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NEPAScouter

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Everything posted by NEPAScouter

  1. My charter organization has supported a troop for 85 years and a pack for 72 years. In my council, and from posts on this forum I know there are units that have been around far longer than my own. For example, one in my own council marked 100 years in 2011. Five or six other units are in their 90s. Five are in their 80's. Which got me thinking... Does anyone know if there are any handy resources for figuring out (even roughly?) the veteran status distribution of units across the country? How many are over 100? over 95? over 90?, etc. We're hoping to have alumni (scouts and leaders)
  2. Eagle707 scripsit: NEPA, I think you may have misread my comment. I didn't say anything about donors. I'm completely in favor of this award and have been since it was announced. D'OH! I had Papadaddy in my reply, then got messed up while I was editing, and put your name in its place. Sorry Eagle707!
  3. Thanks for starting this thread, Skeptic. Like yours, my council has been awarding an "Eminent Eagle" recognition at our annual Eagle Dinner to one local adult who earned the Eagle rank at least 25 years ago and who we feel best exemplifies the life of service and professional achievement we'd like to encourage our new Eagles to emulate. The award recipient is not required to be currently registered in Scouting. Sounds a lot like the intent behind NOESA, with the exception of no 25+ years of required tenure. Like the DESA, councils aren't required to nominate for it. My council's Eagle D
  4. Hi folks, sorry for the delay in responding -- had an out-of-town trip. Basement, yep, we are in agreement on the amount of promotion. It's important that the scouts take ownership of this themselves. We showed the scouts the medal and the full set of rockers last summer (borrowed them from the council), and told them to talk with their PLs and SM/ASMs whenever they wanted to make specific progress in the program (e.g. organize *more* outdoor activities beyond what we have). The two scouts were recognized for their camping rockers at last September's COH. Since then, there'
  5. Hi Wood_Owl, To answer your particular question, yes, with the following differences from "normal". We hold one-hour weekly meetings (as opposed to the usual 90-minute meetings) through the first week in August, then go to summer camp in the second week of August, then take the last two weeks of August off. We start up 90-minute meetings again on the first meeting night after Labor Day. Except for COH meetings, the scouts wear troop T-shirts to troop meetings during the summer. We get mostly the under-16 younger scouts attending because the older ones get summer evening jobs (loca
  6. Hey bnelon! Ok, you may be done with your necker issue, but I'm not letting you off the hook on the OP yet ;-). The OP asked about the popularity of the NOAA program, and you mentioned you had been in touch with the designer of the award. Have you heard anything about how much adoption there has been of the award at any of it's levels? Like I said in my original reply we've had a couple get one camping segment with some pins based on what they had been doing as scouts over the last 5 or 6 years. If we're as serious as I think we are about using the award to spur more outdoor activity
  7. Hi bnelon44, You raise a good point. We do have a troop neckerchief that we wear only for occasions like COHs, Scout Sunday services, Boys' Day in Government, troop meetings and BORs. It's white with gold trim and has a patch identifying our charter organization (we're chartered to a Catholic church). We don't usually wear this neckerchief at summer camp or campouts because, well, it wouldn't wear well. We're not about to change it, though, despite that problem -- 50-year tradition and all that. We figure the troop number on our shirts and on our class B t-shirts gives us a way to defi
  8. My troop had two scouts earn the camping segment, one with a gold device and the other with 3 gold devices. This year I thInk we'll have three or four more do the camping segment. There are one or two scouts who will probably also earn the aquatics segment. Last year was when we started promoting this award program. I think it's a good way to bring recognition to the outdoor method of Scouting. We're gradually trying to promote the medal as a parallel recognition program to Eagle for the older boys. A minor issue I have with the patch+segments portion of the award is that it looks a
  9. Welcome from a fellow PEE-AYE guy, PABill!
  10. All the suggestions sound like I could try some version of them in my situation. I'll especially try to get some kind of post-cathedral recognition practice going so that scouts back in the troop get to see the recipients recognized, and get the counselors in front of the scouts at a meeting. Thanks for your advice!
