence's Hispanic community accounts for between 60 percent and 70 percent of the city's overall population. The recruitment efforts were so successful that Boy Scouts of America executives from Dallas and Washington, D.C., visited the city to study Lawrence's methods as a national model. The council also earned the Yankee Clipper Council the Regional President's Scoutreach Award for 2006. Lawrence was one of only eight communities across the country to earn the award. "The city was also the only community in the Eastern U.S., the only community that serves a non-Mexican-American population and the only one that was not a major metropolitan community to win this award," said City Attorney Charles Boddy, who has been recognized locally and by council officials as a key catalyst to the renaissance of scouting in Lawrence. Boddy is a Lawrence native who earned his Eagle Scout badge while growing up in the city. Though he has moved away from the area, he maintains local ties to Scouting as a member of the council's executive board and as district chairman. "The increase in Scouting membership in Lawrence was dramatic," Boddy said. "But part of the reason was that Lawrence was so underserved for so many years that the opportunity for expansion was really unlimited." Boddy cited the involvement of Latino church leaders, including Pastor Nelson Gonzalez at Iglesia Evangelica Hispana, Father Jorge Reyes at St. Mary's of the Assumption Catholic Church and Pastor Victor Jarvis at Iglesia Ebenezer as crucial to unit organizational and recruitment efforts. In the spring, the council hired Wendy Perez of Lawrence to work as a special liaison to the Hispanic community. A key part of her job is to assist Lawrence and Latino families who wish to join a Scout troop. But she will also help improve communications between the Boy Scouts office and Latinos living throughout the council. Scouting Membership Here's how Lawrence's revival of Scouting over the last two years stacks up with enrollment trends in other area communities. Editor's Note: statistics compiled by the Yankee Clipper Council of the Boy Scouts of America. These include the combined totals for Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Explorers. Community / 2005 Enrollment / Units / 2007 Enrollment / Units / Growth PercentageLawrence 53 3 250 9 372% Andover 387 13 422 13 9% Haverhill 326 14 365 16 12% Methuen 325 13 240 10 -26% North Andover 270 8 215 7 -20% Georgetown 177 5 188 6 6% Groveland 91 2 99 3 9% Plaistow, N.H. 61 3 85 5 39% Atkinson, N.H. 151 7 167 9 11%

Experts fear today's empty playgrounds http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070709/A_NEWS/707090322 http://tinyurl.com/3d4fpu By Jennifer Torres July 09, 2007 Record Staff Writer Heat on Friday nudged outdoor playtime earlier and cut it shorter than scheduled for nearly 70 children at Stockton's Seifert Community Center day camp. Once it got going, though, campers cheered on teammates during a running, jumping, twirling relay race, while other groups played basketball or made up their own games on playground equipment. Some outdoor play - any outdoor play - is important, recreation leader Michaiah Martin said. "Keeping them inside compresses a lot of the negative energies." According to environmentalists, child-development specialists and other advocates, telling kids to "Go out and play" can keep them healthier, less stressed and more imaginative. But, those advocates worry, what used to be something children just did - playing outside - is becoming increasingly rare amid the wide-ranging allure of television, video games and other indoor pursuits, as well as parents' worries about sending their kids out-of-doors without supervision. If he was at home instead of at day camp, 12-year-old Alonzo Easter said, he would probably "ride my bike, play with my friends." He would like to play video games, he said, but his parents limit that to 30 minutes a day. Most children Alonzo's age spend much more time in front of a screen or monitor. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that kids ages 8 to 18 spend more than six hours every day with TV, music, video games, computers and movies. Children 6 and younger, the foundation determined, spend two hours per day using computers or televisions - about as much time as they spend playing outside. Parents also have a role in keeping kids indoors. According to U.S. Census figures, more than half of children younger than 6 in San Joaquin County have two working parents; there might not be time for a family walk in the woods. Outside might also be a scary place. "Fear is the most potent force that prevents parents from allowing their children the freedom they themselves enjoyed when they were young," Richard Louv writes in his book, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder." "Fear of traffic, of crime, of stranger-danger - and of nature itself." Fifth-grader Christiana Smith said she is spending a lot of time this summer singing and practicing guitar. She likes to ride her bike, too, she said. "I just have to ask first." Children who are decidedly "plugged-in" risk tuning out some of nature's benefits, advocates say. According to research cited by the National Wildlife Federation, children who experience free time outdoors have lower stress levels, play more creatively and are in better shape than those who do not. The federation urges a "green hour," time every day for children to enjoy unstructured, outside play. The U.S. Forest Service, too, is advocating for increased outdoors activities. In May, the agency announced $1.5 million in funding for programs that help connect kids with nature. California recipients were the Outdoors Experiences Program in Inyo National Forest ($92,000), and SSTARS Summer Camp in Sequoia National Forest ($29,400). Susie Douglas is San Joaquin program coordinator at the Center for Land-Based Learning. San Joaquin County teens participate in the center's FARMS Leadership program, which aims to teach students the relationship between agricultural practices and the environment, as well as the Student and Landowner Education and Watershed Stewardship, or SLEWS, program, which involves participants in habitat-restoration projects. "They go out into the woods and they being to look at their neighborhoods differently," Douglas said about teens' experiences with nature. "Are they spending too much time indoors? Well, I think once you motivate them by exciting them about the opportunities, about something that makes a difference ... they want to know more," Douglas said. "They care." On Friday, Diantha Devers was among 10 Stockton child-care providers who met for a play date at Stockton's Weber Point fountain. They watched their charges laugh and scream and splash in the water. "Children learn by playing," Devers said. "When they are outside ... they can touch the grass. They learn the grass is important. They learn the trees are important. They learn what the water sounds like." Contact reporter Jennifer Torres at (209) 546-8252 or jtorres@recordnet.com

Here are links to more Frank & Ernest cartoons that involve Scouting: http://frankandearnest.com/cgi/view/display.pl?76-06-16 http://frankandearnest.com/cgi/view/display.pl?79-08-14 http://frankandearnest.com/cgi/view/display.pl?85-06-27 http://frankandearnest.com/cgi/view/display.pl?96-07-11

From a recent post on Cub-Scout-Talk: "The Buckets" comic strip: Sunday, July 8th http://www.comics.com/comics/buckets/archive/buckets-20070708.html This link will be valid for one month.

