BartHumphries

They are technically Boy Scout Leaders, right? It seems like all adult scouters basically have the same requirements, with the exception that Scoutmasters and Assistant Scoutmasters must complete Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills in addition to everything else?

The requirements for the Boy Scout Leader's Training Award are basically those things that we want all the adult scouters to be doing anyway, right?

M21 doesn't say that the medical record must be completed before a scout comes to camp, just that the camp must have one on file for everyone and that it can't be older than 12 months. Is the M35 required physician an absentee physician for most camps then, someone who just signs off on procedures at the beginning of the summer and never actually visits in person?

In another thread, someone linked the 2010 resident camp standards: http://nerbsa.org/filestore/regions/neregion/program/campschool/visitation/2010_Resident_Camp_Standards.pdf

The mandatory requirement M20 on page 9 was really interesting:

On arrival in camp, everyone is given a private medical screening by a physician, health officer, or other adult approved by the camp physician.

Does this satisfy the requirements for the big physical that's required for rock climbing and such? (Like the ropes course or climbing wall at the camp?) If our troop wants to scuba dive or rock climb but the price of a physical is too high (the local hospital wants $75/boy) can we just go to summer camp, then use that to do other activities over the rest of the year? Or can the "camp physician" nominate anyone, is this just an informal check that doesn't really mean anything?

Or, if you didn't want to listen to the whole podcast, you can read his article about that here:

http://www.melrosetroop68.org/blog/?p=1065

That's why we usually just drop the boys off at their house after overnight campouts. Pull up, kick them and their stuff out of the car, drive off once you see that they were able to walk into the door. Cellphones don't always work very well in the mountains where we live (although AT&T has been getting better about that) and getting a message out that we had a flat or that someone lost their glasses just as we were about to go and it took a while to find them (or whatever) isn't always possible. So, it's been unofficial unwritten troop policy for at least a couple decades that, since we have to drive around the lake to put the troop equipment away, we might as well just drop the boys off, especially since all the boys that lived half an hour away split off into their own troop about 15 years ago.

"Yes, this is me, you're what? Going to be late? Well, we're all prepped to paint the bathroom and living room and it's late enough that we're not going to have time to finish what we needed to finish today. Could you please just drop him off at home on the way?" It could be tricky for the leaders to get him home while still obeying the Youth Protection guidelines, but in my opinion that's kind of the leader's problem.

Be careful about who's carrying the food and who's handing things out, as well as what else that person has handled.(This message has been edited by BartHumphries)

In 2013, it'll be 100 years that the LDS church has been involved in Scouting. Will there be anything happening?

When you play football at the high school, the high school pays for football uniforms, or at least it does where I live. It's part of that "free public education" thing. Some schools in other areas recently started charging for those things and they're being sued now. Pee-wee football doesn't count, as it's not real football -- it's not technically part of the school program.

http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/CubScouts/Uniform/special.aspx

"While the official uniform should be worn to all den and pack meetings and formal events, the den or pack may designate a special-purpose uniform, such as the Cub Scout Activity Shirt (shown here) to be worn in place of the official uniform shirt for certain activities, such as sporting events or day camp." I think I saw something somewhere that said the same for Boy Scouting as well.

"It always amazes me how much a fuss the parents make when they spend $2000 for Jambo and get bent out of shape because their boys need TWO uniforms!" That's not a problem where I live as my troop has never, at least going back the 30 years that I know of, gone to a Jamboree (and I couldn't tell you any nearby troop that had). They're just too expensive.

Yeah, I've looked at those requirements, moxieman, but I can't compare them with the old World Crest patch as I don't know what those old requirements are. From what I heard, they were sort of close. I mean, except for the 6th thing, the following seems pretty doable:

2a. Host a group of scouts from another country for three weeks and have them take part in the troop meetings and stuff that you do each week. Just to make it more fun, I presume that one of those weeks would be scout camp and that one of the weekends would be an overnighter. Otherwise, it's basically be just like hosting any other foreign exchange student for a few weeks. (Official unit activity)

3b. You go with your troop while they're hosted by someone from another country (exchange program or if they go to camp in that other country then it's a camp experience). This doesn't have to be the same year as 2a.

