John-in-KC

House passed the legislation 263-171. Buckle your seat belts. If AP is to be believed, House passed Senate legislation in toto, and it's off to 1600 Pennsylvania for a signature party. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081003/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown George W Bush: The Republican who believed in writing new deficits. That will be his political legacy.

I spent the evening at District Roundtable with a 150 Scouting friends. I think serving the Scouters who serve the youth was a good use of my time No Kabuki Theater for me, thank you. And yes, I am locked in to McCain-Palin for this cycle. Now if we could just get someone to re-enact Glass-Steagall, hold a bank holiday, and put some backbone in the US economy, instead of holding a 700 thousand million dollar fire sale.

Title IV, United States Code, Chapter 1, Section 8 http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:+4USC8 You may also find this at the Cornell University US Code site: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/4/usc_sec_04_00000008----000-.html (j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.

There are nine employees in my Council who have daily contact with our Scout Reservations: - Two Directors in our office. These are Professional Service guys. One is approaching the end of his tenure as a Professional, the other is about ready to get his own Council. Each one has primary responsibility for one of our Scout Reservations. - Two Reservation Rangers, one at each. One is an AIA architect, the other a master operating engineer. Both are experienced emergency managers. One is THE emergency management director for his county, the other a captain with his own engine/crew in an area VFD. - Two Reservation Assistant Rangers, one at each. - The larger Reservation also has three Craft/Trade folk: Plumber, Electrician, Carpenter. It also has an office secretary. Professional camp staff is hugely about maintaining property, and hugely about procurement, marketing, HR, and ... compliance. I commend to you a long talk with your current Council Reservation Director.

It gets more fun. UC's in my Council have the task of re-contacting "lost boys" from Cub recruitment to try and re-sell them/their parents on Scouting. That's in addition to contacting the true lost boys, who drop at recharter.

Wally, The trick is this: Putting Win All U Can in here clearly associates the activity with the curriculum. I have to wonder how many WB learners are so Type A they'd go and find the curriculum online? Lisa... I fully endorse what you said. WAUC may have a curriculum desired outcome, but it is a game that can have multiple unintended lessons and consequences. I wonder what an adult educational psychologist would say about it in a professional journal?

"Better to pay the piper now than get run over by da entire band in the comin' years. Unless you're an unethical, socialist pseudo-republican fool of an executive who just wants to get out of Dodge and leave the problem to the next guy." Beavah, Tell us how you really feel! John

Like Lisa, before we go off and discuss linkages, what's the deeper question? That way, we can point you to the right person, be they on Commissioner Service, the District Committee, or the Professional providing full time support...

What I wrote my Congresscritters... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dear X, As your Constituent, I'm sending a short and simple message to you. You're acting exactly as described by John Adams in the stage play and movie 1776: "Piddling, Twiddling, and Resolving ... not one damn thing are you solving." Right now I do not see the Congress having one creative brain cell in all 535 minds. We need the Congress to do its share. Re-enact Glass-Steagall. Call a bank holiday. Eliminate 3d generation and beyond derivative financial instruments. Provide a backstop to the lack of investor confidence in the American economic system. I'm as conservative a Republican as you'll find, but one problem of de-regulation is people are greedy. It's within the Federal purview to manage greed. Very Truly Yours, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The one thing I've noticed: There is more than enough blame to go around. Consumers, Bankers, stockbrokers, Congress, regulatory agencies. We're all involved.

I despise C-rations if I'm out walking. WEIGHT. I am so glad the C-ration and its final form, the Meal, Combat Individual, is gone. Meals Rejected by Ethiopians are novel, but LNT friendly they aren't! There are plenty of dehydrated no-cooks out there. Beef jerky ... especially if you're able to make it at home, can be fantastic. Store bought stuff is so salty it demands water, but when friends make homemade jerky, they use maybe 10% of the salt commercial stuff uses. PB&J works, especially on hard biscuits such as Rich-Moor's Pilot Biscuit. My thoughts.

One challenge you will have in going to one year POR cycles is managing new First Class Scouts who are starting the S-L-E ladder. Your SM will have to be creative in assigning PORs or supplemental projects which meet the standards of Requirements #33215.

One comment from the Venturing leader specific training: *The Uniform* is not a method of Venturing, as it is Cub Scouting or Boy Scouting. The Crew can determine the attire they choose to wear, be it coat and tie, a band uniform, costumage for a theater-arts crew, a T-shirt, or the items Supply Corporation furnishes. As for the burlap cloth BSA furnished gray trou and shorts, I know more than one crew which has elected to discard them, uniform guide be hung. Columbia, Cabela's and REI all make peer items of better quality at lesser price. Young adults tend to think in those terms.