From a recent post on SCOUTS-L: 2 Cub Scouts, 2 little girls, one says: Who do you think you're kidding? The Cub Scouts don't have a special ops! http://www.frankandernest.com/cgi/view/display.pl?106-07-07

Want an American flag delivered to your door? http://www.idahostatesman.com/localnews/story/100144.html Boy Scouts set up and take down flags in northwest Boise and Eagle for a troop fundraiser. By Tessa Schweigert - tschweigert@ idahostatesman.com Edition Date: 07/06/07 In the realm of delivering holiday cheer before dawn, there's Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and a group of local Boy Scouts. Instead of presents or Easter eggs, the 16 Boy Scouts set up American flags for patriotic holidays, including Independence Day. Early Wednesday morning the crew planted the stars and stripes in 136 lawns scattered throughout northwest Boise and Eagle. The Scouts charge $30 for the service, which guarantees an American flag on President's Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, the Fourth of July, Patriot Day and Veterans Day. Flags are delivered before 8 a.m. and typically taken down around dusk that evening. The money earned from the fundraiser pays for Scouts' outings, camps and supplies. Despite awaking at early morning hours, the Scouts, ranging from age 12 to 16, say they enjoy delivering flags. "It's fun you get to go around hammering things in people's lawns," said 12-year-old Logan McArthur. "Except we got hit with sprinklers once. That was the worst." The Scouts, part of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sponsored Troop No. 42, deliver flags in northwest Boise and east Eagle only. Their clientele in the area has continued to increase since the Scouts began the service three years ago. "It helps celebrate patriotism for people who want to but can't," McArthur said. The Scouts have people identify where they want the flag set up on the property. Some people ask for more than one flag like Maryann Ball and her husband, who pay for six American flags to be set up six times during the year. The couple has a long driveway, and Ball said the flags are set up along the drive before she wakes up. "We're happy to support them," Ball said. "I think it's a novel idea, and they've done a really great job with it." Throughout the year, the Scouts learn about patriotism, and this activity helps teach about the flag while also working to earn money for Scout activities, said Scout leaders Bruce Dunkley and Brian Hall. Expectations of fishing, shooting and archery are often 12-year-old Jared Huber's incentive for getting up around 6 a.m. to deliver flags. After all the early mornings and work, "If Scout camp is a dud, I'm going to be kind of irked," Huber said. The scouts leave for camp later this month. How to get a flag: Troop 42 delivers flags in Northwest Boise and eastern Eagle. Contact Bruce Dunkley at 343-7090. Tessa Schweigert: 377-6427

Its an old article, but I just recently came across it -- I tend to agree with much of what the author says, but not everyone will.

Interesting -- thanx for posting it.

