Greg Nelson

Jambo: Do you have something to add to the topic at hand? If not, please take your insulting, trolling behavior elsewhere. There are many people in this forum who work very hard to make Cub Scouting a positive experience for the boys. I don''t consider myself a "baby sitter" in any sense of the word. What I am is a hard-working volunteer who makes it possible for elementary-aged boys to have outdoor experiences and learn life skills that simply are not taught in school. I''m not sure why you hold "den mothers" in such disdain. Some of my pack''s best leaders are mothers workin

That''s how we''ve done it.

I think this topic DOES have a bit to do with the Internet. I''ll go out on a limb and admit that I find it extremely unlikely that this boy has, in fact, earned the 32 belt loops and pins over the course of the past year. Now, if Mom had to go to the advancement chair in person and put in a claim for this number of awards, she''d have a hard time doing it with a straight face. But, with ScoutTrack, Mom can sit in her living room and file outrageous claims online without having to look anyone in the eye. This comes up in every Pack from time to time, and there''s no good answer. In

We set our dues for this year at $50/6 months. This covers the total cost of one boy for a year, plus an extra $10 or so to cover any of our boys who don't have money for dues. Last year they were $60 for the year plus expected participation in the popcorn sale.

I hate hate HATE the popcorn sale. That ---- activity has been the cause of more bad blood and hard feelings than any disputed Pinewood Derby finish could ever generate. My pack is no different from any other - we have a group of parents who are willing to help out as den leaders, campout organizers, special event coordinators, etc. Then we have a group of parents for whom Scouting is not a priority. Now I understand not everyone will have the same passion for Scouting, but... During the popcorn sale, the "sideline" families, with a few exceptions, make little or no effort to sell p

I'm having the same problem. I can't find any way to order custom emblems on the www.scoutstuff.org site. I want to see what the pricing is for our 2-digit unit number with a veteran bar all wrapped into a single patch. On the site, I can get the standard 0-9 red patches, but that's it. I know they used to do custom stuff (I ordered custom emblems from them a little over a year ago), but I can't find any way to order or price it from their site. Maybe they quit doing it? The latest copy of the print catalog they sent me (which is also the only verson available online) has no mention

Our pack is cheap, I guess - we just give out the new neckerchief, and expect the family to get the handbooks themselves. For the 4th graders, since they don't need a new neckerchief, what we've done is give them a coin (BSA Item # 04983, $3.35) with the Scout Oath on one side and the Scout Law on the other. That ties in with their Arrow of Light requirements to have these memorized. We encourage the boys to carrry the coin around and use it to test their recall.

Well, there are bombs, and then there are *bombs*. Eamonn has a good point when he notes that we provide safe® adventures. Scouting will attract a larger-than-average number of adventure-seekers, and not all the boys pay as much attention to safety as they should. Rewind almost 30 years - I can remember shooting off a "Polish cannon" with the other guys in my patrol. What is safe? Heck, no! Was it legal? Probably not. Did we get chewed out when finally caught using it? Yes, sir! The truth is, a fair number of boys like to blow stuff up, as evidenced by the Wolf Cub I had runni

I don't think it's going to ever come back, but it's not the dumbest idea I've heard. If you had leaders with limited outdoor knowledge and experience, such a program might motivate them to educate themselves. Also, seeing leaders working to improve themselves could motivate kids. As it stands, though. it's a bit ridiculous, sort of like a 10-year-old playing in a t-ball league.

Oh, boy! The communication you are getting from the mom is setting off warning bells in my head! I have a boy in my pack with a similar behavior pattern. Anytime he does something wrong, there is always a reason or excuse why he HAD to do X or Y. "He started it, they were bugging me, I couldn't hear you", etc. Or my favorite - "I didn't do it, it was Johnny!" - not effective when I witness things firsthand. "A Scout is honest" aside, that's to be expected from a young boy. The problem is that his parents always buy into his excuses. They just don't get that there ARE no excuses for

Sprocket: Two things that jumped out at me from a recent post: "We'll have about 10 boys" and "Some parents could choose not to take a month" These are both bad ideas. With 10 kids, you should split up into two groups of 5 teams. I know a lot of times the leadership just isn't there for 2 dens, but with 10 boys, some of the kids will get lost in the shuffle, and you'll get more parents willing to sit on the sidelines. I made the mistake when I was a Tiger leader of letting one of my parents off the hook for putting together meetings. As a result, that boy never g

