GKlose

Our patrol heard that other patrols were going to be giving their TGs a gift at the completion of the course. We talked about it briefly, and decided to throw in $10 each towards a gift. We didn't have any great ideas, but I saw a Leatherman on sale at the local REI and asked the rest of the patrol if they thought that would be a good idea. They agreed, so that's what we bought for him.

At course completion, everyone was doing a quick presentation, so we gave it to him. No problem. But then others started giving out their gifts, and they were more "thematic" so to speak. Like the Fox Patrol gave something Fox-oriented to their TG. In other words, we didn't really catch on to what everyone else was doing. Our gift was kind of over-the-top compared to the others (even though it was only $10 each).

Guy

We're a SOAR/myTroop user too. Universally, everyone in the troop loves the EBlast. The reality is that I go in at least once a week, just prior to the EBlast, and change up the announcements on the front page of the site so they are re-sent with the weekly EBlast. I might add an announcement or two of something that is upcoming. In other words, the EBlast content is constantly being freshened.

So I typically do three things w.r.t. a new or changed event...I'll send out email to "announce@..." for immediate email, I'll enter the announcement on the site, and then I'll make the calendar entry.

Also, since announcements on the site are typically truncated to a couple of lines, I'll edit them to make sure that most of the content is displayed on the front page (in other words, I judiciously use the "break" directive). I find that most account owners on the site either forget their account names or passwords, or rarely ever click beyond the front page -- they only seem to want to know what is going on now or in the next few days.

Another thing I really like about SOAR -- it was trivial to map in our own domain name, and create email lists and email aliases.

About half the troop seems to use the event registration feature. I'd like to be able to use the online payment feature, but I think you're limited to linking it to a PayPal account. Our CO has a policy against that, so we can't use the feature.

Guy

Just a side note, B-Skip -- congratulations on the troop revitalization. I've been witnessing the same thing with our troop. Three years ago, I thought we were well on our way toward folding (19 Scouts and dropping, with 9 that were aging out this last year). We just picked up two last night, for a total of 30, most of whom are active. Outings have gone from 6 to 8, to about 15 to 20. Simple stuff, really -- if you build it (program), he (they) will come.

Guy

Personally, I would be very afraid of swimming with manatees. There's too much of a chance that one of them might find me rather attractive (in a manatee-like sense) and decide to court me. :-)

Guy

Our number came in at 1800 also -- some quick observations.

We had two outings that didn't fall into either the long-term or short-term column: a 5-day canoe trip, and a ski trip where the guys stayed in a bunkhouse at a ski resort. Besides those we had 10 outings that met the short-term qualifications and two weeks at summer camp. Not bad for a troop that just a couple of years ago wasn't even getting in six outings a year. I will claim partial credit for helping rejuvenate the troop culture and activity level. Most of the credit goes to an SPL that far exceeded expectations, and did a great deal to rejuvenate youth leadership and activity level.

I'm kind of annoyed at the service project category. Logging it in to Good Turn for America shouldn't make a difference (I don't need another account, with another password, on yet another system) -- even so, we schedule six projects a year -- this year, two were cancelled (one because of weather, one where help wasn't really needed); and on top of it, we "staffed" service projects for 7 Eagle candidates. That might be a record for our troop, and we'd have a hard time squeezing more in with our new activity level.

We fell short in one category, training, because we have a couple of adults trained as ASMs (including our CC) but really function as committee members. I'm hoping to correct that this next year.

We also don't have a troop budget. We tend not to spend that much, and we don't fundraise all that much. So we got a 0 in that category. I'll probably do a straw budget this next year and have the committee talk about it, just so we can say we did. :-)

BTW, "Fitness" is on the 2012 criteria, right? Not on the 2011 criteria?

Guy

I suppose like everyone else, our guys go through cycles. We're complicated because while we have vegetarians, we also have a peanut allergy Scout, and a Scout with a severe milk and egg allergy (he really only eats bacon and plain bagels at home).

