Aquila calva

We tell the scouts going to summer camp, they have three main jobs at camp: 1) Have fun. 2) Work on advancements. 3) Be safe. Use the buddy system. Follow the camp rules, and take a shower every day, and while you're at it, check carefully for ticks, especially deer ticks. Lyme disease is a real concern and the best way to avoid getting sick is to remove the ticks within 24 hours. It works. Also, without raising alarm, we explain to parents and scouts the symptoms of Lyme disease and West Nile virus, just to keep everyone as safe as possible. Those are two things we didn't need to worry about, oh so many years ago.... Here is a quote from a website on Lyme disease. "If a tick is attached to your skin for less than 24 hours, your chance of getting Lyme disease is extremely small. But just to be safe, monitor your health closely after a tick bite and be alert for any signs and symptoms of tick-borne illness."(This message has been edited by Aquila calva)

Hereajo, Probably the last three things you need right now are: 1) A lecture on the origin of the saying The buck stops here 2) Being told you passed the buck and that you are trying to be a Monday morning quarterback 3) Being told you didnt pass the buck far enough You clearly are trying hard to deal with this difficult situation. Pick and choose from the many above posts for as much helpful information as you can glean. Keep talking with people you know and trust about the many wonderful opportunities there are available in scouting. Continue doing the best you can for your son and your family. Have fun scouting.

When it comes to justice and mercy we should never pass the buck. A few more thoughts... Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. Dwight David Eisenhower All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope Winston Churchill If you want peace, work for justice. Henry Louis Mencken

Questions for hereajo and/or klcbaskets, regarding these incidents. What were the positions of the parents of the offender? How did they react to these incidents? Apparently their car was in the parking lot at an OA function indicating they were at the event. Are they registered leaders in the troop? One post says: The airsoft gun was in the offenders parents car in the parking lot of the scout camp. The gun was pointed at the victim in the parking lot of the scout camp. The victim feared for his saftey when the gun was pointed at him. There has been trouble with the offender and siblings before Is the offenders family enmeshed in the troop? He has siblings in the troop. When a scout unit becomes the safe-haven for bullies, youth or adult, the whole Scouting organization suffers. Has this unit become a safe-haven for bullies, young and old? Report as LongHaul outlines above.

It is best when the Scoutmaster and Committee Chair have a friendly working relationship. They need to be able to communicate openly and honestly with each other. So, get the Scoutmaster's opinion when selecting a new CC. In effect, the new CC will become the most immediate and direct supervisor of the Scoutmaster. Have fun scouting.

Adding to the "Merry Christmas" mix, something written 53 years ago today. Have fun scouting. E.B. White, Christmas Greeting, 1952 From this high midtown hall, undecked with boughs, unfortified with mistletoe, we send forth our tinselled greetings as of old, to friends, to readers, to strangers of many conditions in many places. Merry Christmas to uncertified accountants, to tellers who have made a mistake in addition, to girls who have made a mistake in judgment, to grounded airline passengers, and to all those who cant eat clams! We greet with particular warmth people who wake and smell smoke. To captains of river boats on snowy mornings we send an answering toot at this holiday time. Merry Christmas to intellectuals and other despised minorities! Merry Christmas to the musicians of Muzak and men whose shoes dont fit! Greetings of the season to unemployed actors and the blacklisted everywhere who suffer for sins uncommitted; a holly thorn in the thumb of compilers of lists! Greetings to wives who cant find their glasses and to poets who cant find their rhymes! Merry Christmas to the unloved, the misunderstood, the overweight. Joy to the authors of books whose titles begin with the word How (as though they knew!). Greetings to people with a ringing in their ears; greetings to growers of gourds, to shearers of sheep, and to makers of change in the lonely underground booths! Merry Christmas to old men asleep in libraries! Merry Christmas to people who cant stay in the same room with a cat! We greet, too, the boarders in boarding houses on 25 December, the duennas in Central Park in fair weather and foul, and young lovers who got nothing in the mail. Merry Christmas to people who plant trees in city streets; merry Christmas to people who save prairie chickens from extinction! Greetings of a purely mechanical sort to machines that thinkplus a sprig of artificial holly. Joyous Yule to Cadillac owners whose conduct is unworthy of their car! Merry Christmas to the defeated, the forgotten, the inept; joy to all dandiprats and bunglers! We send, most particularly and most hopefully, our greetings and our prayers to soldiers and guardsmen on land and sea and in the airthe young men doing the hardest things at the hardest time of life. To all such, Merry Christmas, blessings, and good luck! We greet the Secretaries-designate, the President-elect; Merry Christmas to our new leaders, peace on earth, good will, and good management! Merry Christmas to couples unhappy in doorways! Merry Christmas to all who think they are in love but arent sure! Greetings to people waiting for trains that will take them in the wrong direction, to people doing up a bundle and the string is too short, to children with sleds and no snow! We greet ministers who cant think of a moral, gagmen who cant think of a joke.Greetings, too, to the inhabitants of other planets; see you soon! And last, we greet all skaters on small natural ponds at the edge of woods toward the end of afternoon. Merry Christmas, skaters! Ring, steel! Grow red, sky! Die down, wind! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morrow! -E.B. White, 12/20/52 P.S. Indeed.