4a. Go to Philmont for an "international conference" then tell everyone about it when you get back home.

4b. See who else wants to go and promote others helping to fundraise for their boys to do a large camp trip or to all join an exchange program or something -- beat the drums.

4c. Help plan these activities that you, you know, are already planning.

5a. Pass the pot around in organized fundraisers at two District/Council things. Perhaps at that 100th anniversary campout that just occured (for me, anyway) your troop could have manned a booth selling ice cream or something then donated the profits to the World Friendship Fun. You have to do this twice, by the way.

If you don't want to go to Philmont for a conference, you can go serve with a troop in another country for a while, do something international (but in the US) for National, be the one who convinces someone from another country to come work at a scout camp here, or pony up $1,000 (perhaps, during those two fundraisers, you might find someone who'd be interested in making a special $1,000 donation, since it doesn't have to be you or even anyone in the troop who pays, you just either have to become or recruit a donor).

Sure, you could also cross one of those requirements off by instead paying (or finding someone else who'd be willing to pay) a cool $10,000 (in which case you'd get an extra special award that would be given to you by the King of Sweden), but personally I'm just ignoring that part. Honestly, $10k?

How does the knot on the Boy Scout emblem represent doing good deeds? We had a new boy join and I was about to do all the initial Boy Scout requirements with him and another boy tomorrow night. I understand the symbolism in everything else, but I didn't remember this one -- I have "knot" done my good deed for the day? Is the symbolism really all about (what seems to me to be) an atrocious pun?

Edit: Maybe this should be in a different forum. I was thinking that the knot is part of the Scout emblem as depicted on parts of the uniform, but maybe it should have been somewhere else. If that's the case, please move it.(This message has been edited by BartHumphries)

My grandmother was an accountant for the Boy Scout Ventura County Council. My birthday present from her was usually another year's subscription to Boy's Life. Well, I don't know if reading Boy's Life engenders longer Scouting participation, but I became an Eagle Scout and I work with a scout troop now. Most of my fellow scouters who didn't have grandmothers like mine "graduated" from scouting and are now no longer involved with it. The whole magazine was good, but back when I was 10 my favorite part was always the comics -- the Norby ones were why I first started reading Isaac Asimov's books.

Maybe it is. Why don't you email that site and ask. How would any of us know whether or not he's made any necessary licensing agreements (if such are indeed necessary)?

I tell people to buy what they can. If nothing else, just buy a scout shirt. Then, each year, buy something else.

My hat is a nice one with leather from 1996. My pants are from 1998 (and have a faint white patch on the right knee from a carpet burn while playing "knee" football one night as an activity). I replaced my shirt from 1994 somewhere around 2003. Recently I bought a new belt and a couple pairs of socks. Take care of your uniform and it'll last you a long, long time.

The full dress uniform is for "show". I'd wear it to some activities at Scout camp, for our evening meetings, etc. For anything else (like camping, hiking, any other rough activity), I'd wear something else, like swapping out the scout uniform pants for jeans, wearing ordinary socks, etc.

"Recycling" a uniform is a great practice. Take care of your uniform and when you outgrow it, donate it to the pack/troop so that the Cub/Scoutmaster can resell it to a new boy at a cheap price. This lowers the price that a boy has to pay for a uniform and it also brings a little more money in to do more camping/merit badge activities.

Well, you can still earn the international activity temporary patch and the the international scouter knot. I believe they have requirements comparable to what the old world crest requirements were. I didn't know that the money for the patch went to some other organization, I thought it was a case of charging extra for the uniform without having to raise the price on the uniform.

