Its Me

A few years ago I had been at a new job a while and the UW comes rolling through our company. Since our VP of operation was high up in the UW we were all expected to give. Especially the salaried staff.

So the Human Resource lady comes and asks me why I haven't filled out a UW donation card. I mention overhead and stuff. She is undeterred. So I put a challenge to her. I pull out my check book and I offer to right a check for $200.00 to HER favorite charity. No deal, she said it had to be made out to the UW. I caved in and just went with the payroll deduction. I guess our VP needed the honorary UW position as Exalted Pooh-Bah more than her charity needed $200.00.

We have three active tents. The Kelty Mantra Five (five man), a Eureka Tetragon 8 (four man) and a really large Target tent sold under the Great Outdoors label (10 man). For room that target tent is great. For light weight that Tetragon by eureka is great, its 9 lbs and has slept my entire family of five (three children under 12). But for foul weather the Kelty Mantra is the best. The large rain fly on the Mantra covers the entire tent and takes the water some 2 feet away from the base of the tent. A six hour rain, at the 4000 elevation on the Appalachian trail and not a drop in the Kelty Mantra tent. The target tent is good and has held up to some strong winds but a good soaking rain at a cub campout put about 2 pints of water in our tent.

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After buying a few kits I decided just to build my own.

Adult Advil

Childrens Advil

Benadryl cream Small tube

Peptobysmal Tablets

Benadryl Pills

Cough drops

Tweezers

Antiseptic wipes

Neosporin

Small surgical Scissors

Band Aides at four different sizes

Blister band aides

Two 4 inch gauze pads

Quick Wrap

Duct tape ~ 36

Latex Gloves

Emergency Blanket

Tick card

Q-tips

Water Purifier tablets

Hand sanitizer

WWBPD, the fact that you still have those items in your closet diqualifies you to be on this committee. Thank You and Keep-on keeping-on.

What if there was a Star Wars club at school and to be a member you had to believe that Star Wars was really cool.

Good reply Kraut-60.(This message has been edited by Its Me)

I thought my public school was a atheistic youth group organization. Which according to you is a religion.

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The purpose of this thread was to stimulate discussion on why so many packs from various districts would chose not the wear uniforms.

The "as it is written so it shall be" crowd is losing the flock while they preach choir. Also the boys reasons for not wearing their uniforms at this campout go way beyond whether my olive-drab pants had the officals BSA seal. I agree with many of the analysis about the unforms being too precious for typical scout outdoor activity.

In the cases cited it was a fight for a group to GAIN access to government controlled land.

Here the ACLU is asking the DoD to prohibit access. To exclude a group because their member list is not as open as the ACLU has detremined it should.

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Why cant a 40 year old man be a bear cub?

Why cant a non veteran join the VFW?

Why cant men join the ladies red hat society?

Even the Rotarians are invitation only?

Why cant non political based groups be selective?

The issue is whether a group that wants to put certain requirements on its membership such as they must all be of the same age and sex, should be allowed access to government facilities. To compare group the BSA in the same category as the political KKK is ridicules. The KKK seeks power and influence hmmmff similar to the ACLU.

The assault on the BSA by the gay and atheistic organizations is shameful.

This is a proxy fight against society through a youth group.

To rejoice and continually post articles regarding such attacks on the BSA on this scouting forum, shows a contempt and loathing for an organization that knows no bounds.

Why is a youth group such as the BSA such a target for Gay and atheists groups?

Hey Merlyn why stop at Military bases. Why not continue on and ban BSA from national forest land?

I am getting here late [Merlyn wrote "preventing religious discrimination on their bases"] what religion does the BSA discriminate against?

Bob, where is the system to correct this? Where is the adult peer pressure? Outside of this forum it doesn't seem to exist.

If a car slid off the road and detectives Bob White were to investigate he would conclude that the car slid off the road because the tires lost traction. Poor performing tires. But the reasons for this wreck go beyond where the tires contact the road. Root cause could be pavement conditions, driver error, speed, brakes, signs...

