MarkS

Bob White said, "...[the annual charter agreement] does not give priority of the CO's policies and guidelines over those of BSA's. It gives them equal importance. It says when conducting the Scouting Program that the rules of both the CO and BSA are to be followed." The agreement does seem to give priority to the CO where it says that the council will respect the aims and objectives of the [chartering] organization and offer the resources of Scouting to help in meeting those objectives. Are the methods rules or are they resources (tools) or are they both? I think they are tools,

jblake47 said, "So, if the methods are not required, the boy has only a uniform shirt, and his troop was adult led troop method, does that mean he doesn't get his Eagle?" Those are all examples of the methods of scouting. All the methods are equally important. However, the aims (including our mission) of scouting are more important than any method. They are why we serve (or at least they should be). If the only way for your program to produce a young men who are physically, mentally, and emotionally fit; have a high degree of self-reliance as evidenced in such qualities as initiative

Because they are still tools for achieving the goals of scouting as described in the BSA mission and vision statements. Our unit practices all the methods of scouting. However, we don't confuse the methods with what our goal is.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

OGE, are those questions rhetorical? What are you suggesting? It's tough to tell when you can only read a post because none of that non-verbal communication makes it thru. It sounds to me that you are suggesting that if the uniform is a roadblock to a young person participating in scouting, a unit should not attempt to fulfill its mission and vision for that young person... of preparing them to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law, and to become a responsible, participating citizen and leader who is guided by the Sc

Avionics Systems Engineer currently working in aircraft computer and display systems. Sounds like Ohio_Scouter and I are competitors... poor fella. ;-)

A good way to figure out your dues is with the following equation... d = ( b - f ) / m where d is the dues, b is your budget, f your income from fundraising, and m is the number of boys in your unit (m for membership). Our unit collected dues twice a year. Right before recharter and at the beginning of a new school year to coincide with our council's fall recruitment campaign.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

Beavah said, "If community polarization and animosity is your goal, yeh might be doing a good job. If service to the community and to children is your goal, I reckon yeh should be ashamed." Why the heck should he care about the communities. The guy lives in Minnesota, not Santa Maria, California or Pike Peak. What the scouts can do for those communities is not important. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't affect his.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

Merlyn, In your research have you verified that all funds have been used for... "Over a 1, 2, or 3-year period, as selected by the grantee, not less than 70 percent of CDBG funds must be used for activities that benefit low- and moderate-income persons. In addition, each activity must meet one of the following national objectives for the program: benefit low- and moderate-income persons, prevention or elimination of slums or blight, or address community development needs having a particular urgency because existing conditions pose a serious and immediate threat to the health or welfa

Can one really be truly manly if one has to determine whether or not they or their beliefs fit in a particular definition of manliness? I don't think one can be manly if they have to question what being manly is. However, if one must seek some outside source or inspiration to verify their manliness, you might as well have fun with it. Therefore I suggest the works of Bruce Feirstein for confirmation.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

The BSA values ***ARE*** our program. The outdoors is merely our classroom.

Is a patrol required to ask permission of an SM before they go on a hike outside the confines of a troop activity? I don't think so but they will certainly need their parents permission. If I were an SM of a troop, I would tell my patrols that they can plan their own activities outside the confines of troop activities (from a video game lock-in at one of their homes to a hike to a campout). I would only require that they get permission from their parents and I'd advise them if they asked for help. In reality though, the chances of the patrols in my unit doing this is neglibible but n

Bob White said, "The Venture Patrol and a Venturing Crew are two separate units..." Yes, BW is exactly correct on his description of the Venture Patrol. However, the small Venturing Crew sponsored by our CO consists pretty much of all the older boys in our Venture Patrol via dual registration, and their girlfriends and sisters. The boys that still need Eagle are working on their advancement in the Troop and help with Troop activities but for the most part all their HA activities are planned by the crew. It works pretty well for the Troop from a planning standpoint. The work gets spre

Eusebius of Caesarea

OGE, when it comes to ham radio, you're talking about Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS). Pappy, there are tons of ham radio web sites devoted to operating morse code on the net.