Safety. Troop has an ASM who is a New York City firefighter! What a resource! Sounds like a chance to have some troop training on safety, rescue, and all the great equipment used. The scouts will love it. Embrace opportunity. Life is full of choices. Have fun scouting.

Congratulations to your son on being elected patrol leader of his venture patrol. He can help plan some fun activities for himself and his friends. Has he set a date for his Eagle project yet? He will want to start recruiting helpers now, so they can put the project on their family calendars. Has he finished all his merit badges for Eagle? He will want to work on those, too. And then there are those required letters of recommendation that need to be gathered. Remember the variation on the old saying If youre going to put all your eggs in one basketwatch that basket! Joining a Boy Scout Troop is basically putting all your eggs in one basketso to speak. Your son has invested a lot of time and energy in scouting and in this troop and he is rightly focusing on the Eagle goal. He can certainly join another troop, but there is no guarantee it will be better than the one he is in. (You can talk to the District Advancement Chair with your questions.) And then, there are the questions about his friends in the troop and what they will do. Can all the members of the troop help make the troop better? Cooperation is better than confrontation, almost always. This troop sounds like it has a lot of good things going for it. Yes, there are some major challenges. Of course, life is full of challenges. The challenges are falling heavily on a few older scouts and their families right now. It is OK to put all your eggs in one basket. Just watch that basket. Have fun scouting.

Congratulations to your son on getting his Eagle project approved at the district level. It sounds like he found a helpful adult leader in the district advancement chair. Your son stands on the doorstep of a major life-time accomplishment. His Eagle project sounds like it will be a lot of fun. Help him remain a leader among his friends in the troop. They will also need him to help them on their Eagle projects. You are an observant father and you clearly care a lot about how your son is being treated, and how your son is handling these matters. This is all a very serious subject for your son, for his friends in the troop, for you and for the other families involved. There are Scout Leaders all over the country right now who are feeling the pain in this situation. Again, the scoutmasters actions are indefensible. They are not the Scouting Way. Where he learned such behavior is speculation. Perhaps he had a scoutmaster who did the same thing to him years ago. Maybe he was prevented from getting Eagle because of such adult behavior. This amounts to abuse of power. Scouting isnt about wielding power and causing emotional pain in young people. Scouting isnt about hiring and firing anybody. Setting a scout up as SPL for 17 months and then jerking the position away from him, is not the Scouting Way. Scouting is about having fun, learning and teaching leadership, responsibility, helpfulness and all the other points of the Scout Oath and Law. Sometime, when you have a private moment with your son, ask him to recite the Oath and Law for you. You can say it is practice for his Eagle Board of Review. He needs to hold onto these ideals, now more than ever. Help your son have fun with his troop, even if the scoutmaster and committee chair dont want, or are incapable of being much help to him. This is highly unfortunate and again it is not the Scouting Way. Your son needs the signatures of these two people on his Eagle application. From the repeated use of the phrase forced to join a venture patrol, there seems to be an indication that a venture patrol may be totally new to this troop. Are there troop leaders who are trained and interested in leading high adventure trips with these scouts? The transition out of the SPL position can be difficult for a scout, no matter how it was done. Troop adult leadership needs to help offer other more advanced scouting opportunities in order to retain the older scouts. This is the reason scouting offers the option of a venture patrol within troops. Just out of curiosity, can you tell us when the troop had its last Eagle scout? Can you find out how many second-year Webelos there are coming into the troop next Spring from the troops feeder pack? This information could be helpful to future members of the troop, and may offer an avenue to help prevent this same thing from happening again. Just to lighten the mood a bit and to try and be helpful, is it possible to take heart in the old saying When handed a bag of lemons, make lemonade. A glass of lemonade, anyone? Have fun scouting.