What I am saying is that the problem of non-uniform goes beyond just where the organization contacts the Scout at the volunteer level. There is no council driven effort to change this. Here at this campout as, I said earlier was a chance to identify scouts in 100% uniform compliance, even identifying leaders and packs in full uniform.

I suspect that the reason this is not done is that council is afraid that a strict uniform policy or even a hint of a requirement will drive scouts away.

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First we need establish that the very low number of Cub Scouts in uniform at a council campout is a problem. I say that it indicates a problem.

Second we need to look at the root cause of the problem. A single den leader wearing shirts but not a kerchief and socks is not the root cause.

Was the root cause the uniform cut or material?. In this case I don't think so. The temperatures were mild 75-82 during the day and mid sixties at night. We had perfect weather for cotton shirts and short pants (wool socks?).

Was the identification as a goody-two-shoe the issue? No again because they would have been around peers.

Was it a wayward pack here or there? No nearly all packs had little or no participation.

The root cause is at the council level, by not being adamant to the scoutmasters about wearing uniforms.

I would say that there could have been methods of encouraging uniform wearing such subtle reminders through emails or roundtable table discussions to have scouts in uniform at council event. Or some sort of trophies or first in line for chow or some other award to packs with the most uniform participation (broken down by size to be fair e.g. best pack under 20, over 50 ). I am sure there are other ways.

The root cause of this problem is much higher than just a den leader not in full uniform.

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EagleKy, the tigers were better at wearing their orange shirts, but the blue and tan Wolf, Bear and Weblos uniforms were scarce.

There were so few kids wearing partial or full inform that if you weren't looking you may not have found one. A stranger walking in would not have been able to tell that this was a scouting function.

I am not talking full uniform with hat a kerchief. Just pants shirt and socks.

The answer somewher between 5-10 cubs were in uniform. 50 boys in my pack and my son was the only one in uniform. Very few adult leaders were in uniform as well. I wore the shirt. A few cubs were in the so called class B uniform maybe 15-20%.

What an opportunity missed. Imagine witnessing a sea of boyscout blue and thinking we are all in this togther. The uniform design was not the problem. I belive it is a leadeship problem starting at council. Why else would so many packs from different districts not feel the need to put scouts in unifrom?

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We were at a cub world campout sponsored by council. There were approximately 250-300 scouts there.

Take a guess at how many scouts either in percentage points or in actual numbers. Dont include the dozen or so volunteer Boy Scout troop running the programs.

Make him something special that he could put somewhere and think nicely of the scouts. If the bridge every gets mended maybe a recognition award from the council is in order. This is a multi year endevour. Each year the the torch should be passed to return good relations with this owner.

We hold our den numbers all the way through cub scouts. We had one of the moms make a really nice den flag with our pack and den numbers. For an insignia we used the arrow of light. We picked this so we wouldn't have to make a new flag every year and because its the carry over patch from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.

Good comments ManyIrons and all. Really thanks for the replies. I will have more than half my cubs for all or part of the campout. I have one family that just joined our den and I believe they are acquiring the equipment to old fashion way; borrowing it!

Both sports an scouting have a place within our youth's childhood. The only thing that I was a little bent on was that this is our premier Cub campout, but there will be a couple other campouts in the spring.

This is a well run Council event. This is about as good as it can get for a Cub. Its close. Its fun. Its camping, hiking and campfires. I showed this campout on our den calendar back in August. Head to head the Pack's annual Council campout loses to a routine sports game.

Why? Although the parents want good and responsible kids, the aggressiveness and competitiveness offered in sports are considered more important attributes to be learned.

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Little johny is going to mis 24 hours of experience.

Friday night dinner (with friends)

Friday night flashlight tag

Friday night in a tent

Saturday breakfast

Saturday Flag ceremony

- BB gun shooting

- Craft

- Group games

- Making a bird house or toolbox

For a 40 minute game?