A Nation of Wimps http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20041112-000010.html Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they're breaking down in record numbers. Hara Estroff Marano Psychology Today Magazine, Nov/Dec 2004 Maybe it's the cyclist in the park, trim under his sleek metallic blue helmet, cruising along the dirt path... at three miles an hour. On his tricycle. Or perhaps it's today's playground, all-rubber-cushioned surface where kids used to skin their knees. And... wait a minute... those aren't little kids playing. Their mommiesand especially their daddiesare in there with them, coplaying or play-by-play coaching. Few take it half-easy on the perimeter benches, as parents used to do, letting the kids figure things out for themselves. Then there are the sanitizing gels, with which over a third of parents now send their kids to school, according to a recent survey. Presumably, parents now worry that school bathrooms are not good enough for their children. Consider the teacher new to an upscale suburban town. Shuffling through the sheaf of reports certifying the educational "accommodations" he was required to make for many of his history students, he was struck by the exhaustive, well-writtenand obviously costlyone on behalf of a girl who was already proving among the most competent of his ninth-graders. "She's somewhat neurotic," he confides, "but she is bright, organized and conscientiousthe type who'd get to school to turn in a paper on time, even if she were dying of stomach flu." He finally found the disability he was to make allowances for: difficulty with Gestalt thinking. The 13-year-old "couldn't see the big picture." That cleverly devised defect (what 13-year-old can construct the big picture?) would allow her to take all her tests untimed, especially the big one at the end of the rainbow, the college-worthy SAT. Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without skinned knees or the occasional C in history. "Kids need to feel badly sometimes," says child psychologist David Elkind, professor at Tufts University. "We learn through experience and we learn through bad experiences. Through failure we learn how to cope." Messing up, however, even in the playground, is wildly out of style. Although error and experimentation are the true mothers of success, parents are taking pains to remove failure from the equation. "Life is planned out for us," says Elise Kramer, a Cornell University junior. "But we don't know what to want." As Elkind puts it, "Parents and schools are no longer geared toward child development, they're geared to academic achievement." No one doubts that there are significant economic forces pushing parents to invest so heavily in their children's outcome from an early age. But taking all the discomfort, disappointment and even the play out of development, especially while increasing pressure for success, turns out to be misguided by just about 180 degrees. With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. Forget, too, about perseverance, not simply a moral virtue but a necessary life skill. These turn out to be the spreading psychic fault lines of 21st-century youth. Whether we want to or not, we're on our way to creating a nation of wimps. The Fragility Factor College, it seems, is where the fragility factor is now making its greatest mark. It's where intellectual and developmental tracks converge as the emotional training wheels come off. By all accounts, psychological distress is rampant on college campuses. It takes a variety of forms, including anxiety and depressionwhich are increasingly regarded as two faces of the same coinbinge drinking and substance abuse, self-mutilation and other forms of disconnection. The mental state of students is now so precarious for so many that, says Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard University and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, "it is interfering with the core mission of the university." The severity of student mental health problems has been rising since 1988, according to an annual survey of counseling center directors. Through 1996, the most common problems raised by students were relationship issues. That is developmentally appropriate, reports Sherry Benton, assistant director of counseling at Kansas State University. But in 1996, anxiety overtook relationship concerns and has remained the major problem. The University of Michigan Depression Center, the nation's first, estimates that 15 percent of college students nationwide are suffering from that disorder alone. Relationship problems haven't gone away; their nature has dramatically shifted and the severity escalated. Colleges report ever more cases of obsessive pursuit, otherwise known as stalking, leading to violence, even death. Anorexia or bulimia in florid or subclinical form now afflicts 40 percent of women at some time in their college career. Eleven weeks into a semester, reports psychologist Russ Federman, head of counseling at the University of Virginia, "all appointment slots are filled. But the students don't stop coming." Drinking, too, has changed. Once a means of social lubrication, it has acquired a darker, more desperate nature. Campuses nationwide are reporting record increases in binge drinking over the past decade, with students often stuporous in class, if they get there at all. Psychologist Paul E. Joffe, chair of the suicide prevention team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, contends that at bottom binge-drinking is a quest for authenticity and intensity of experience. It gives young people something all their own to talk about, and sharing stories about the path to passing out is a primary purpose. It's an inverted world in which drinking to oblivion is the way to feel connected and alive. "There is a ritual every university administrator has come to fear," reports John Portmann, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. "Every fall, parents drop off their well-groomed freshmen and within two or three days many have consumed a dangerous amount of alcohol and placed themselves in harm's way. These kids have been controlled for so long, they just go crazy." Heavy drinking has also become the quickest and easiest way to gain acceptance, says psychologist Bernardo J. Carducci, professor at Indiana University Southeast and founder of its Shyness Research Institute. "Much of collegiate social activity is centered on alcohol consumption because it's an anxiety reducer and demands no social skills," he says. "Plus it provides an instant identity; it lets people know that you are willing to belong." Welcome to the Hothouse Talk to a college president or administrator and you're almost certainly bound to hear tales of the parents who call at 2 a.m. to protest Branden's C in economics because it's going to damage his shot at grad school. Shortly after psychologist Robert Epstein announced to his university students that he expected them to work hard and would hold them to high standards, he heard from a parenton official judicial stationeryasking how he could dare mistreat the young. Epstein, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, eventually filed a complaint with the California commission on judicial misconduct, and the judge was censured for abusing his officebut not before he created havoc in the psychology department at the University of California, San Diego. Enter: grade inflation. When he took over as president of Harvard in July 2001, Lawrence Summers publicly ridiculed the value of honors after discovering that 94 percent of the college's seniors were graduating with them. Safer to lower the bar than raise the discomfort level. Grade inflation is the institutional response to parental anxiety about school demands on children, contends social historian Peter Stearns of George Mason University. As such, it is a pure index of emotional overinvestment in a child's success. And it rests on a notion of juvenile frailtythe assumption that children are easily bruised and need explicit uplift," Stearns argues in his book, Anxious Parenting: A History of Modern Childrearing in America. Parental protectionism may reach its most comic excesses in college, but it doesn't begin there. Primary schools and high schools are arguably just as guilty of grade inflation. But if you're searching for someone to blame, consider Dr. Seuss. "Parents have told their kids from day one that there's no end to what they are capable of doing," says Virginia's Portmann. "They read them the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You'll Go! and create bumper stickers telling the world their child is an honor student. American parents today expect their children to be perfectthe smartest, fastest, most charming people in the universe. And if they can't get the children to prove it on their own, they'll turn to doctors to make their kids into the people that parents want to believe their kids are." What they're really doing, he stresses, is "showing kids how to work the system for their own benefit." And subjecting them to intense scrutiny. "I wish my parents had some hobby other than me," one young patient told David Anderegg, a child psychologist in Lenox, Massachusetts, and professor of psychology at Bennington College. Anderegg finds that anxious parents are hyperattentive to their kids, reactive to every blip of their child's day, eager to solve every problem for their childand believe that's good parenting. "If you have an infant and the baby has gas, burping the baby is being a good parent. But when you have a 10-year-old who has metaphoric gas, you don't have to burp him. You have to let him sit with it, try to figure out what to do about it. He then learns to tolerate moderate amounts of difficulty, and it's not the end of the world." Arrivederci, Playtime In the hothouse that child raising has become, play is all but dead. Over 40,000 U.S. schools no longer have recess. And what play there is has been corrupted. The organized sports many kids participate in are managed by adults; difficulties that arise are not worked out by kids but adjudicated by adult referees. "So many toys now are designed by and for adults," says Tufts' Elkind. When kids do engage in their own kind of play, parents become alarmed. Anderegg points to kids exercising time-honored curiosity by playing doctor. "It's normal for children to have curiosity about other children's genitals," he says. "But when they do, most parents I know are totally freaked out. They wonder what's wrong." Kids are having a hard time even playing neighborhood pick-up games because they've never done it, observes Barbara Carlson, president and cofounder of Putting Families First. "They've been told by their coaches where on the field to stand, told by their parents what color socks to wear, told by the referees who's won and what's fair. Kids are losing leadership skills." A lot has been written about the commercialization of children's play, but not the side effects, says Elkind. "Children aren't getting any benefits out of play as they once did." From the beginning play helps children learn how to control themselves, how to interact with others. Contrary to the widely held belief that only intellectual activities build a sharp brain, it's in play that cognitive agility really develops. Studies of children and adults around the world demonstrate that social engagement actually improves intellectual skills. It fosters decision-making, memory and thinking, speed of mental processing. This shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, the human mind is believed to have evolved to deal with social problems. The Eternal Umbilicus It's bad enough that today's children are raised in a psychological hothouse where they are overmonitored and oversheltered. But that hothouse no longer has geographical or temporal boundaries. For that you can thank the cell phone. Even in collegeor perhaps especially at collegestudents are typically in contact with their parents several times a day, reporting every flicker of experience. One long-distance call overheard on a recent cross-campus walk: "Hi, Mom. I just got an ice-cream cone; can you believe they put sprinkles on the bottom as well as on top?" "Kids are constantly talking to parents," laments Cornell student Kramer, which makes them perpetually homesick. Of course, they're not telling the folks everything, notes Portmann. "They're not calling their parents to say, 'I really went wild last Friday at the frat house and now I might have chlamydia. Should I go to the student health center?'" The perpetual access to parents infantilizes the young, keeping them in a permanent state of dependency. Whenever the slightest difficulty arises, "they're constantly referring to their parents for guidance," reports Kramer. They're not learning how to manage for themselves. Think of the cell phone as the eternal umbilicus. One of the ways we grow up is by internalizing an image of Mom and Dad and the values and advice they imparted over the early years. Then, whenever we find ourselves faced with uncertainty or difficulty, we call on that internalized image. We become, in a way, all the wise adults we've had the privilege to know. "But cell phones keep kids from figuring out what to do," says Anderegg. "They've never internalized any images; all they've internalized is 'call Mom or Dad.'" Some psychologists think we have yet to recognize the full impact of the cell phone on child development, because its use is so new. Although there are far too many variables to establish clear causes and effects, Indiana's Carducci believes that reliance on cell phones undermines the young by destroying the ability to plan ahead. "The first thing students do when they walk out the door of my classroom is flip open the cell phone. Ninety-five percent of the conversations go like this: 'I just got out of class; I'll see you in the library in five minutes.' Absent the phone, you'd have to make arrangements ahead of time; you'd have to think