One thing they stumbled upon awhile back was tacos -- with refried beans as a filling for the vegetarians. One campout I formed a small cooking groups for two vegetarians, and their dads -- since we were looking for something quick to prepare, we had heat and eat Indian entrees that were actually very good (bought on sale at an Indian grocery, so they were cheap too).

The troop's latest kick, though is "meat on a stick" -- our prior SM is a hunter and also perpetually on a low-carb diet. It led to a Friday night campire snack of "meat on a stick" -- hot dogs for those with no patience, and italian sausage for those with patience. On a 5-day canoe trip this last summer, one dad carted a cooler and we had meat on a stick for the first 3 nights.

Guy

I think some Scouts just naturally try to slide by as best they can, working every angle they can think of.

Case in point: Cooking MB, and a Scout from the troop comes to me as the counselor. I'd previously counseled him in Music MB, so I knew he was just a "slide by" minimal effort kind of kid. First meeting, I warned him and his buddy that Cooking was not a simple merit badge, that there were a lot of tiny details to work through.

So the wise-guy of a Scout turns in a "camping menu" (versus "home menu" or "backpacking menu") that has mango listed as a fruit for every meal and Mountain Dew as a beverage for every meal. I naturally suspect "wise guy" and ask him to do it again for real. He swears up and down that he always eats mangos and drinks Mountain Dew. But I don't give in. He repeats it, but it wasn't a particularly good menu. It is missing quantities and pricing (a key part of the reqt, if you ask me).

His "backpacking menu" includes a generic "freeze dried meal" listed for every entry. He redoes it, but with minimal effort -- lists things like "pita bread and lunchmeat" (even though I'd already prepped them with some discussion about what makes a good backpacking meal, and about the lack of refrigeration "until someone invents a lightweight backpacking refrigerator"). No weights or quantities listed, another key part, if you ask me.

When talking about actually cooking these things, he argues about our SM, "Mr. W. will probably tell you I've cooked before", even though having been on outings with this kid, I know that he is never around when cooking is going on. He probably had not cooked since T21 reqts, and even then, I would suspect he didn't do much. Anyway -- I tell him no, I want to see him cook myself. We're at a patrol-oriented summer camp that summer, with patrol cooking, and I make note that every time he is listed to cook, he manages to find someone else to "assist". It gets funnier, because when it was time for one of his turns at cleanup, he delayed and delayed, and then 10 minutes before it was time to leave for program activity, he yells out "hey, there's almost no time for cleanup left, so everyone has to help out!".

So, about the menus -- he resubmitted them to me, and I'm pretty sure they were exactly the ones I turned down prior. So this time I wrote down exactly what was missing and what I expected to see (exactly the requirements, no more, no less). I didn't hear from him, or the buddy, about this MB again.

Several months later, I'm going through our Troopmaster advancement details -- both Scouts had been earning a lot of merit badges, so I looked to see about Cooking. Both were marked as complete. They'd decided to go to another counselor. I think they decided I was being too intolerant by asking them to actually follow the requirements.

But I don't feel badly about it, not at all. I asked nothing more than exactly the requirements, which I had warned them up front were very detailed and weren't easy.

I'm bugged, though. I don't think I would agree to do another MB with them. MBs are a better time to teach reading comprehension (the requirements, for example) rather than taking the easy way out. I'm probably more bugged that there is a cooking MB counselor out there that lets Scouts do half the work but sign off the blue cards.

Which brings up another quick story -- I'm at this patrol-oriented summer camp, with patrol cooking, and we're sharing a large site with another troop (separate patrol flys, though). The SM from the other troop tells me that after the week of patrol cooking, they have their scouts get a note from home that they cooked a meal and then sign off Cooking MB for them. No kidding -- that only leaves off about 75% of the actual requirements for the MB, including what I think are some of the more important ones (discussions about sanitation and food-borne illnesses, for example).

Guy

Since I live in New England, in addition to the things that others have mentioned, I always carry/wear a hat and a fleece layer :-).