Many non profits buy up land for camps. Take Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall summer camps, for example. The Salvation Army owns quite a collection of houses and the store managers live in the houses rent free (since a store manager is shuffled off to a new store every few years, it doesn't make sense for them to be continually buying/selling a house). I could go on, but many non profit entities own land. The major difference between a non profit and a for-profit entity is whether the vast bulk of the money made in the business is turned around and invested back into the business or whether most of it goes into the hands of the people running the business. In Scouting, it goes back into the "business" and so it's a non profit corporation.

You'd be surprised how many, many people actually work for the Vatican. The number is much higher than 300.

I asked that same question about ago and so far someone has linked to the District Quality Unit requirements, but nobody's posted the Unit ones yet and I haven't seen them:

http://www.scouter.com/forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=288274

You absolutely must file -- everyone and everything must file a tax form. That form might be just a sort of declaration, "By the way, here's how much I made, and now I'll be going back to work and ignoring you again..." It might be a "I/we didn't make enough to have to pay taxes." It might be a "I paid you enough already, now give me some of that money back." It might be a "Whoops, I didn't pay enough, here's more money." But everyone and everything, all people and businesses of all types, are supposed to file something (although that "something" can vary).

Don't give the IRS a reason to come after you and practice transparency (don't do anything secret with the money like try to help out a poorer scout without letting the other scouts or the committee know about it). Bring this question up at your next district roundtable and ask the other units how they handle it. Take an accounting class at your local community college just so you get a better understanding of how exactly to handle these sorts of things -- such a class can't help but benefit you professionally as well, whether you're a mechanic or a large corporate mid level manager or whatever.

Ok, I finished putting it together with this nifty little program I found called Compendium. Yeah, it's a little messy as I had to put all the little bubbles together by hand. But I think it shows what it's meant to show well enough.

See, I was looking at various awards, wondering what the boys were close to based on what they'd already earned and as I looked at everything I started thinking, "Hey, haven't I see that merit badge as a requirement for that other thing, what was it again?" How many awards could one merit badge help a person earn?

I found a few surprising things, for instance, if you'd like to be an Eagle and you earn Citizenship in the Community, Citizenship in the World, Environmental Science (all merit badges required for Eagle), then either Fish and Wildlife Management or Soil and Water Conservation, as well as do a service project, you've not only made a great stride towards becoming an Eagle, but with a bit of paperwork and ancillary things you'd also have earned the Boy Scout World Conservation Award, the Hometown USA Award, and you'd have made good progress towards the William T. Hornaday Award.

Anyway, here's the current somewhat jumbled dependency chart. Anyone who can do a better job of arranging things is freely and openly invited to do just that -- I admit that drawing up such charts and organizing things isn't really what I'm good at.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a66/bubbajoe12345/scout/BoyScoutAwardDependencies.png

The numbers show what's required, for instance 3/12 means there are 12 possible choices and you must do 3 of them. A yellow arrow (or red arrow in a latter version) means that the merit badge/activity isn't required, but that doing optional thing would make earning that desired award a lot easier.(This message has been edited by BartHumphries)

Thanks, those are all great reasons.

If every scout everywhere in the BSA wears the same world scout crest and never takes it off or swaps it for something else, why isn't it a part of the uniform like the American flag? I mean, do I really need to pay X for the shirt, then Y to have the world scout crest sewn on it by the scout shop?

That's great. My local lodge apparently never did it, so I didn't know how widespread the practice was.

Why build it from the ground up when they could just buy one of the "abandoned" military bases like what's now called March Air Reserve base in Riverside, CA? The military has closed a number of those bases over the years and it seems like it would be a lot cheaper in the long run and provide a much better level of support to get one of those bases, repaint, fix anything that's broken, etc.

It's like my first programming teacher taught me, the most important thing to remember is to not reinvent the wheel -- you'll get much farther, much faster, by using the libraries and things that others have put together instead of trying to build it all yourself.

I can understand if their point was to encourage and promote troops doing more of those basic things themselves, but wouldn't you at least want to start with someplace that already has the basic sewer and similar infrastructure for thousands of people already put in?

Ok. I couldn't find a quote button, so I wasn't sure what I was missing at first.