ahead." Herein lies another possible pathway to depression. The ability to plan resides in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the executive branch of the brain. The PFC is a critical part of the self-regulation system, and it's deeply implicated in depression, a disorder increasingly seen as caused or maintained by unregulated thought patternslack of intellectual rigor, if you will. Cognitive therapy owes its very effectiveness to the systematic application of critical thinking to emotional reactions. Further, it's in the setting of goals and progress in working toward them, however mundane they are, that positive feelings are generated. From such everyday activity, resistance to depression is born. What's more, cell phonesalong with the instant availability of cash and almost any consumer good your heart desirespromote fragility by weakening self-regulation. "You get used to things happening right away," says Carducci. You not only want the pizza now, you generalize that expectation to other domains, like friendship and intimate relationships. You become frustrated and impatient easily. You become unwilling to work out problems. And so relationships failperhaps the single most powerful experience leading to depression. From Scrutiny to Anxiety... and Beyond The 1990s witnessed a landmark reversal in the traditional patterns of psychopathology. While rates of depression rise with advancing age among people over 40, they're now increasing fastest among children, striking more children at younger and younger ages. In his now-famous studies of how children's temperaments play out, Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan has shown unequivocally that what creates anxious children is parents hovering and protecting them from stressful experiences. About 20 percent of babies are born with a high-strung temperament. They can be spotted even in the womb; they have fast heartbeats. Their nervous systems are innately programmed to be overexcitable in response to stimulation, constantly sending out false alarms about what is dangerous. As infants and children this group experiences stress in situations most kids find unthreatening, and they may go through childhood and even adulthood fearful of unfamiliar people and events, withdrawn and shy. At school age they become cautious, quiet and introverted. Left to their own devices they grow up shrinking from social encounters. They lack confidence around others. They're easily influenced by others. They are sitting ducks for bullies. And they are on the path to depression. While their innate reactivity seems to destine all these children for later anxiety disorders, things didn't turn out that way. Between a touchy temperament in infancy and persistence of anxiety stand two highly significant things: parents. Kagan found to his surprise that the development of anxiety was scarcely inevitable despite apparent genetic programming. At age 2, none of the overexcitable infants wound up fearful if their parents backed off from hovering and allowed the children to find some comfortable level of accommodation to the world on their own. Those parents who overprotected their childrendirectly observed by conducting interviews in the homebrought out the worst in them. A small percentage of children seem almost invulnerable to anxiety from the start. But the overwhelming majority of kids are somewhere in between. For them, overparenting can program the nervous system to create lifelong vulnerability to anxiety and depression. There is in these studies a lesson for all parents. Those who allow their kids to find a way to deal with life's day-to-day stresses by themselves are helping them develop resilience and coping strategies. "Children need to be gently encouraged to take risks and learn that nothing terrible happens," says Michael Liebowitz, clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and head of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at New York State Psychiatric Institute. "They need gradual exposure to find that the world is not dangerous. Having overprotective parents is a risk factor for anxiety disorders because children do not have opportunities to master their innate shyness and become more comfortable in the world." They never learn to dampen the pathways from perception to alarm reaction. Hothouse parenting undermines children in other ways, too, says Anderegg. Being examined all the time makes children extremely self-conscious. As a result they get less communicative; scrutiny teaches them to bury their real feelings deeply. And most of all, self-consciousness removes the safety to be experimental and playful. "If every drawing is going to end up on your parents' refrigerator, you're not free to fool around, to goof up or make mistakes," says Anderegg. Parental hovering is why so many teenagers are so ironic, he notes. It's a kind of detachment, "a way of hiding in plain sight. They just don't want to be exposed to any more scrutiny." Parents are always so concerned about children having high self-esteem, he adds. "But when you cheat on their behalf to get them ahead of other children"by pursuing accommodations and recommendationsyou just completely corrode their sense of self. They feel 'I couldn't do this on my own.' It robs them of their own sense of efficacy." A child comes to think, "if I need every advantage I can get, then perhaps there is really something wrong with me." A slam-dunk for depression. Virginia's Portmann feels the effects are even more pernicious; they weaken the whole fabric of society. He sees young people becoming weaker right before his eyes, more responsive to the herd, too eager to fit inless assertive in the classroom, unwilling to disagree with their peers, afraid to question authority, more willing to conform to the expectations of those on the next rung of power above them. Endless Adolescence The end result of cheating childhood is to extend it forever. Despite all the parental pressure, and probably because of it, kids are pushing backin their own way. They're taking longer to grow up. Adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends, according to a recent report by University of Pennsylvania sociologist Frank F. Furstenberg and colleagues. There is, instead, a growing no-man's-land of postadolescence from 20 to 30, which they dub "early adulthood." Those in it look like adults but "haven't become fully adult yettraditionally defined as finishing school, landing a job with benefits, marrying and parentingbecause they are not ready or perhaps not permitted to do so." Using the classic benchmarks of adulthood, 65 percent of males had reached adulthood by the age of 30 in 1960. By contrast, in 2000, only 31 percent had. Among women, 77 percent met the benchmarks of adulthood by age 30 in 1960. By 2000, the number had fallen to 46 percent. Boom Boom Boomerang Take away play from the front end of development and it finds a way onto the back end. A steady march of success through regimented childhood arranged and monitored by parents creates young adults who need time to explore themselves. "They often need a period in college or afterward to legitimately experimentto be children," says historian Stearns. "There's decent historical evidence to suggest that societies that allow kids a few years of latitude and even moderate [rebellion] end up with healthier kids than societies that pretend such impulses don't exist." Marriage is one benchmark of adulthood, but its antecedents extend well into childhood. "The precursor to marriage is dating, and the precursor to dating is playing," says Carducci. The less time children spend in free play, the less socially competent they'll be as adults. It's in play that we learn give and take, the fundamental rhythm of all relationships. We learn how to read the feelings of others and how to negotiate conflicts. Taking the play out of childhood, he says, is bound to create a developmental lag, and he sees it clearly in the social patterns of today's adolescents and young adults, who hang around in groups that are more typical of childhood. Not to be forgotten: The backdrop of continued high levels of divorce confuses kids already too fragile to take the huge risk of commitment. Just Whose Shark Tank Is It Anyway? The stressful world of cutthroat competition that parents see their kids facing may not even exist. Or it exists, but more in their mind than in realitynot quite a fiction, more like a distorting mirror. "Parents perceive the world as a terribly competitive place," observes Anderegg. "And many of them project that onto their children when they're the ones who live or work in a competitive environment. They then imagine that their children must be swimming in a big shark tank, too." "It's hard to know what the world is going to look like 10 years from now," says Elkind. "How best do you prepare kids for that? Parents think that earlier is better. That's a natural intuition, but it happens to be wrong." What if parents have micromanaged their kids' lives because they've hitched their measurement of success to a single event whose value to life and paycheck they have frantically overestimated? No one denies the Ivy League offers excellent learning experiences, but most educators know that some of the best programs exist at schools that don't top the U.S. News and World Report list, and that with the right attitudea willingness to be engaged by new ideasit's possible to get a meaningful education almost anywhere. Further, argues historian Stearns, there are ample openings for students at an array of colleges. "We have a competitive frenzy that frankly involves parents more than it involves kids themselves," he observes, both as a father of eight and teacher of many. "Kids are more ambivalent about the college race than are parents." Yet the very process of application to select colleges undermines both the goal of education and the inherent strengths of young people. "It makes kids sneaky," says Anderegg. Bending rules and calling in favors to give one's kid a competitive edge is morally corrosive. Like Stearns, he is alarmed that parents, pursuing disability diagnoses so that children can take untimed SATs, actually encourage kids to think of themselves as sickly and fragile. Colleges no longer know when SATs are untimedbut the kids know. "The kids know when you're cheating on their behalf," says Anderegg, "and it makes them feel terribly guilty. Sometimes they arrange to fail to right the scales. And when you cheat on their behalf, you completely undermine their sense of self-esteem. They feel they didn't earn it on their own." In buying their children accommodations to assuage their own anxiety, parents are actually locking their kids into fragility. Says the suburban teacher: "Exams are a fact of life. They are anxiety-producing. The kids never learn how to cope with anxiety." Putting Worry in its Place Children, however, are not the only ones who are harmed by hyperconcern. Vigilance is enormously taxingand it's taken all the fun out of parenting. "Parenting has in some measurable ways become less enjoyable than it used to be," says Stearns. "I find parents less willing to indulge their children's sense of time. So they either force-feed them or do things for them." Parents need to abandon the idea of perfection and give up some of the invasive control they've maintained over their children. The goal of parenting, Portmann reminds, is to raise an independent human being. Sooner or later, he says, most kids will be forced to confront their own mediocrity. Parents may find it easier to give up some control if they recognize they have exaggerated many of the dangers of childhoodalthough they have steadfastly ignored others, namely the removal of recess from schools and the ubiquity of video games that encourage aggression. The childhood we've introduced to our children is very different from that in past eras, Epstein stresses. Children no longer work at young ages. They stay in school for longer periods of time and spend more time exclusively in the company of peers. Children are far less integrated into adult society than they used to be at every step of the way. We've introduced laws that give children many rights and protectionsalthough we have allowed media and marketers to have free access. In changing the nature of childhood, Stearns argues, we've introduced a tendency to assume that children can't handle difficult situations. "Middle-class parents especially assume that if kids start getting into difficulty they need to rush in and do it for them, rather than let them flounder a bit and learn from it. I don't mean we should abandon them," he says, "but give them more credit for figuring things out." And recognize that parents themselves have created many of the stresses and anxieties children are suffering from, without giving them tools to manage them. While the adults are at it, they need to remember that one of the goals of higher education is to help young people develop the capacity to think for themselves. Although we're well on our way to making kids more fragile, no one thinks that kids and young adults are fundamentally more flawed than in previous generations. Maybe many will "recover" from diagnoses too liberally slapped on to them. In his own studies of 14 skills he has identified as essential for adulthood in American culture, from love to leadership, Epstein has found that "although teens don't necessarily behave in a competent way, they have the potential to be every bit as competent and as incompetent as adults." Parental anxiety has its place. But the way things now stand, it's not being applied wisely. We're paying too much attention to too few kidsand in the end, the wrong kids. As with the girl whose parents bought her the Gestalt-defect diagnosis, resources are being expended for kids who don't need them. There are kids who are worth worrying aboutkids in poverty, stresses Anderegg. "We focus so much on our own children," says Elkind, "It's time to begin caring about all children."

