AnneinMpls

Sigh - to revisit a place such as this is like seeing once again a long lost lover. (For me, it is the Belgian countryside with its wandering canals, scattered stone farmhouses and a misting grey that turns it all to an ever-changing impressionistic painting. And the smell of the balsam forests in the rain - can't tell direction from the trees - the moss grows all the way around) The State Department has a travel advisories website - it's generally pretty descriptive and up-to-date. http://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html http://travel.state.gov/peru.html These will give you fai

MomScouter - sounds like you're putting the emphasis in the right place While there's a whole lot I dislike about the way my council does things, we apparently are really blessed to have the financial assistance program we've got - vests, some insignia, and handbooks are all provided for families that apply, and they can also apply for money towards troop dues. Most of our families receive $20-$35 each year towards troop dues - comes as one check that I deposit directly into the troop's bank account. Do you know whether sewing patterns and fabric are still available for home sewing unifo

Congratulations to Jon on his appointment! He has an opportunity to create something very cool for his troop from scratch - sounds like he's the right person to do this from what you've described of the initiative he's shown at summer camp I wanted to comment a lil bit on the side issues you brought up regarding the difficulties at camp and how to acknowledge the good things you see the boys doing. As the Scoutmaster (acting or otherwise) sometimes your most important job is too mentor the other adults! An important skill for the adults to learn is how to observe - BP called this

Yha, it's tricky to change a troop's culture if they havn't gotten into wearing the uniform... In our case, most of our families apply for financial aid through the council, and as part of that, their vests and some insignia to start off with are provided free. For our girls, to have something brand new and that represents their accomplishments is a very very cool thing. Also, if you were in GS yourself and have your old sash, etc to show off, the girls really really love this and it can help motivate them to wear theirs. When we award badges, etc. I always say to the girls, whether or not

Sigh Alpha, how would you and I go about getting the needed changes made to the uniform? I have noticed in the last few years they've started placing little tent icons next to uniform options most suited for camping - that's a step at least. I think the Brownies in brown is such a tradition, I wouldn't want to mess with that. (And I think the Daisy program as a whole ought to be realigned closer to the Brownie program but that's a whole nother topic for a whole nother thread!) But if we could come up with a basic uniform design for Juniors on up through Adults, practical for outdoor act

Awwww, you hijacked my whiney thread! Hey, I was never one to avoid quick paths to madness, sortof like ripping off a bandaid - the faster the better, right? I do find it humorous how much complaining Boy Scout folks do about their uniform - do they even know how good they got it? Put a bunch of Girl Scouts in a room together, and anyone actually in uniform is in the minority. The fewer uniforms they sell, the more expensive they get, and we're cycling towards no longer being a uniformed organization. Which is truly sad. There are so few uniforms being sold now, that it's ge

Hehe, I thought I was kinda cuckoo using a stapler, but it really does work great! Holds everything very nicely in place in the sewing machine. I set the zigzag stitch to fairly close together and the width to the same width of the border. If you've got a good color match, the stitches disappear into the border. My friend Cathy & I used to sew our badges on by hand while riding the overnight train to Munich - got our uniforms spiffed up on our way to the conference. Thimbles are fabulous if you're hand-sewing, but the sewing machine is soooo quick. (Not so great for sewing patches to

Seems like smaller (tiny) troops will be more likely to need to reorganize patrols as they grow than larger troops. Some reasons I can think of.. 1. Simple growth may require new patrols, as the troop grows from the size of one fairly small patrol to enough members to make 2 or 3 pretty stable patrols. 2. Recruiting might only bring in 1 or 2 new scouts at a time, rather than enough to start a whole new patrol. Until recruiting is stepped up, trying to form new scout patrols may not be the most efficient use of troop leadership. And in the tiny troop, they are not generally overwhelmed w

Hi Alpha! Neat to see you hanging out in this forum too I think perhaps there's more than a few of us Venusian beauties picking the brains here for use in our Girl Scout troops - and the natives here appear friendly and patient You are dead on when you say the GS program lacks the opportunity for leadership development by breaking the program up into 3 year spans (and, truthfully, most GS troops break it up even further into 1 year groupings!). I'm feeling better and better about deciding to do a combined Junior-Cadette troop (4th thru 9th grades). When my bridging 4th graders came in

I'm taking a look at the new catalog thinking over uniform options for our new Junior/Cadette troop. I've already determined that whatever we do, we're gonna look like two different troops thrown together - there just is no middle ground between the Junior and Cadette uniforms (not that I really had any expectation of that anyway...) For the Brownie troop we gave up on the uniform shirts - poor quality, hugely expensive. We went to light blue polo shirts that we got on clearance at Old Navy for $4 each. One of my co-leaders found a whole bunch of Brownie jumpers on clearance also - some f

Well, if you're going to go to the trouble to cook up a mess of beans, might as well make a meal of it... 1/2 lb Canadian bacon, cut into 1" pieces 1 lb. hamburger 1 small onion - chopped cook all this together - brown well, drain fat (in a skillet or in the bottom of the dutch oven) Throw that all into the dutch oven and add: 1 can butter beans 1 can kidney beans 1 can baked beans 1 T dry mustard 1/4 cup vinegar 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup white sugar let cook slowly till it smells good (Nope - this is not my recipe - it's my uncle's girlfriend's...they a