Guy

A side note, but our district committee had a similar circumstance last year. A guy shows up, young and an Eagle, but I'm not sure if he was a college student or not. Most district committee work would have been fairly boring for him, so they added him to the Boy Scout activities subcommittee. Help out with planning a few camporees, that sort of thing. Nothing too difficult.

OA would be another good place to assist. Maybe campmaster at the local camp. All sorts of things. No need to turn him away.

Guy

If I were in that same situation, I would be tempted to do two things:

- I would seek out most, if not all of Stosh's postings about his experiences. He seemed to have a way with boy-led that sounded very interesting. I'm thinking of an incident in particular, perhaps it was something like him leading a jamboree contingent troop. He said "I don't do adult-led well, so let's try this..." and then he stepped them through a bunch of boy-led exercises. It was pretty clever, I think.

- I'd take a page out of Kudu's book -- I'd get the 3rd edition SM handbook and do a sort of training session with adult leaders. I'd point out to them the old method of training a boy-led patrol, step by step. Then I'd selectively :-) show them sections of the present SM handbook.

Guy

Since the splinter from our troop, we haven't really had many problems (in that regard). I would admit that when my son joined, I saw a load of problems too. I've tried to work within the system, and help change the troop culture. It's taken a lot of hard work, and some cooperation by like-minded adults. I've documented many of these trials and tribulations on this forum through a series of questions and comments (sometimes with a preface that said we are/have been an "adult-led, advancement-oriented troop method troop").

The guys that left could have done the same thing, and helped develop a troop culture that was closer aligned with their expectations.. However, I like our present vision which is closer to Patrol Method than their (still) adult-led Webelos III method.

As part of our recruiting and "assimilation" efforts (for lack of a better term), I now do a new parent's meeting a couple of months after crossover. Almost universally, I find that parents need to recalibrate their thinking after having spent 4+ years in the Cub program. Many are relieved that they aren't expected to participate as much (included with the statement that they can participate, if they want to, and that the steps to do that will include applications, CORI forms, youth protection training and position training).

We haven't yet, though, recruited an entire den, which is what happened just prior to this splinter.

BTW -- last year, we had a major shift in the troop -- we had a crop of new kids, and a crop of older kids (separated by the "age range" that was made up of the "splinter group"). The older kids were resistant to accepting true patrol method changes (and still are). So a new crop was coming in, they made up a new patrol, all others (minus inactives) were lumped into another patrol -- they didn't seem to care. Now, a year later, a promising leader from the newer patrol stepped forward and he is leading a patrol of new crossovers. So we're kind of running with the new Scout patrol concept. However, we're not intending to push for an automatic dispersal at a given time. I hope we're going to wait until one Scout steps forward and says "I'd like to lead a patrol" and then suggest that he try recruiting one.

Guy

So the troop that my oldest decided to join, some 4 years ago, had a similar issue. When we were visiting troops, I didn't know what was up, but then I pieced it together later on.

An entire Webelos den from a pack joins a troop. They are formed as a new scout patrol, going into summer camp, and then when fall rolls around, the troop reorganizes, and the den/patrol is split up into other patrols. The now split-up patrol members (and/or the dads) aren't too happy about it, and aren't happy they don't have any input into the annual calendar (that had been previously set up). They go off on their own monthly outing, a retreat more or less, and decide that weekend to form their own troop.

That's where we entered. We visit every troop in town, including this new one. We get some funny statements, like "we want our guys to stay together as a patrol all the way through" and "we're going to work on one rank per year". They showed us pictures of an outing where they had rented a ski condo and a dad was shown cooking in the kitchen. Hmmmm, Webelos III anyone? At camporee that spring, during a cooking competition, I was walking around observing. Saw this particular troop -- it surprised me that two Scouts were actually cooking, but it didn't surprise me that a dad was standing 3 feet away, watching every move.

My son chose the troop that this group had split off from, so I heard the story from the other side too. I will say that I don't think either side was at fault, and the SM from the old troop did say that there had been mismatched expectations and that he didn't want to get in the way of anyone wanting what they wanted. So he's been fine with the split.