Scout handbook offers lessons to live by http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=28&a=299422 http://tinyurl.com/yu9kqk Dan Conradt 7/2/2007 8:32:21 AM Carole Schember gave me something to think about when she said "the world would be a better place if everyone read the Boy Scout Handbook." I first met Carole Schember when I was working on a news story about a local scout leader. We sat in her daughter's living room, and while we talked, she absently paged through a copy of "The Official Boy Scout Handbook." It wasn't a new book, but it had the same lovingly used look I've seen with some Bibles. And she spoke passionately about how young people need direction, and good role models. We ended our visit, and as I was about to leave, she handed me her copy of the Boy Scout Handbook and said "I want you to have this." I hadn't given scouting much thought for 40 years, but I knew it was a gift that was being given with great feeling. I stood at the door and paged through the book, past chapters on topics I've always identified as the backbone of scouting -- pitching tents, tying square knots and hiking. I told Mrs. Schember I have a 6-year-old son, and would be honored to share the book with him. I was a scout when I was young, but there weren't enough kids in Rose Creek to form a Boy Scout troop. So the program ended following the Webelos program, the transition between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. I had pretty much forgotten about my scouting days until that visit with Carole Schember, and after putting Steven to bed that night, I settled in on the couch to read through the handbook more carefully. And the memories came flooding back, memories of weekly pack meetings, scouting jamborees on the Mower County Fairgrounds and community service projects such as picking up garbage in the ditches along Highway 56. Once, we even found a dollar in the ditch. In 1966, it was enough to buy each of the 10 kids in our pack an ice cream cone. I remembered walking with my Cub Scout pack in Rose Creek's centennial parade in 1967; and earning an Arrowhead by completing a project that required the planning, cooking and cleanup of a meal for your family -- in my case, hamburgers, French fries and chocolate malts. I even built a pretty fast Pinewood Derby car. And each month I would page through my copy of "Boy's Life" and be fascinated by stories about stamp collecting, space exploration, or kids my age who were organizing food drives and cleanup projects in their communities. I was in some pretty good company. More than 100 million Americans have been Boy Scouts since the organization was founded in 1910. Neil Armstrong and Henry Aaron were scouts. So were Walter Cronkite, Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg. Gerald Ford and Harrison Ford too. But reading through the handbook reminded me that there is more to scouting than building campfires and learning first aid. The Scout Law proclaims that "A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent." Objectively, I'd say I accomplished about six of those things today. There's room for improvement, but what a great goal. My copy of the Boy Scout Handbook is looking a little more worn now than it was when I first got it, and I have shared it with Steven. And now I know what Carole Schember was talking about. Maybe if we heard "On my honor I will do my best ..." more often, we wouldn't hear "You have the right to remain silent ..." so much. Dan Conradt, a lifelong Mower County resident, lives in Austin with his wife, Carla Johnson, and their son.