Giving advice can be like stepping into quicksandbut here goes anywayMore advice from a troop committee chair who hopefully lives far away from the troop in this story The scoutmasters actions are indefensible from a procedural point of view (Is there another side to this story we havent heard, such as the rock-climbing incident was somehow life-threatening and the youth leaders were somehow responsible?just speculation now.) The scoutmaster is dealing with his frustrations in an unfair manner. He is the long-time volunteer scoutmaster and he has the support of the volunteer committee chair. From the sound of this story both need more training from qualified volunteer and professional trainers. Or they could both benefit from reading the available scouting manuals. But it is the parent who asked for advice, not the adult leaders. Stating the obvious firstScout and parent need to continue their focus on the productive future of the scout. Eagle advancement provides great leadership opportunities. Now that the scout has the approval of the scoutmaster and committee chair on his Eagle project, he needs to take it to the district leaders. This is normal procedure in our district. Maybe he will find someone at the district who is willing and able to help him take his project to completion. (Does the troop have an adult leader trained as an Eagle Coach?) Since the scout appears to have the support of other scouts in his troop, he should have no trouble recruiting them to help on his Eagle project. The scout will eventually need the signatures of SM and CC on his Eagle application (not to mention those letters of recommendation). One important question for the scout and parent to ask and answerhas the scout fulfilled the requirement of six months of leadership in a troop position since becoming a Life Scout? If he has, ask the scoutmaster to sign off that requirement in the scouts book. If the scoutmaster removed him before the end of a six month term as SPL, this action may prevent the scout from fulfilling this requirement and thus he will not be eligible for Eagle until the requirment is completed. Does the scoutmaster have ulterior motives? If the scout has spent 4 or 5 years around this scoutmaster, and they are now not getting along, it may be time for the scout to finish up his Eagle and hopefully be better trained than the scoutmaster. The scout should continue having fun with his friends doing high adventure activities, too. Another piece of advice (it is cheap, after all!), dont change troops at this point unless it is the last resort. Since the Eagle project is now approved on a unit level, get it done as a member of that unit if at all possible. Getting involved in another troop, with another set of adult leaders will just take time and energy away from completing the advancement. The scout could someday be a very good scoutmaster, if not president. Have fun scouting.

Twenty-year scoutmaster has seen all this before. Sixteen year-old and inactive parent have seen none of this before. Scoutmaster and Committee Chair are tight, as they need to be. Scoutmaster doesnt want, or is unable, to put more effort into leadership training for this one sixteen year old. Reasons dont really matter. Scoutmaster is a volunteer. Focus sons efforts on completing Eagle project and other necessary advancement. Help him have fun in his Venture Patrol. He is an intelligent young man with a lot of spunk who is well-liked by his peers. He could be president of the United States someday. Have fun in scouting.