Guy

Stosh -- what really strikes me about both of your stories, and knowing that you had anything but an "Eagle mill" going, is that those are two very solid incidents of mature Scouts who demonstrated they were Eagles, despite the a priori expectations of the board. Well done :-), to the Scouts and to you.

Guy

KC9DDI -- I like that response!

Blancmange -- I don't know how that is reconciled. What I suspect, however, is that the policy had been developed after one too many incidences of hovering parents (we all have at least a few of those stories, right?). If I can quickly find the "dispatches" from our DE, I'll post them here.

We'll see how this all pans out, with the changes. My oldest should be attending the "Life to Eagle" seminar within a couple of months, and I'll be keeping my ears open. For some fun, I might even drop a small bomb or two.

Guy

In case you didn't read the prior thread, I'm the Scouter that was observing the EBoR where the board chair said these words: "since Eagle projects are required to have 'lasting value', tell us...".

It hadn't been the first time I heard those words. About a year earlier, I was at a "Life To Eagle" Seminar for a different district, and I heard two things that made me stop and think -- the first was "even though there is no minimum number of hours required for an Eagle project, we like to see about a hundred hours" and the second was "we like to see projects have 'lasting value'". I don't have much of a problem with either statement. An astute Scout would estimate his project to be at least a hundred hours, and if his estimates were looking a little too fictional, then maybe he really isn't choosing a project that is challenging enough. There isn't really anything about 100 hours that shows more or less leadership, which is where the real beef is, I suppose.

As far as "lasting value" goes, I think that's in the mind of a beholder. I don't really like a predisposition towards construction projects, which it seems where my present district sits --I've heard a few stories about how it was suggested to Scouts having projects reviewed that they add construction components to non-construction projects.

But the real issue I had: afterward, I sent looking, and I saw no such requirement for "lasting value", anywhere I looked. So I'm not sure where the EBoR chair is getting the present idea that "an Eagle project is required to have 'lasting value'". It's not even a case of "we like to see 'lasting value'", but it is stated to be a requirement.

But the new Guide To Advancement specifically states that projects are *not* required to have lasting value. I know the district board is aware of the new document, because someone was discussing it with us prior to the board convening. We'll see how much "adapting to local procedures" goes on -- much like the way present projects are reviewed with the idea of "there is no minimum number of hours..." being changed to "...but we like to see about a hundred hours."

There's a strange dynamic in our district lately -- we'd gotten word that the district Eagle board, for reviewing projects and scheduling Eagle boards, only wants to communicate with Scouts through email (thus requiring electronic submission of project workbooks). No parents. When difficulties with the board came through, parents complained to Scoutmasters, Scoutmasters contacted the board, and then we got another electronic notice that said "Scouts only -- no email from parents or Unit Scouters". Wouldn't be so bad, but I've seen two email trails where I saw what I would consider un-Scoutlike feedback coming from the chair. Which I also find odd, because both trails included the statement "we expect more out of our Eagle Scouts than that." How can someone who sends un-Scoutlike email chastise someone like that? I don't get it...

I've talked to two people about this -- the D.E. who suggested that maybe one of our unit Scouters should volunteer for the board. The other was an SM-friend from a nearby troop. Turns out it was actually his email that caused the reiteration of "no parents, no unit Scouters" email.

I'm starting to go "hmmmmm...".

We have probably at least four more EBoRs coming up in the next six months to a year. My oldest son might be 18 months out, or so, on his present path. We'll see where that goes.

Guy

TwoCub -- I haven't discussed it with the Scout yet because I haven't seen him since the board was held. If this thread is still active, I'll talk to him this next week and then report back.

I will offer this: I was with the Scout and SM/dad moments after we exited the boardroom. The Scout plopped in a chair, relieved, and said to his dad "man, they really grilled me!". At the time, I thought that was a pretty fair reaction.

Guy

I'm just kind of tossing this out for thought-provoking discussion -- I don't really have an agenda here (and I admitted up front that some of these are hot button issues).