Allow me to offer today's Blinding Flash of the Obvious: This young man is in full up authority rebellion. He's jerking the chain looking for the reaction. Has anyone thought of taking this young man aside and having a long, long talk with him ... letting him do 80-90% of the talking and doing some active listening? There's a root problem somewhere that he's acting out by refusing to be a team player. I sure as heck cannot tell you what it is from here, but the description fits the mold of the problem pretty well. This is also one of those times where the Scouts parents need to be consulted ... independently and with privacy/respect. You're not going to solve the problem of team playing if you don't determine the source of the dynamic. Tongue now firmly in cheek... Or you can do nothing, and watch your PL/SPL get frustrated, or worse, lose it and punch the kids lights out... Or you can just remove the kid from your troop, and hope he's not in trouble with the gendarmerie a year from now....(This message has been edited by John-in-KC)

I'm in agreement with GW, Beavah, and Gunny. 1 - If the young man is the symptom of a problem, then address the problem. 2 - The right person to first have the friendly cup is the CC, then if needed involved the COR. If you have a Commissioner Service worthy of the name, bring them into the loop. 3 - If there are questionable MBs etc, have the CC or unit advancement person coordinte with the District Advancement Chair. Rogue MB Counselors aren't needed around Scouting; he's the one who signs off on their ability to Counsel!

Something tells me more than a few Councils have their own spin on implementing the course, no matter how many CD's give an oath to precisely follow the syllabus. All I will say is our class had a grand time weekend 2. We did the round robin of patrol projects, we visited with our TG about tickets, and we had a couple classes, but really, what we had was a weekend to rest.

He has a right to be upset. Whoever in his Council has charge of uploading data to ScoutNet, didn't. There's an easy way for BSA to fix this: Put a training record module in MyScouting. Allow US, the volunteers, to see what is in ScoutNet for us. Then, we can take discrepancies back up the line... and get them fixed. Of course, that would mean the IT shop at National, the Council Solutions Group, and our Registrars would actually have to do some work.

That can be fixed. One of the stores that has an existing BSA license needs to license the ax and log logo, and start making namecard holders. Yeah, I don't like the plastic namebadges either. Great for using on a Class B uniform when I'm a camp staffer/commissioner, but otherwise I'd like a little uniqueness in my life.

Uh... I was SHOUTING! Caps were malice aforethought. I thought I was being nice in not going bold, underline, italic, and large text size. If second weekend is fast pace, I'd hate to think how you'd do in one of the units I serve or in my day job.

Who's gonna provide all that stuff?

FAST PACE??? SECOND WEEKEND? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT????!!!!??? That was one of the most laid-back campouts I ever had. We were good, but not great, field campers. We planned menus on a combination of what we liked to make/bring, what we knew we could cook, and how we could use leftovers for good. Both dinners were elaborate for camp cooking, but since we had a good duty roster and a good understanding of who was supplementing where, we had a blast. John I used to be an Owl C-40-05

All those plates and cups in the camp cook kit come in handy for serving stuff at the table! The cups come in handy for measuring liquid and dry ingredients. No problem with the classic cook kit. In fact, I have my families version of it. We camped every summer as our vacation in my youth; it was great on top of the Coleman stove. If I really want to go to town on making soups and chilis, that cook kit comes out at home now! As far as flys go, guess it depends on if you are going to camp heavy or light, and what the prevalant winds are like. In Flyover Country USA, we get LOTS of wind; we'd need 18" stakes to keep a simple fly down. We used the carports with quite fair success.

I use BW's solution for my Owl! Amazing thing, rubber cement!

What emb021 describes is very similar to what our local VOA does for allnighter activities. - Males under 21 - Females under 21 - Males over 21 - Females over 21

Neill's post has a lot of meat on the bones. Short version, thanks to National a bit over a year ago: If you choose to recharter a boy who quit showing up, that's your problem. National expects the unit to be in contact with each registered youth member, be that through Troop meetings, PL/SPL contact, SM contact, or newsletters. Did he complete his time in his POR? Did he complete the 21 MBs he needs for Eagle? Has he performed his Eagle Leadership Service Project such it will pass muster at the EBOR? Does he live the values of the Scout Oath and Law in his daily life? If you answered yes to all those, his next steps are to start his Eagle app according to your Council's local procedures. If the answer is no, he has work to do. Recently I had a youth member we'd not seen in over a year. He was turning 17. A couple of us Scouters went to his home and visited with him. We told him what he needed to do to, if he wanted to earn Eagle. We told his Dad (an Eagle Scout) as well. We told him if he'd work with us, we'd work with him. OTOH, we also told him if he was the invisible man, we weren't going to recharter him at years end, and that he'd have to find another unit. We told him specifically when he'd age out of Boy Scouting, and when he could not finish the 3 long term MBs before aging out. He showed up a couple times, then sank back into quietness. At years' end, we didn't recharter him. We did send him a copy of his records. To my knowledge, he decided (or just didn't) that Eagle wasn't part of who he was. I wish you well. I commend to your SM and CC that they scrub the youth member roster each year at recharter time.

OK, your location lists you as Heidelberg Military Community (or whatever USAREUR is calling it this week). The Transatlantic Area Council might be able to help you with adult recruitment: http://www.tac-bsa.org/ You are in the Edelweiss District. Here's the page with their Key 3: http://www.tac-bsa.org/tacbsa/Edelweiss.html They may have insights on triggers for folks who are stationed in Europe at the moment. Al and Karen both have given you good ideas, too.