JoeBob

I was pleasantly surprised by these covered toe water shoes from BassPro: https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/world-wide-sportsman-lost-river-water-shoes-for-men The neoprene liner makes them very comfortable without socks. They dry out almost instantly. I wore thick poly socks for portages to resist pebbles and sand. The soles are thick enough that you don't feel every rock poking through when you've got a 17 foot canoe on your back; and they held to my foot well so that I wasn't slipping and sliding around in my wet shoes. No ankle support; but when I'm kneeling in the boat, that's a good thing. I'm still enjoying them as my go-to fishing shoes.

Fred, I love you. From 6 feet away.

I ask for Tomahawk missiles, and this is what I get:

Tomahawk missiles. I need to buy at least two...

Why do you assume that missing summer camp is a failure? Is that a requirement that I am not aware of? Can a scout not have a full and satisfying scouting experience through troop and patrol camping?

And Northern Tier.

I highly recommend a decent hammock. Check other threads for hammock camping tips. I sleep better in my hammock on a hillside than I sleep at home on our $2000 mattress. When the others retire early, I crawl in and read a book on my phone until I drift off. The little gear tie twists are great for hanging a small LED flashlight from your bug screen. The only challenge when Cub camping is late night latrine visits. Once you settle into your hammock, your really are reluctant to come out...

G2SS has killed a lot of the boys adventure.

Late to the topic and trying to digest the entire thread in one sitting. I completely agree with the second sentiment: BLOW UP THE COUNCILS! We don't need them. The only good things that Council ever provided me was a storage space for our district archery equipment (could be much cheaper as a Public Storage space and with better access!) and the Scout Shop (which could be handled better as an online resource with less traffic.) Camps can be run independently, left to fail, or be replaced by state parks. The only other things that came out of that hulking real estate cow patty were negative bureaucratic effluent. These are the only two council services that require a real person. But if their offices were at the Scout Camp, maybe they would be more sensitive to conditions there. I disagree that 'the ever-continuing decline in membership' is a problem. I don't follow the premise that bigger is better. I yearn for a BSA that is half the size in numbers, but still twice the moral beacon of yesteryear. Many of today's youth are into gaming or sports. They don't want to be Scouts. That's okay. Why should we waste our resources trying to convince them otherwise? I think we could borrow a line from the USMC: "The few. The Proud. The Boy Scouts." The only benefit from higher enrollment numbers is more dues money to pay bureaucrats' inflated salaries.

Tort reform would certainly help. If you have deep pockets, some lawyer somewhere is trying to think of a way to take your money.

May I adjust your wording? Make American Boy Scouts Great Again. MABSGA!

Don't tell plaintiff's counsel that BSA is a congressionally mandated charter. Talk about deep pockets; if the feds are paying, even I probably can remember some sexual abuse. Lemme work on it...

National employees did a lot of flying.

I'm curious as to the relative value of the 4 HA bases. Northern Tier is a medium sized outpost. Not a lot of real estate. BSA does not own the Boundary Waters. (Sorry lawyers.) I can guess that Seabase would have about the same value as Northern Tier, for the same reasons. Bechtel, because of the mortgage , may be a negative. Especially since BSA paid more than the land was actually worth. But Philmont... That is acreage. Who wouldn't want to retire to the 'Tooth of Time' retirement community, where age really bites?

If I'm 'waiting with baited breath', does that mean that I have to put worms in my mouth? Do Red Wrigglers taste better than Night Crawlers?

Irrational posters? That's crazy! Oh.

JTE is an artificial adult measurement. I'd bet that less than 5% of Scouts can tell you what JTE stands for.

I'll resist any ban of my semiautomatic butter knives. You'll have to pry them from my cold slippery fingers!

For crosscutting, we would make a 'Deadman' log sawhorse. It looked something like above, but we'd use 8 foot long green logs and auger holes to bury the ends. Lashing the two cross sections and one cross-brace gives you a very stable platform at waist height so that you can really get going with your two man crosscut.

I love the way the end of your sentence refutes beginning, honestly! Weak arguments that have little basis in fact or logic fail to stand against dispassionate analysis. http://slavenorth.com/slavenorth.htm On to climate change!

Eh... The War of Northern Aggression was not started over slavery. It was an economic move to force Southern states to support a fledgling Northern industrialization. The slavery issue was used as a crutch long after the war started to justify conscription of the unwilling. Read the newspaper editorials of the times and check your dates. (Conscription Riots) If slavery was the focus of the war, why did Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation free only the Southern slaves and not those remaining in Northern territories? To foster a slave rebellion that he hoped would siphon off troops. Southern generals were traitors? Not according to the Northern generals who recruited many of them to serve in the US Army after the war. I trust the judgement of military minds who fought as adversaries and then as allies, to be better informed of the character of their contemporary Southern generals than some armchair distortionist attempting to warp history to fit today's political correctness. I'm not a Southern apologist. The South doesn't have a damn thing to apologize for.

Or sold something for a profit...

Or never killed an Indian.

It's hard to find a Founding Father who never owned a slave.

Hiding history doesn't change history. It just makes you ignorant. And political correctness hasn't done Scouting much good so far.