At the time, my reaction was that it is certainly fair for them to ask about 103 MBs -- in fact, another piece of the story is that "Neighbor-Scout" had his EBoR a month earlier, but I'm not sure how many of the same Scouters were on his EBoR too. I did hear that board questioned his 103 MBs as well.

The question about where the merit badges came from doesn't bug me so much. If a Scout, for example, is racking up huge numbers at a merit badge university, that tells one story. To earn virtually all Eagle-required MBs at the local camp's "Eagle Week", that tells another story. But in this case, the buddy pair was doing it a rather normal way, by calling individual counselors and setting up meetings. Part of their organization method was to use the worksheets available online (I'm not so fond of those).

I'm not big on negative tone, and the first EBoR question about the merit badges was "do you think you're getting anything out of all these merit badges?" Questions like that immediately put the Scout in a defensive posture. Tough, sure. But not what I'd really consider Friendly and Courteous.

Granted, I know this Scout quite a bit better than these guys looking at his application for the first few minutes of the EBoR. I'm disappointed by [what I perceived as] the negative tone, but I also think they missed an opportunity to find out a little more about him personally, and also to hear firsthand about his goals (national outdoors award, Hornaday, and others). In fact, while we were waiting to be called into the board, we were looking at a world map together, and I brought up one of my favorite topics -- Antarctica. This Scout didn't know about the Antarctic Scout program. It got a "hmmmm..." from him. I love planting seeds like that :-).

One more thing -- about sarcasm. The only part I perceived as a sarcastic comment was the "you're not an 'A' personality, are you?" after the candidate answered a question about his many activities outside of Scouting.

Like I said earlier, I don't really have an agenda. It's not like I plan to follow up with either the EBoR chair or the district advancement chair, whom I've known for several years. But I will probably warn future candidates, including my own sons, that this sometimes happens with this board.

But thanks again for all the input...

Guy

I would guess we're not talking about last minute board members either. The way the process works in this district -- the advancement committee meets on the 3rd Thursday of the month, and requests for either project review or EBoRs have to go in two weeks prior (1st Thursday deadline). If a Scout misses the 1st Thursday, they wait until the next month to be considered.

The advancement board meets prior to 7:15pm, for regular business. At 7:15pm, they start their first Eagle Board. Second one at 7:45pm. If there are 4 candidates on a Thursday night, they split into 2 boards, and handle 2 candidates each.

They also run a concurrent "Life to Eagle" seminar -- prior to last week, I got an email note that said that the monthly seminar would not be held, because the guy who ran it wouldn't be able to because they were running two boards that night.

Guy

Thanks for the input, everyone. I'm just giving you one facet of a 3-sided story, I'm sure the board and the candidate would have their own takes on what happened as well.

When the news was delivered to the Scout-candidate, he and his SM/dad were before the board, and I wasn't. From what I understand, the board told him the favorable news and then suggested that he continue with his leadership development by participating in our council's Brownsea 22 program (which is still the old circa 1976 syllabus) -- the Scout had already been planning on doing that. He's got a pile of merit badges, so Eagle palms will be catching up with him every 3 months or so, until he turns 18. :-)

We've had 5 other scouts go through this same board in recent months. Maybe 3 more in the next six months. I've not sat in on these boards, so I can't really say what their true style is, or whether or not every Scout is treated the same way.

About the merit badges -- I think it is a virtual case of "alchemy" :-). Another Scout lives across the street from the candidate, only he is a couple of years older. They have known each other pretty much their entire lives. Neighbor-Scout joined the troop about 2 years before Achiever-Scout. Neighbor-Scout was kind of hitting the teen doldrum years when Achiever-Scout joins the troop, with his goals, including making a run at all merit badges. So they operated as a buddy pair, and are quite organized. Multiple calls to multiple counselors, some of whom handle multiple merit badges. They set aside a couple of evenings per week, and weekends, to exclusively work on whatever MB is next on the list. Some "specialty" merit badges need special circumstances -- for example, we happen to go to a summer camp that has Horsemanship, Climbing and Watersports. They were a little disappointed that they didn't finish all 3 this summer, but they are out looking for counselors to finish them. Even though we are a small to mid-size council, we have a pretty good MB counselor list with good coverage. When asked at his EBoR, the candidate did mention that finding a counselor for Veterinary Science was probably the most difficult task. The two Scouts take turns calling counselors. Some newer and more difficult merit badges are on the "to be finished" list -- Backpacking, Scuba and Robotics immediately spring to mind.

