MattR

It's still a great project. At 16 it was gear to grow food. At 22 it was that plus teaching people how to grow food. Clearly not a typical scout.

3 hours ago, mrjohns2 said:

I'm confused

As we all are. Election doesn't make you an OA member, completing the ordeal does.

As said before  the term election isn't very accurate.

I like the nomination process because it worked in my troop. Scouts knew the other scouts better than the adults in my troop. It was never a popularity contest in my troop. Every time I disagreed with the scout vote and started asking questions I was corrected.

The biggest problem was that the scouts had long memories. If you were a butt it would take a few years to change that perception.

Welcome to the forum, @DocDeVivo .

Any uniform is acceptable, no matter how old.

15 hours ago, Cambridgeskip said:

I do though think that the Young Leader scheme is excellent. This is where 14-17 year old explorer scouts effectively become apprentice adult leaders with Beavers, Cubs or Scouts. It ahs helped us produce multiple adult leaders

I've always thought before that having a wider age range in scouts helped promote the magic of older scouts working with young. To me  that magic was what scouting was about. And yet I can see how splitting that age group could help the scouts see the transition from younger scout to older. I had a lot of conversations with scouts along the lines of you're no longer the young scouts, it's time to start helping out.

Something about the UK group system could also help that as well. The BSA also struggles with the transition between age ranges because they're separate units. If the same leadership ran through the entire age range then maybe those transactions would be easier.

It's nice to talk about it but speaking of an uphill battle ...

10 hours ago, qwazse said:

lamb (and lime and mango in which to marinate it),

10 hours ago, qwazse said:

I called it "My Big Fat Greek Vegetarian Chili."

Lamb is vegetarian?

I think I might hijack this thread again. The topic of trailers is a type of hot button issue for me. It's not the trailer so much as the mindset it creates. I'm fine with a trailer to make it easier for more scouts to get in fewer cars. What I dislike is the attitude of "we have a trailer, just bring all the gear we could possibly need." I'd talk about Thrifty and it just never resonated with anyone. What people want vs what they need. When I did a lot of backpacking I got really good at knowing the difference.

I forced the troop to dump the huge patrol boxes that did take four adults to move. We replaced those with a patrol tote on wheels that two scouts could easily deal with. I wanted to go one step further and do similar to what I did as a scout; divy up all the needed patrol gear at the meeting before we went camping and leave the rest behind. Nobody understood. I'd point out the cooking requirements that included making a list of gear needed and, again, it just never connected.

Now, I just feel like I'm getting in the way. I don't participate anymore, because of things just like this.

I can only tell you what my troop does. Decades ago we wrote a document explaining the process of selecting a new SM or CC. We've followed that ever since. If that doesn't exist take this as a learning experience.

Since there seems to be only one person willing to take the job, as seems to be typical anymore, most of this is moot. However, if the new guy is not acceptable to enough people then the committee should have a discussion about how to go forward.

This all said, the behind the scenes talking to people to figure who is interested is the unofficial part that's going to happen.

Best of luck in these tough times.

10 hours ago, ramanous said:

In my observation, the scouts tend to congregate in the kitchen while cooking then disperse when it comes time to clean-up saying they helped cooked so someone else should do the clean-up (who tend to be younger scouts that then stop coming to outings.)

My observation: Nobody enjoys cleaning. So everyone should help. The scout in charge doesn't actually clean anything. Instead, he or she is responsible for finding tasks and delegating them, making sure they get done.

Next observation: a patrol that understands teamwork has no problem with cleaning or anything else. A patrol that has poor teamwork won't be helped by a duty roster or even a fairly good PL. It takes a rare leader that can create good teamwork from bad.

We need a watermaster as we have to bring our own water. Either way, it's typically hard to cook without water. 

To me, the whole point of the duty roster is to get the scouts out of the idea of "we just do it all together". It's a tool for the PL to learn how to delegate - grubmaster, cleanup, eventmaster ...

Maybe it would help to sit down with the plc and have them make one with some adult questioning.

7 hours ago, SSScout said:

Oh good. A ""Faith and Chaplaincy"  discussion....   

Told ya we need a separate forum, but noooo....

But if we had one then we couldn't place bets on the next time you'd remind us we didn't have it.

On 4/13/2022 at 3:41 PM, Cburkhardt said:

Other than persons appointed to serve on governance committees as a result of the bankruptcy settlement, do you think BSA alumni who were abused will return to serve youth in the BSA? 

Depends on each individual. Some will, some won't. I'm not sure how this is really different than asking about any alumni.

On 4/13/2022 at 3:41 PM, Cburkhardt said:

If so, what do you think they should or will do as BSA volunteers?

They should and will likely do what best motivates them. Again, depends on each individual.

On 4/13/2022 at 3:41 PM, Cburkhardt said:

Is a sense of reconciliation or forgiveness likely or even possible?

Depends on how whole they are. My father, who left Germany in 1939 when he was 12, never became whole. He never forgave German society for what it did to him. He wasn't too keen with Christian society either. Individual Germans and Christians he would like but as a whole, he was always guarded. Trauma can run deep. But there were many holocaust survivors that did fine. It seems to me it depended on the support they got from family. My dad's family was not great.