Monday's act heroic after 30 years http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060424&content_id=1415977&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc http://tinyurl.com/2q9upe 04/25/2006 10:00 AM ET By Ben Platt / MLB.com LOS ANGELES -- It was 1976, a fun year for America. It was the country's bicentennial, the war in Vietnam had ended a year earlier and everyone really wanted to put all the problems from the 1960s, Watergate and Vietnam behind them and just enjoy the country's yearlong 200th birthday party. On April 25, the Chicago Cubs were visiting Dodger Stadium for a three-game series. Playing center field for the Cubs was Rick Monday, the first player taken in the amateur draft that was created 11 years earlier. Monday was born and raised in Santa Monica, Calif., so playing in front of his friends and family was always special to him. On this day, fate would hand Monday a moment that people still talk about with reverence 30 years later. Monday recounts the moment in his own words. "In between the top and bottom of the fourth inning, I was just getting loose in the outfield, throwing the ball back and forth. Jose Cardenal was in left field and I was in center. I don't know if I heard the crowd first or saw the guys first, but two people ran on the field. After a number of years of playing, when someone comes on the field, you don't know what's going to happen. Is it because they had too much to drink? Is it because they're trying to win a bet? Is it because they don't like you or do they have a message that they're trying to present? "When these two guys ran on the field, something wasn't right. And it wasn't right from the standpoint that one of them had something cradled under his arm. It turned out to be an American flag. They came from the left-field corner, went past Cardenal to shallow left-center field. "That's when I saw the flag. They unfurled it as if it was a picnic blanket. They knelt beside it, not to pay homage but to harm it as one of the guys was pulling out of his pocket somewhere a big can of lighter fluid. He began to douse it. "What they were doing was wrong then, in 1976. In my mind, it's wrong now, in 2006. It's the way I was raised. My thoughts were reinforced with my six years in the Marine Corp Reserves. It was also reinforced by a lot of friends who lost their lives protecting the rights and freedoms that flag represented. "So I started to run after them. To this day, I couldn't tell you what was running through my mind except I was mad, I was angry and it was wrong for a lot of reasons. "Then the wind blew the first match out. There was hardly ever any wind at Dodger Stadium. The second match was lit, just as I got there. I did think that if I could bowl them over, they can't do what they're trying to do. "I saw them go and put the match down to the flag. It's soaked in lighter fluid at this time. Well, they can't light it if they don't have it. So I just scooped it up. "My first thought was, 'Is this on fire?' Well, fortunately, it was not. I continue to run. One of the men threw the can of lighter fluid at me. We found out he was not a prospect. He did not have a good arm. Thank goodness. "Tommy Lasorda was in his last year as third-base coach before he took over for Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston. Tommy ran past me and called these guys every name in the longshoreman's encyclopedia." "A lot of people don't know this, but he beat me to the flag," recalls Lasorda. "I saw Rick start running over from center field to left. I didn't know what it was, but as soon as I saw him start, I took off and I ran out there, and of course, by that time, Rick had picked up the flag and continued running. When I got there, I see these two guys and I told them, 'Why don't one of you guys take a swing at me?' because there were 50-something thousand people in the ballpark and I only wanted them to swing at me, so I could defend myself and do a job on them." Monday continued, "Doug Rau, a left-handed pitcher for the Dodgers at the time, came out of the dugout and I handed the flag to him. The two guys were led off the field through the Dodger bullpen. "After the guys left, there was a buzz in the stands, people being aghast with what had taken place. Without being prompted, and I don't know where it started, but people began to sing 'God Bless America.' When I reflect back upon it now, I still get goose bumps." Thirty years ago, cable television was in its infancy and the Dodgers rarely, if ever, televised a home game. A Super 8 film of the incident would not surface until 1984, so the moment might have been captured only by Vin Scully's vivid description of it on radio. Luckily, in the photographers' well that day was the late James Roark, who was shooting stills for the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Roark had the perfect angle and snapped the now-classic photo of Monday whisking the stars and stripes away just as one of the protesters was going to light it on fire. "James Roark took the picture, and it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize," said Monday. "This past winter, my wife and I had been looking at a lot of photos that had been in the archives, and one of the photos we came across was a picture of James Roark and I standing together, holding up the photo that he took. The 30th anniversary means a lot because it was a moment captured in time by James, who is no longer with us, and he has been greatly missed over the years." Monday, who played for the Dodgers from 1977-83 and has been one of the team's broadcasters since 1993, then recalled the impact the moment had on a country that was wanting so badly to show its patriotism again. "The letters I've received from that day have run the gamut of emotions. They've been from children who were not born yet and had only heard about it. They've been from Vietnam veterans, including one yesterday. This soldier wrote that there were two things that he had with him in two tours of Vietnam. These two things kept him in check with reality. One was a small picture of his wife. The other was a small American flag that was neatly folded. The picture was folded inside the flag and in the left breast pocket of his uniform. "He would be in mud for weeks and months at a time. Those two things were what he looked at to connect him with reality, other than his buddies, and some of them were lost in battle. He wrote in the letter, 'Thanks for protecting what those of us who were in Vietnam held onto dearly.' "That means something, because this wasn't just a flag on the field. This was a flag that people looked at with respect. We have a lot of rights and freedoms -- not to sound corny -- but we all have the option if we don't like something to make it better. Or you also have the option, if you don't like it, [to] pack up and leave. But don't come onto the field and burn an American flag." Later that year, Monday was given the flag by the Dodgers' general manager at the time, Al Campanis. It hangs proudly in his home in Vero Beach, Fla. Monday and his wife, Barbaralee, would like anyone who was at that game or a veteran to share their thoughts -- in 500 words or less -- and photos for a book they are putting together about the event that was recently voted as one of the 100 Classic Moments in the History of the Game by National Baseball Hall of Fame. The address is mvpsportscorp@aol.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