BTW, I recall that Neighbor-Scout was working on Life rank as his younger friend joined the troop. Part of the alchemy has been the competition between the two -- Neighbor-Scout didn't want to lose the race to Eagle. :-) Neighbor-Scout had about a 10 MB head start, some of which did come from lame programs at summer camp, including one "Eagle Week". Neighbor-Scout admitted he didn't like his week there, and would not return.

If this question pops up -- the troop is pretty much a "any MB at any time" kind of troop. The old SM, and the new SM, both are pretty liberal with blue cards. I know that's a hot button issue on this forum, so I won't belabor the idea.

I said earlier in this thread that I would give my feelings at a later time -- I'm pretty impressed with what these two Scouts have done. "Highly focused" on a goal is how I would describe it, and how many teens do you run into that are highly-focused on something other than Xbox? :-) I don't think "achieving" is a bad thing, in fact, I think we should encourage it.

Guy

Another thought -- re: mentoring younger Scouts. This Scout's PoRs include being a Den Chief, an Instructor and (now) a PL. I don't think he was quite ready to be a PL last year, but when a bunch of Scouts were transitioning in this last June, we thought he was the best candidate for taking on a new Scout patrol, some of whom were in a den where he was a den chief. He's on virtually every outing, and this year was at both of our summer camp weeks.

In other words, I think he's doing just fine in that regard. Since this is all self-regulated, I don't see him burning out any time soon :-).

"lasting value" -- first time I heard something strange was at a "Life to Eagle Seminar" in a different district, not this one. The presenter said, "we like to see projects that have lasting value". Same district made no bones about getting around the "no required amount of time on an Eagle project" by saying "there is no required number of minimum hours, but we like to see about 100 hours".

Anyway, fast forward to today. I'd read the section of the new G2A, and had made a mental note of the "projects are not required to have lasting value" part. I'm pretty sure this advancement committee was in the process of digesting the new guide anyway. It will be interesting to see how that pans out. I'm tempted to take my older son to the "Life to Eagle Seminar" next month, and see how they are addressing some of these issues, and some of the changes.

BTW, while I haven't see this directly, I've heard reports that when approving projects, these guys are very much the sticklers in certain areas, including materials lists and fundraising details. I'm sure this new project workbook is going to affect their process.

Eagle92 -- there's no pressure. Dad is supportive, of course, but in no way is he pressuring the Scout. Fun? In my opinion, this Scout is definitely wired that achieving is fun. He likes the idea that so few Scouts ever earn the Hornaday award, for example, and it makes him want to do it all that much more.

guy

Stosh -- I think you're dead on. Along the way, the board did mention that the vast majority of candidates they see are about to turn 18, or have already (two other Scouts from our troop also had their boards that same night, and both had already turned 18).

The chair did ask him about his plans after earning Eagle -- I do know his plans, but he didn't do really well articulating them. He's off to Philmont next summer, he's just been inducted into the OA, and he is set on earning the national outdoors awards and the Hornaday award. That should take him a good three years or so :-).

My impression of this Scout, during his board, was one of exuberance. The answers, and excitement, were pretty much bursting out of him. Overall, I thought the tone of the questioning was kind of negative, and I was sitting there wondering why they would question an exuberant Scout with that tone.

Guy

Just in case you missed my earlier message :-), I sat in on an EBoR as an observer (in lieu of the SM, who is the candidate's father). At our district EBoRs, SM's are invited to sit and observe, and to answer any questions that might come up.