"I'm assistant troop leader in a Junior troop. Half the girls are in sixth grade, half in fifth." There's a lot of information you've packed into your post, so I'll try going at it, point by point... Anytime you have a "half this half that" situation you have what is called a dichotomy. Human dichotomies are inherently conflictual as each half is unconsciously trying to define itself as "not the other half" - if one half of the group is compliant, active, taking part in discussions, your other half will take their perceptions of that group and pull towards the opposite pole. (This is p

Don't know if this one has been posted here before, but it's a good one that can bear repeating MAKING MUSIC WITH ALL YOU HAVE AND WITH ALL YOU HAVE LEFT. By Jack Riemer of the Houston Chronical On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk acro

How many months did he actively serve? A month in the spring or two or 3? Was the troop meeting regularly through the summer? Then I'd count it, including summer camp. Otherwise, if the troop didn't meet during the summer, count his time in the spring, add in however long summer camp was (I'd probably round it up to a month), and have him finish off the rest of the 6 months now this fall. Anne in Mpls

My best guess at how to do this would be to base your number of incoming Webelos on the number of New Scout Patrols your troop is able to provide high-quality ASMs and Troop Guides for. So if you have enough personnel to handle 3 New Scout Patrols, then you can take in about 30 new Webelos (assuming 10 per patrol, allowing for some attrition you may end up with 8 or so per patrol. PLC can help identify who you have for troop guides. Peace out, Anne in Mpls

Scoutnut, I've seen patrols not work well at all in small all-same-grade-level troops. From what you've described regarding your girls earning program aide, silver, and now working on gold all together, can I assume you're working with a all-same-grade-level troop? The patrol system utilizes the varying experiences of older and younger Scouts, so if you don't have that, then, yup, town meeting is about the best you can do to ensure girls' participation in the planning process. I agree with you, that simply having patrols is no automatic guarantee that a troop is youth-run - whatever form o

Does anybody know where I can go for more information or pictures of the old patrol crests? These were black felt ovals with red borders embroidered with usually flower emblems, some trees and birds also were in use. So far I've only found one site - it has a full page of troop crests but only one example of these original black felt ones and it is only a scan of a picture in a book. Back to hunting ebay... Anne

Army bases I've been to always served sweet tea - love the stuff. Army cuisine in general seems to me to have a very strong Southern influence - is this true? Sigh - the US military sure treated us Scouts well over in Europe - we had Army cooks at our resident camp dining hall, and we were feasted at our conferences at Garmisch - steak dinners, etc. I miss the contact with the Army chaplains too - fabulous models of respect for all faiths - I hope that some of that rubbed off on me.

Scoutnut, I'm not sure what your specific concerns are? I see Girl Scout troops folding every year - sometimes after only a couple of months - because they aren't taking the time to build a foundation. Almost *daily* I meet a girl who says either no one called her back when she asked to join a troop, or she thought she was in a troop but it dissolved soon after. If I'm telling girls we're going to do scouting, then I have made a commitment to help them build a program that is sustainable over the long term. Small troops are neither sustainable or a good way to do Scouting - a small troop i

From what I'm reading, it sounds like it is absolutely vital to balance youth recruiting with adults - this is the "scary/difficult" for me - I don't feel a great deal of confidence in pulling together the adult leadership. Adults can be fickle and tempestuous It feels a bit like I work 5 times as hard to keep the adults happy for half the result I would get for my effort from the youth. I'm also surprised to hear how rapidly your troops have grown...still reflecting on that bit, Anne

I put out my GS recruitment yard sign from last year...tonight 3 girls dropped by to find out how to join So we are now potentially at 7 girls for the new troop. Just hoping now for their parents to follow through...that's always the hard part. I actually do home visits to get registrations done! Ok, so right now, we're at 1 7th, 1 6th, 1 5th, 4 4th - if they can each bring a friend, we'll be at 14. (The 7th 6th and 5th graders came together - 2 sisters and a best friend) The sisters are from a family we sold cookies to last year - I never realized cookies could be a recruitment tool..

I tried to email to you but your address bounced: "host unknown". Can you recheck the address you gave me? Peace out, Anne

I've been reading "Delivering the Promise" and it says there is a huge qualitative difference when a troop reaches 21 members. I'm trying to analyse this - I'm assuming once you get to 21 then 3 patrols becomes possible (7x3=21) and that this makes youth leadership a reality rather than a "we'd do it if only we could get it to work". Was your troop tiny? Have you managed to get to 21? How did you do it? How long did it take - months or years? Do you actively recruit only younger ones, or across the board? I'm concerned that if I recruit older ones, we won't have enough of a program fo

Has anyone utilized Hilcourt's "Green Bar Patrol" method of training patrol leaders? I'm currently trying to pull together as much information as I can find because patrol leader training is completely missing from Girl Scouts in this day. Patrols get at most a paragraph in the handbooks and leaders' books now. Yikes! Green Bar Patrol sounds easily doable to me, the main thing being the extra time involved to do it. Anne in Mpls

Apologies folks - I may have overstated things - it gets squishy in my mind sometimes which policies are local and which are from GSUSA. Here in my local council, we are required to sign the council's "Principles of Inclusiveness" which prohibits any specifically religious activity at a Girl Scout event. Uh huh...I live and work in a Council where we are forbidden to sing Johnny Appleseed. I abide by this prohibitions at all Council events. Our troop elected to have a moment of silence before meals which we do at all troop functions whether or not we get frowned at a bit. Religious servic