"In the 1990s, the Boy Scouts, a chief sponsor of camping in America, began excluding atheists and gays from its leadership. That prompted the Kagins to create an outdoorsy alternative for non-believers." This appears to be a win-win: BSA isn't forced to drop or change its principles, and atheist kids can attend their own summer camp, and not feel odd or left-out by attending a BSA camp that has the pledge, prayers. etc. that they don't agree with in the first place. Is it really that hard to setup an alternative rather than suing BSA into submission? This approach looks like the way to go, to me. Can someone explain to me why not?

A camp they can believe in http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-campatheist_27jun27,1,4522407.story http://tinyurl.com/3c5mt3 Ohio's Camp Quest lets young atheists enjoy summer fun with like-minded children By Ron Grossman Tribune staff reporter June 27, 2007 CLARKSVILLE, Ohio -- At the same time youngsters at Bible camps across the nation are reciting, "Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep," kids at Camp Quest are climbing into their bunks, confident there is no one out there to hear those prayers. Proudly proclaiming the motto "Beyond Belief," Camp Quest bills itself as the nation's first sleep-away summer camp for atheists. Founded in 1996, it has inspired four similar camps across the nation for children whose parents are either opposed or indifferent to religion. Much of what goes on here, amid the cornfields of southwestern Ohio, is little different from any other camp. Campers canoe on the Little Miami River, practice archery skills and go on nature hikes. To be sure, they also engage in some unusual rainy-day discussions of philosophical issues. Children who barely come up to an adult's waist toss around terms such as "circular logic." And those nature hikes focus on the beauty of evolution, unaided by any unseen hand. Atheism has been experiencing a revival, as it were. Some national surveys show the numbers of non-believers growing. Books hyper-critical of religion are best-sellers. The biologist Richard Dawkins argued in "The God Delusion" that religion is just that. Faith as the source of all evil was explored with burning passion by Christopher Hitchens in "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." But more than a training ground for a movement, Camp Quest is a place to set down the burden of being different. Children who grow up in Christian households have the emotional security of being in the nation's majority. Members of religious minorities have similarly minded friends and relatives. But coming from a family that does not believe in God often sets a child on a lonely road. Frieda Lindroth, a first-year camper, recognized that her first day at Camp Quest. "'Wow!' I said to myself, 'I'm not alone,'" said Frieda, 12. She recalls being an atheist since the 2nd grade. For its inaugural season, Camp Quest drew 20 campers. This year, it enrolled 47 young people, ranging from 8 to 17 years old, for its weeklong session at a campground rented from a 4-H group. About 100 others will attend Quest's daughter camps in Michigan, Minnesota, California and Ontario, Canada. A Harris Interactive survey in 2003 found that 9 percent of Americans don't believe in God, while another 12 percent are uncertain about the issue. Even if their numbers are lower, the Secular Coalition for America calculates that the ranks of non-believers are larger than the combined number of religious Jews, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Presbyterians, Hindus, Muslims and Eastern Orthodox Christians. Camp Quest's founder, Edwin Kagin, thinks non-believers have become more outspoken as a reaction to the religious right. School boards have inserted "intelligent design" into their curricula almost as fast as the courts can veto such measures. Kagin and his wife, Helen, founded Camp Quest out of frustration with what they saw as a forced march to theocracy. His father was a minister in a family line of Presbyterian clergy tracing back to John Knox, the great Scottish reformer. "But I went to college and started reading books my father had preached against," said Kagin, 66. Kagin has a full beard, a rolling gait and a sardonic delivery reminiscent of Mark Twain, as played by Hal Holbrook. He became active in atheist causes but was frustrated by lawyers hired to fight them. So he got a law degree and became the legal director of the activist group American Atheists. In the 1990s, the Boy Scouts, a chief sponsor of camping in America, began excluding atheists and gays from its leadership. That prompted the Kagins to create an outdoorsy alternative for non-believers. "We wanted a camp not to preach there is no God," said Kagin, "but as a place where children could learn it's OK not to believe in God." Many Camp Questers have wrestled with that issue on their own, among them Sophia Riehemann, a 9th-year camper. She long avoided the words "under God," during recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance at school. "This year, I stopped getting up and saying the Pledge," said Riehemann, 16, who, like other campers, reports that it is taxing constantly negotiating with the world of believers. "Here at camp, that little barrier is finally down." Like many campers, Riehemann comes from a home that stresses a scientific explanation of reality in place of the biblical account. Similarly, the dining room walls at Camp Quest are hung with portraits of notable free-thinkers and scientists, ranging from Darwin and Einstein to Woody Allen, honored for giving comedic expression to religious skepticism. Riehemann notes that a secular perspective takes away childhood joys other kids have, such as Christmas. But that doesn't bother her. "They have Santa Claus," she said, "and we have Isaac Newton." Like Riehemann, other campers report the painful experience of publicly declaring their lack of religious belief. Like gay people, they call it "coming out." Allison Page, 9, read a book of Bible stories and decided they "were just silly." When her classmates found that out, they called her names and threatened her. That prompted her parents to home-school Allison. They sent her to camp so she would have summertime playmates. Allison reports finding the Bible incompatible with her experience of life. An only child who'd like to have siblings, she was stumped by the story of Cain and Abel. "It just doesn't make sense," Allison said. "A brother wouldn't kill his brother." Sheridan Scott, 10, encountered hostility on the front lines of atheist activism. He and his mother are part of a group of Florida atheists that raises the banner for non-belief in public places. "As a hobby," he explained. "But some people are so hostile, yelling at us: 'You will go to Hell.'" Ed Golly, a camp counselor, belongs to the Florida atheist-activist group. When members saw Christian revivalists preaching on the streets of a Tampa night-club district, they mounted counterdemonstrations. "We hold up banners saying, 'Jesus is not Coming' and 'No Prayer in School,'" said Golly, 55, a volunteer like all the staff. A small-craft pilot, Golly flies his airplane to camp and takes campers up in it. They gleefully report that, at least as high as a Cessna can go, there is no evidence for a God in the sky. Much of the learning at Camp Quest is similarly non-directive. Atheism isn't so much advocated as set alongside traditional belief systems. There are meal-time talks on various religions. Campers debate questions such as, "Would the world be better off without religion?" Many of the young people come to more measured conclusions than Dawkins and Hitchens, acknowledging religion has some virtues, like providing some people a sense of community. But at the final campfire, it was obvious how most Camp Questers come down on the question of belief. The young people giggled and laughed through skits and songs, savoring for one last moment being just one of the gang. For the concluding act, Edwin Kagin stood in front of the crackling flames, pounding an oversized walking stick worthy of a biblical prophet. He broadly impersonated an evangelical preacher, exhorting his congregation to believe in the unseen. "Who needs proof, if we have faith?" he asked. All around the campfire, young hands went up. -- rgrossman@tribune.com

OGE, while I think those groups (there are many like "Save our Scouts", "Defend Scouting", etc.) intentions are good, I think the best advice is to stick with the real thing, BSA. I don't know that a donation to those other groups would do nearly as much to help BSA as a donation directly to BSA itself. If you want to support BSA's legal defense, then donate directly to BSA. Just my 2

I heard an interesting story on NPR last nite -- an American woman who is also Muslim was being interviewed (I think by Terry Gross?) and the woman was explaining how women were not allowed to worship in the main hall with the Muslim men in her mosque. She started a mini-revolt, and eventually the women in her mosque were indeed allowed to worship in the main hall, albeit behind the men. This story brings to mind a couple of intersting points: (1) In the context of this thread, I wonder why the "MSM" (mainstream media) aren't all over Muslim leaders about this treatment of women, especially here in America (according to the woman being interviewed, second class status is typically how Muslim women are treated, even in the US)? Where are the NOW protesters marching in front of mosques across America? (2) Unrelated to this thread, after hearing the story on NPR, I had to ask myself, I wonder how far this little protest would've gotten in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Would the media there even have given this woman a forum for her views? People bash the US, but we're still the free-ist (is that a word?) country on the planet. Its interesting that we in the US have be tolerant of everything and everyone, even those who wouldn't do the same for us were the situations reversed . . .(This message has been edited by fgoodwin)