As for the CSA survivors, I would expect something similar. Some will be able to forgive and some won't.

On 4/13/2022 at 3:41 PM, Cburkhardt said:

Will BSA volunteer parents of today’s daughters and sons and those who step forward to lead the BSA in the future be perpetually held to account for the negligent oversight and evil acts of the past?

As long as there are survivors that are not whole, of course. Maybe a better question is will the BSA and volunteers be perpetually humble about what happened?

On 4/13/2022 at 3:41 PM, Cburkhardt said:

This is springtime and Easter – a time of potential renewal in all of us and the organizations to which we belong. 

Tonight is also the first night of Passover. The story is about people escaping slavery. Not just physically but emotionally as well. We're all slaves to different things as well, so this is a fairly broad topic. It's also complicated. Truth be told, Moses was never going to live to see the promised land. And yet, Moses still had a good life. Lots of lessons to be had. Sometimes it is all about the children.

This thread has been locked until tomorrow morning. I asked nicely for people to get back on topic. As court is not in session, there's nothing to talk about so this shouldn't be a problem. If this makes no sense to you then please read my previous post.

1 hour ago, MYCVAStory said:

Can you provide some clarification?  How would that be different than a thread related to the confirmation hearing?  Thanks.

Has the judge ever discussed anything about CSA in other youth activities? Or how society has changed, anyone is picking on the BSA, the media or how the bsa is safe enough? I haven't seen it. She has no interest in "the files" so those posts that mention them likely don't belong here.

The judge is interested in the bankruptcy case. This includes the claimants, debtors and those getting swept into this like the insurance companies, the COs and the councils. That's it.

This may seem too restrictive to some of you but please think about how many posts are in this thread. This is part 9. There are roughly 100 pages per part and, I don't know, 20 posts per page? That's roughly 20,000 posts.

If you want to start another thread about the files, the media, and all the rest, go ahead. To be honest, I doubt anyone will and if they do it will quietly die. Every time I've pulled out a sub thread that's exactly what has happened. It doesn't appear that anyone's opinion has changed. Of course, that could be the vast majority of all social media so I'm not mad at anyone. You're all rather passionate about your views and they're all valid. And yet repeating the same arguments over and over again ... isn't going to get anyone outdoors.

I tried and got a 404 error.

We created another thread for this sub topic. This thread is limited to what we think the judge is interested in and I doubt where other CSA occurs is on her radar.

In the past I've tried to keep these threads separate. I gave up on that.

During covid I started watching a YouTube series that gets deep into the science of human biology. It's called medcram and the original intent is to help med students learn. It's very geeky but well explained.

Anyway, I learned yet another reason why we should spend time outside: near infrared sunlight (the stuff that warms us up) helps create melatonin within our cells during the day,  which in turn is used to clean out mitochondria from oxidative stress (caused by creating energy for cells) thus helping our immune system deal with such things as covid.

One cool part is that near infrared will go deep into the body, including going through bone. So, sunshine literally helps clean your brain.

Another cool thing is that green plants do a great job of reflecting infrared light (but not UV) so hanging out under a tree is great.

People that sit inside all day clearly don't get as much sunshine but new, high efficiency windows and lights make it worse because they create or transmit less infrared.

Bottom line, spending time outside is good for you.

9 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

Here's another one...

Fully support sending kits to the battle zone.  But, how much money is the council making off of this per kit?

If you aren't getting any, SAY SO!  If you are taking in money off of this, SAY SO!

But, Caution!:  If you are making money off of this, be prepared for a backlash.  Is it immoral to make money off of someone else's misfortune?

 

https://betterfundraising.org/scout-kit-2/

 

 

And when you go to the website the kits are $20 each.

I also wonder how those kits are going to get to Ukraine. My guess is it would be better to just write a check to someone that has everything already set up to, say, buy first aid supplies in Poland and just drive them to the border.

But to answer your question, this is certainly a duck.

Welcome to the forum, @GeoJeff83

Welcome to the forum.

What are gross receipts? It's in the indirect expenses category.

Here's my guess. The fundraiser is to offset some other expenses like the cost of upkeep on the pool, shotguns, whatever. Those other expenses are the gross receipts. The amount of money made to offset those expenses was $128k in contributions - $60k in direct expenses = $68k. No longer inept but not very cost effective. I mean, if half of my donations went to the cost of raising the money I'd not be thrilled. I also wonder how much salary was in the gross receipts.

Four years in a row of losing money while fundraising means either the council is inept or they're writing off other expenses against it so they don't have to pay as much taxes, or some such accounting games. It's likely legit and opaque unless you dig into the details.

That's great. That should help a bunch of troops. Most of my scouts found HA trips the highlight of scouts and the more the variety the better.

2 hours ago, qwazse said:

Um, I'm sorry (not sorry). But not wanting to publicly associate with scouting is a good reason to suspend advancement. If you're ashamed to be in my troop, it's all good, I'll just be ashamed to bling you. [Rant over.]

It seems like the only lesson to the scout is just tell you what you want to hear.

21 hours ago, fred8033 said:

Mostly based on the application.  It requires a unit leader signature.  That is the chance for the unit to indicate whether unit accepts the scout.

I never said no but there was pressure to say no when our troop got too big.