MattR

Maybe you could dig into that a bit. Representative of what? Do they have an organization? An address? Is there a way to ask them a question? A contact page? A FAQ? Is there leadership, ways to solve problems, voting, a way to come to consensus, make decisions, anything that is more than just a hashtag and a vague description of what they want? The answer to all of this is no. As best I can tell they have a website and a wiki page. The website is very vague and the wiki references web pages that no longer exist on the website. At one point in time the website had a list of 13 guiding prin

I've only read the introduction so far. My first impression is that, for the majority of issues, nothing has changed, at all. It's the same arguments about program, council, national, parents that "Molly coddle" their kids, "the good ol days" when kids were self reliant, struggle with incorporating minority immigrants and more. 1920 and 2020 look surprisingly similar. It might have some good insights into how to move forward with less national resources as they had little. Only warning: this is a real thesis and not a scouter U thesis.

Another way of looking at @skeptic's point: If you're sure the BSA is going to fold then why are you still here?

I have a story for you. I met some guy and he had Hebrew tattooed on his arm. I thought that was really odd because anyone that knows Hebrew likely does not have any tattoos. So I thought this could be an interesting person to talk to and I asked him what the meaning was of that tattoo. He said "I don't know, it just looked cool." There was absolutely no offense taken. Besides, it did look cool. And yet, I can just see someone asking a rabbi for a cool looking word for a tattoo and the rabbi saying sure! And handing him Hebrew for putz. Assuming someone is using a different culture in a

Nope. It only melted the ice less than 2" at the hottest point of the fire. Water and ice are good insulators. The next morning everything had burned down to the water level and stopped. We built a platform of logs that we stacked everything on top of. We had scouts working all day collecting logs in several feet of snow. That was a great camp fire.

Welcome to the forum! We bought a tire mount but I'm not sure there was much discussion about it.

I hate to keep piling on, but it seems that scouts don't love doing merit badges. They might feel like they've gotten a step closer to eagle, but it isn't fun. We never do merit badges on high adventure trips and those trips are the best fun. Rafting on a river is fun. Making a snow shelter and sleeping in it is fun. BBQ in the snow using a big metal trash can is fun. Making a rope bridge is fun. Camping without tents is fun. Making a fire on a frozen lake from a pile of wood stacked 8 feet high is fun. I admit, coming up with fun stuff is hard, mainly because it has to be different.

Sure would be nice to learn from what they were up against and what they did. Publish it under case studies.

No. Just sounds like you've been locked inside too long.

Thank you for your explanation, @TAHAWK. I did not know about what happened at Ohio State. I was too young to know what was going on back then but I do remember the assassinations in 68. There were a lot of long faces in my neighborhood. As for what you're not seeing in the media now, I am a bit surprised. I poke around in a lot of different news sources and while it does take some time to answer questions I usually figure it out. BTW, here's another headline for you: "Calm night of protests in Portland after Oregon State Police step in for federal officers." This was from a local tv station i

Welcome to the forum, @SWdenleader. You don't need to be grandfathered in. If a scout is going to leave because of a uniform issue then there's a problem. No kid should be denied scouting because of some uniform issue. Honestly, I don't even know if this is an issue (if you can't read where it says webelos must wear a tan uniform, then it isn't a rule), but it doesn't matter. What does matter is your scouts having fun. In this economy, do your best. Don't worry about the uniform. Oh, and pull up a log and join us.

@TAHAWK, when I asked you what the point of your posts were, I really was asking a question. I never said you couldn't post. I'm having to wade through all your posts to figure out what it is that you're getting at. There are many ways to read these pictures. I mentioned all the other things going on just as a way to say, yep, this is a bad summer, and violent protesters are just part of it, so what's new? Is this it? I suspect, from what you've written before it could be, but, and I'm trying to be polite here, you have a way of posting things and not explaining, clearly, what you're t

That's still a nice saw. I just don't have room. I had a guy with a portable mill saw some logs up for me. That was a huge bandsaw. I was like a 7 year old watching this thing. Gas powered. He could have easily done 25" diameter logs. Mine were small at 14". He changed the blade (this was black locust) and, just a guess but it was 4 loops around 2 feet in diameter, so 12ish feet. But only 1 tooth per inch. It took about 10 minutes to slice an 8' log into 5/4 boards. Part of the reason I'm out of room is I have some of that wood stacked in my garage.

@TAHAWK, I read enough news elsewhere. Honestly, what's the point of these posts? It looks like you're saying there is vandalism and violence. I agree. I also read some great comments, of all things, about how "back in the day" peaceful protesters had to be extra vigilant to expel violent protesters because it just takes one bad protester to to completely skew the coverage away from the peaceful protest. Kind of like how a few bad cops might skew the work of many good cops. So where are we now? There are a few violent protesters and a few violent cops making their own news cycles in the middle

That's why I was so impressed with the Israeli scouts. From day one, when a 6 year old kid enters their program, they know that when they're 14 they're going to be running a small group of younger scouts. By the time they're 16 they're going to be deciding the program for a patrol. By the time they're 18 they're going to be running a troop of 100. There are no ranks or requirements for each scout and only vague descriptions of what the program could be, but the leadership is very well laid out. Fewer expectations of ranks and parents might make it easier for scouts to lead. This also rem

@Eagledad, I suspect that 98 years ago nobody worried about entertaining older scouts. A sail boat sounded like fun, so they got one and had fun. And it grew into Sea Scouts. And now, their equivalent to Eagle is harder to do than what Eagle requires.

Sure they do, but if on those other events you ran at a profit, why not just say the net of all the events has to balance out? We asked for that and, well, that's when things got ugly. I like @CommishJulian's approach of just doing it on your own.

Sounds like the original venture patrol.

Sounds familiar. I got in trouble trying to make camporees cost neutral, i.e., charge the scouts no more than what it costs. All of the rest sounds wonderful, but this I have to ask about. I thought a band saw size was the largest piece of wood that can go through it, height wise. So a 92" band saw could easily cut a full sized car. Or is this the length of the band? Anyway, keep having fun. That's what rubs off on the scouts.

If I had a PL that wanted to do something like that I'd take the loophole you found and tell them to go for it. It shows initiative.

Yep. Scout is now a rank. When it was just join, the meanings were still in tenderfoot. It was honestly confusing to keep track of what was where.

Done. Thanks for the catch.

Just to let everyone know, I removed emails, phone numbers and names from that letter. Posting that type of info on a public forum is a bad idea.

You had me until jambodemic 🙂. I like it because a jamboree is out of my price range (not the event itself but the 5 fold council tax). Better yet, all scouts could participate. That would be nice. Getting every scout to camp the same week would be great, not to mention a great challenge. My hunch is you'd have to think about the details. Getting the majority of scouts together at the same time would take a lot of space. Then there's the network required. That's not cheap. But if you make it, it would be cool.

Speaking of flogging a dead horse