Essay: The Myth of Boyhood http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19358334/ July 2-9, 2007 issue - Picture a world where your father walks with you down a starlit road, pausing to point out Orion. He recites Robert Frost, knows how a battery worksand all the rules about girls. "The Dangerous Book for Boys," by brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden, is peaking on Amazon's best-seller list (No. 5 last week) by recalling just that world. The compendium of trivia, history and advice is geared toward preteen boys, but it's found a surprising audience in men in their 30s and 40s, too. The book's marbled endpapers, archival illustrations and dry, humorous tone ("excitable bouts of windbreaking will not endear you to a girl") offers a portal back to a time of "Sunday afternoons and long summer days." But did this world ever exist? The book's success suggests we'd like to think so. First published in Britain last year, it was conceived as a homage to the popular "Boy's Own" periodicals from the early 1900s. It's inspired a host of copycats, including "211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do," by Thomas Cutler, and "The Daring Book for Girls," out in October, while a reissue of the 1890s volume "The American Boy's Handy Book," by Daniel Carter Beard, is moving up the charts on Amazon. Clearly, nostalgia for the halcyon world of our fathers and grandfathers is strong. But that nostalgia may tell us more about who we are now than who we were. Stephanie Coontz, author of "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap," says parents worry they're not spending as much time with their kids as past generations did. In truth, "people are spending more interactive time and resources on their kids than ever before," Coontz says. The real problem is they think they have less to teach them. "Dangerous" author Conn Iggulden says technology is partially responsible for this insecurity. "I can't fix a car like my father used to, because my car has a computer in it," he says. "Once it was possible to know everything. It gets harder in the modern world." Such is the nature of nostalgia: "When you have anxieties about the present you express them by hearkening back to a safer past," says Coontz. As gender roles become less defined, possession of a discrete store of traditionally "masculine" knowledge (how to build a go-kart) gives men a sense of order in a disordered universe. For now, conservative pundits and bloggers have seized upon "Dangerous" as a corrective to the "feminization" of the culture: Christina Hoff Summers writes that it "valorizes risk, adventure and manliness." The anxiety might also be for our children. Robert Baden Powell, father of the Boy Scout movement, wrote "Scouting for Boys" in 1908, out of concern that the young soldiers he had fought with in the Boer War were physically and morally unfit. "At the height of the British Empire, the older generation worried about boys' becoming pasty and soft and useless," says Conn Iggulden. "I see similar concerns today." But the Boy Scouts of America, with its exclusionary policies toward gays and atheists, and emphasis on safety over fun, may feel old-fashioned in a bad way: enrollment has declined steadily for a decade. "The Dangerous Book for Boys," on the other hand, suggests activities with a whiff of rebelliousness without advocating anything truly unsafe. It also gives parents a product, in today's commercial age, refreshingly free of brands or logos. Of course, they're still falling for one of the most enduring brands of all: nostalgia. Jennie Yabroff

Gern, I'm not a lawyer, so maybe someone who is can elaborate. But I thought there was a concept called "detrimental reliance" which goes something like, if the city told the Council to adopt a policy in order to settle a matter, then the Council adopted it (and spent money in reliance on that promise), the city can't later change its mind and say that's not good enough. Something about "estoppel" -- again, IANAL, so I could be wrong.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BOY SCOUT STORY http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/8161352.html By MARK CHILUTTI Posted on Mon, Jun. 25, 2007 I'M WRITING THIS filled with disappointment due to the actions of the leadership of the city that I love. While in Atlanta several weeks ago on Boy Scout business, I was pulled aside and told we'd been blindsided, again with regard to the office that the Scouts have occupied and maintained in Philadelphia since 1928. I get frustrated when I read the side of the story that our city solicitor tells, as it seems to not fall in line with the first point of Scout Law: Being trustworthy. My goal is to tell the side of the story that seems to be hidden. In 2004, the city presented a non-discrimination policy to the Cradle of Liberty Council, our local Boy Scout organization, and asked that it be adopted to resolve the city's concerns over the occupation of our city-owned building at 22nd and Winter. It was adopted, and we considered the matter resolved. On a Friday evening in July 2006, after hours, the council received a letter from the city solicitor's office threatening eviction if the council didn't begin paying fair-market rent, or adopt a different policy of non-discrimination. On that Monday, without the matter being on its published agenda, the Fairmount Park Commission passed a resolution in support of the eviction. Other interested parties were informed in advance of this action and attended the meeting. The Scouts weren't contacted in advance. Since July 2006, the Scouts have attempted to take part in a dialogue with city officials to reach a compromise, even though a solution had seemingly been reached in 2004. During this time, the city solicitor's office repeatedly contacted the Scouts with what we felt were unreasonable demands for meetings. They canceled the last meeting scheduled with a promise that someone would call and reschedule, but never followed through. In December 2006, the Scouts asked the city for a figure that represents fair-market rent. The city never answered that request. In February 2007, Scouting representatives met with Councilman Darrell Clarke. Councilman Clarke indicated he would look into certain matters and get back to the Scouts. He never did. On May 31, Councilman Clarke introduced a resolution in City Council to evict the Boy Scouts from their headquarters. The resolution was passed 16-1. The Scouts had no knowledge the resolution was to be introduced and feel we were again blindsided. The Cradle of Liberty Council provides free programs for more than 40,000 children in the city of Philadelphia. The programs target underserved boys and girls. Via after-school programs, internships, educational opportunities, camping and other activities, the Boy Scouts address many of the social concerns of parents and youth in our region. The Cradle of Liberty Council is currently exploring its options in response to the passage of the May 2007 resolution. It has a strong legal position, but the ultimate goal should be a compromise because - and let's be honest here - in a year in which Philadelphia is a national leader in homicide rates, this city should not be focused on evicting an organization that provides highly valuable programming for a portion of the population most in need of the support and exposure to opportunity. What will it take for the city to make the kids its priority? This should not be a hard question to answer, but it seems to be impossible these days. Instead of trying to kick us out, the city should be trying to help us in maintaining services for 40,000 kids. I would not be the person who I am in life, personally or professionally, without the skills I learned as a proud member of the Boy Scouts of America and the Cradle of Liberty Council. I know that I am not the only one whose life has been touched by Scouting, and I wish that our time could be spent trying to find a way to get more kids off the streets and into the great outdoors to experience the possibilities of what a life spent serving others can truly be. * Mark Chilutti is a Boy Scout volunteer and an Eagle Scout, Class of 1982.