LisaBob: Thanks for the response. As for the "MY Range" thing, I agree with you. In a setup like at our camp, with 15 boys shooting at one time, and 200 or more coming through each day. you can't have more than one sheriff. The problem with the group response idea is that, in any group, there will always be 20% of the boys just sitting there saying nothing. Now, some of them know the answer but are just shy. Others have no idea what the answer is, since they go to la-la land any time someone tries to teach them something. Since I know the boys in my Pack, I have an excellent se

scottteng: "Until then keep your opinions to yourself or take it up with the range master or shooting sports director." OK, you tell me how I should handle it. Now, I don't know how your camps go down, but our rangemaster such as heck doesn't have enough time to sit down individually with 400 boys and have the Cubs explain BB and/or archery safety rules. Yet there it is in the belt loop requirements. And it's pretty clear that the communication should be from the boy to the adult, not from the adult to the boy. Telling rules to the boys is NOT ENOUGH. They have to verbally show

OK, I don't want this to come off like a rant against my district's day camp. The folks organizing this have put together a great set of activities for the boys, and they are having a wonderful time so far. BUT..... I have a problem with them awarding belt loops, achievements, and electives like candy. For example, after our boys finished the BB station, they were told that they had qualified for the BB Shooting belt loop. Well, in my mind, not quite yet. One of the 3 requirements is "Explain the rules for Safe BB gun shooting you have learned to your leader or adult partner". A

Our pack does the neckerchief thing as well. We are giving our current Webelos I boys a "Scout Oath" coin from the Scout Shop, to help them prepare for the Arrow of Light.

You would think a librarian woulb be able to get his/her facts straight. Penn & Teller: BS! was on Showtime, not HBO.

Newbie Den Leader: I was there! We came up one marker short of the medals on the orienteering, and have been poring over the map since, figuring out what route would have yielded 1 or 2 more punches. We got zero interest from the parents, because of the high cost ($90 for a parent/son pair). I went mostly for the reason others have listed - to get to enjoy a Scout outing with my son, instead of being "on duty". I also wanted to scope out one of the council camps. I enjoyed the large amount of "program" offered at the campout, compared to our pack outings. Still, when you compare

Well, that show was disappointing. Not because it was a hatchet job on the Boy Scouts - I expected that - but because it was so poorly done. As a former debater, I thought they did a terrible job of making their point. The main point of the show was to attack the BSA positions on athiest and homosexual members. To do so, they mostly relied on ad hominem attacks, instead of rebutting the arguments put forth by BSA defenders on the show. Calling someone a f..... or a...... doesn't really refute what he is saying, does it? For the most part, the people supporting Penn and Teller's point

I've seen more than one poster claim that Scouting is a Christian activity, and it's no secret that many of the posters here are strong Christians. (As are the large majority of Scouts.) Even without the Christian angle, most of my parents signed their kids up in Cub Scouts for outdoor activities, not religious activities. All attempts to plug religious medals fall on deaf ears, except for those who can get it "for free" as part of the Sunday School curriculum at our local Catholic Church and our local UMC. And I've had two parents ask me to not renew their sons' Boys' Life subscrip

I wouldn't characterize Penn and Teller as ultra-liberal. More like ultra-libertarian. And the point of their series on Showtime, with an unprintable name that starts with "Bull", is to point out things that are not as they seem. They delight in blowing the whistle on charlatans of all stripes. Some of their previous targets include John Edwards (the guy who talks to the dead on TV), feng shui practioners, PETA, and Gandhi, who held some pretty obnoxious racist views. Hardly a list of topics that ultra-liberals would take on. They're not just cracking jokes, although they love

I was hoping they'd go for the angle where all the BSA wants is warm bodies, so they can get more charitable $$$.

Unless you want to really get into this, I'd just go to http://terraserver-usa.com/ and print off topo maps of a local park for free.

Ask and ye shall receive. http://www.pack320.com/leaderbragvest.html I found that my boys needed it a couple of inches wider and an inch or two shorter. And we didn't even sew them - just stapled it together. It's held up for 2 years, and any repairs would be easy.

I enjoyed the issue a few weeks back where "Bible Heroes" shared a page with a panel explaining black holes. "Bible Heroes" should be axed because it's boring. It's written and drawn in a very dated style. And I'd love to see some Book of Mormon cartoons in BL. At my Roundtables, held in an LDS building, I get to see paintings of the Jews crossing the Atlantic to come to America and of Jesus appearing in front of Chichen Itza or some similar building before a crowd of Indians. Put some of that in BL and watch the fireworks.

And do we want to go back to the days of 50% attrition from Tigers to Wolves??? The problem then was that the boys weren't "really" Cub Scouts. The parents came, they saw, they had had enough after one year. The current system of full integration of Tigers into the Pack leads to much greater retention. Introducing a "Cub Scout-lite" program for kindergartners will only have the effect of making new parents think their boys aren't missing much by dropping out of Scouting.