No but I think it was some variation because they were tapping on walls. It's difficult to get the 1:3 timing between a dit and a dah when you're tapping on a wall because a scrape may not be heard on the other side while a tap would. Also. Just realized your test message is not really representative of a real emergency call. In a real emergency you would send SOS serveral times followed by your ID, wait just a few seconds for a reply, and repeat. Once you get a reply, you then send your location and situation. This is because if a listener is tuning across the radio band looking for a si

Morse Code suggestion... I'm not sure how you're teaching Morse Code but if you're using the dot and dash symbols, you're making it harder than it has to be. You should teach the sounds, the boys should be thinking that "A" sounds like di-dah, or "B" sounds like dah-di-di-dit and just writing it down. With enough practice they'll start recognizing words and will be able to head copy and just writing down notes. When you hear "my name is" enough times, you don't copy that and just write down the guy's name. It's harder to learn I just heard di-dah, which is .- which is an "A." Copying the

scoutmomma said, "The City of Philadelphia says otherwise, or this never would have come up. As I understand it, their concern is not to violate their own non-discriminatory policy because they don't want to lose federal funding." Merlyn said (sorry about butchering your username), "Leasing government property for $1/year is subsidising the BSA, which is a discriminatory organization. They can stay if they pay market rates, because then the city won't be subsidising them." Agreed that the city is saying that BSA was violating the ordinance they wrote subsequent to the original lease

Merilyn said, "Government-supported discrimination doesn't fit their agenda. Things were fine until the BSA decided it was a private club that needed to discriminate against people." I don't agree that honoring the original lease constitutes government-supported discrimination. All the BSA has done is not succumb to creeping normalcy.

If I correctly recall what I've read, CoL completed a major renovation of the property some years back. That combined with regular maintenance exceeds an average of $200,000 a year. Seems like Philly just bought themselves a money pit.

kb6jra asked, "I wonder how many unit leaders are chosen because they have the uniform and the time and meet no other qualification?" Given that our current SM's youngest ages out in October combined with the fact we haven't been able to recruit additional leaders in the last couple years, you might be describing my fate. What we did last time was a luxury.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

Beavah asked, "Small committee of only three plus scouters in committee roles makes that really tight. Selecting from just ASMs makes it even tighter, eh?" Yep and there was some thinking of looking outside the current adult leadership for a new scoutmaster but it was decided that the few available would serve well--even if there might be a little bit of a learning curve to climb. Beavah asked, "Was there any youth or parent input? Or didn't yeh see that as bein' valuable?" Didn't ask the youth but did ask (frequently and extensively before the process started) for parent input

Beavah asked, "How is it that da committee is able to rank the various candidates? How many of the committee are both trained and experienced? Have they really watched each candidate in action so as to be able to make an honest evaluation? Do all your committee members go campin' and sit in on TLT and such?" Beavah... what we did is steps 2 thru 5 as described in Ch. 5 of the Troop Committee Guidebook (our CO is the PTO of a local elementary school so CO involvement was, well, you know). It's important to note that our unit of 20+ boys has a group of six highly motivated scouters whe

Our committee starts of by putting together a list of desired qualities for a postion, individuals are graded 1 thru 10 for each quality by each member of the committee, the grades from the committee are averaged and then multiplied a weighting factor based on the importance of the quality to the committee, finally the grades are added up and to deteremine which candidate has the highest score (just like any other trade study)... then we usually choose the one guy willing to do the job (just like most scouting units it seems). The last time we had two candidates for SM and the qualities w

Beavah said, "Yah, fgoodwin, I didn't see any flamin', eh? MarkS and I and others were havin' a friendly and animated discussion about issues. Nobody was rippin' on anyone personally." I'm certainly happy you didn't think there was any flaming going on. I know I was close but tried not to cross that line. I lost a friend on my High School Cross Country Team in a car accident. He was a passenger in a vehicle driven by a teen who was experiencing a drizzly rain for the first time. The driver was going too fast but not terribly so, skidded, didn't know how to recover properly, and wrapp

hops_scout said, "From the articles I've read (both here and on the Belleville News-Democrat's website) it sounds to me like the program might have technically been illegal to begin with. It talks about the driving curfew being moved up to 11PM instead of midnight. They already said that they are driving until as late at 2AM." Actually under the old law 16 year-olds had the 12:01 am curfew and 17 year-olds had no curfew. Under the new law both have an 11 pm curfew. Safe Ride drivers had to be at least 17 with 1 year of driving experience so they wouldn't have been in violation of the old