So, I didn't want these issues to cloud the earlier message, and I know these topics are somewhat "hot button" issues, but I just thought I would toss them out as observations. The board was being run by 3 adults, not in uniform :-), and I know one to be the district eagle board chair, who reviews all projects.

- chair poses a question like this: "since Eagle projects are required to have 'lasting value', what do you think about [your project]?" (if it makes a difference to your thoughts, the project was clearing a fire road in a state forest, and rebuilding a dilapidated bridge that fire trucks might use -- the Scout went well over his initial estimate of project hours). The Scout's answer included the fact that the prior bridge had been about 20 years old and he didn't see why the rebuilt bridge wouldn't last another 20, given that it had been done with pressure-treated wood.

- the board spent quite a bit of time concerning the candidates age. He just turned 14, and had a goal since he was very young, to be an Eagle Scout prior to the same age his dad earned Eagle (at age 14). While I can't quote the exact questions, they were along the lines of, "do you think you fully understand the nature of being an Eagle Scout at this age?" They pressed a little, I think, and eventually after some not very satisfying discussion (on both sides), the chair admitted that he thought the question was a rhetorical one.

- another major area they spent time on was with the candidate's merit badge totals. The kid is somewhat of an "achiever", and I first learned this when I heard he was looking to earn all Webelos activity badges. So shortly after joining the troop, along with becoming an Eagle by age 14, he also set a goal of earning all merit badges. As of last week, he has earned 103.

I have my own feelings about this situation, which I won't disclose (yet), but one question the board asked was "how many of those came from summer camp?" Since I've been with the Scout at summer camp the last two summers, I know for a fact that he has completed less than 4 at camp, and I think he has 3 partials from this year's camp (Climbing, Watersports and Horsemanship). All others have been earned outside of camp. None (!) have been earned at "Merit Badge University" type events. One merit badge, I think, was earned at a district "merit badge day", where Scouts could work on Safety, Auto Maintenance *or* one other merit badge I can't recall (and unless I'm mistaken, each one of them required work outside of the merit badge day).

Back to the EBoR, one panel member said "do you think you're getting anything out of all these merit badges?" I can't really quote the Scout's entire answer, but he held his ground pretty well. At one point, he said "well, I probably can't plumb an entire house, but I *can* fix a sink."

During the merit badge discussion, the chair basically asked the Scout "is that all you do, just work on merit badges, or what else do you do?" The Scout answered that he played (at school) baseball, basketball and soccer, and then added that he was also president of the math club. The chair gave him, in my opinion, a sort of sarcastic "you're not an 'A' personality, are you" retort.

Guy

By the way -- there are a couple of other northeast high adventure programs I've seen: Adirondack Trek by Patriots' Path Council (http://www.camps.ppbsa.org/camps/sac/Trek.htm) and the Valley Voyageur program by Daniel Webster Council. I'd agree that the VV program isn't nearly as remote as MHA, but I would think that the Patriots' Path version would come close.

Guy

Couple of related thoughts --

Le V, our troop went on our own high adventure trip this summer, in the same general area in which MHA operates. The major issues -- MHA's prices and their 14 year old age limitation. We didn't go on the Allagash, where I'd agree that even 14 is rather young, but MHA still has the limitation on easier trips. And then -- we did a 5-day trip for about $160 each. MHA charges much more than that.

B-Dweller, I think you're right about FoS drying up. Same thing happened in our Council, with the sale of a camp. The situation was this -- council consolidations in the early 90s, and historic council camps were kept in place, for awhile. Eventually a new "hatchet man" SE was brought in, and forces the sale of a couple of camps. District (old council) politics set in, and a group of Scouters (whom I sympathize with -- it was their old FoS and sweat equity that built and maintained the old camp) is left out in the cold. We're still seeing the effect, years later, in terms of district volunteers and FoS donations. Issue was taken a step further, about a year ago, when the "hatchet man" SE seems to have forced a district consolidation, which had the major effect of splitting one of the old historic districts (the one that "lost the camp") into pieces. Then in a stunning bit of followup, the hatchet man was axed by the e-board.

Guy