  11. Does anyone have advice on how to encourage scouts to work on the Catholic religious emblems Ad Altare Dei (AAD) and Pope Pius XII (PPXII)? My troop is sponsored by a Roman Catholic parish, and the pastor and I would like to encourage more of the troop's catholic members to work on these awards. Here's some background: Our troop regularly holds a Scout Sunday service at the parish church, and is pretty integrated into the life of the parish through 3 service projects each year. About 70% of the troop membership is catholic. The parish has a pack, and we don't have too many pr
  12. Talk about staying active in Scouting after earning Eagle. He attended the 2010 Jamboree and was the scout who introduced Mike Rowe at the closing show. I knew he looked familiar! He was one of the 3 youth emcees at the closing show. http://www.mikeroweworks.com/2010/07/mike-with-an-accomplished-scout/ Congratulations to Roland!
  13. Here's what the Pennsylvania BSA specialty license plate looks like: http://www.dmv.state.pa.us/images/plates/bsa.jpg All great promotions for Scouting! But the PA ones don't support "vanity quotes." I understand that they are issued only with numbers in numerically increasing order. Roadkill, I hope the plates help the Michigan BSA program a lot!
  14. I think the forum would benefit from nested thread support that lets users see what posts are responses to responses (to responses, and so on...). I think some of the heat in some of the discussions on here comes from users not being able to see what post someone is responding to within a thread.
  15. I usually skim over OA threads since I'm a non-member who, as a youth, was in a troop where OA wasn't promoted. But this thread's thoughtful string of ideas primed my engine with some questions and observations. Hope they're helpful! 1) I'm all for service to camps, council, units, etc., but from my non-member perspective, what is it about OA that would enable me to do more for these entities than I'm already able to do as a non-member? I think this is the general question I have as an adult seeking answers from m3sd3's and SeattlePioneer's ideas. 2) I understand that OA has tried
  16. Yes, it could have been authoritarian, and some might see it that way. I may have drunk the koolaid (hope not!) but the goal as I've been told is to see units make an effort. Things out of their control aren't going to be held against them. What the council wants to see is active troops with good programs for their situation, not necessarily huge troops or high recruitment in areas where there just aren't enough boys for large growth. They're more interested in helping a troop or pack work at some kind of improvement than summarily terminating them.
  17. Thanks Once_An_Eagle_Always_An_Eagle, for reviving this thread. My unit was, and is, a "decent" unit, but my fellow leaders recognize that there's room for improvement, and it helps to see some concrete guidelines from National to get a better idea of where we can direct our improvement efforts. We're an old unit (83 years) that was very strong up until the mid 1990s, but hit a rough patch of about 10 years of having only 5 or 6 members. Over the past 6 years we've gradually built membership up to 23 scouts. Although some of us "old timers" from the troop's earlier salad days came back to h
  18. I've used the $0.99 Animated Rope Knots to show not just the picture of a knot but also the process of tying them. About the only criticism I have of it is that for some knots the movies showing the tying process run a little quickly. The free Planets is a good app to show planet and constellation positions. Its 3D sky view is very good for the price! I also use the free Space Station Lite to get realtime tracking of the International Space Station when we're out waiting for it to appear for flyovers.
  19. Hi jtswestark, We get about 2 scouts per year trying to earn Astronomy at summer camp. When you have a good counselor who'll conduct "night under the stars" sleepouts, I find that gets them interested. There are a couple of iPad apps out there that use the GPS location to show the night sky, labelled with constellation names, so that as you hold the screen overhead, the screen is supposed to show the correct labels with the portion of the sky it lines up with. Haven't used them though. I do use the Planets iPhone app to help figure out when what is visible. For the free price, it has
  20. Gern, you forgot to mention the problem for the poor scouts who camp above the Arctic Circle or the Antarctic Circle either when the sun doesn't rise or when it doesn't set! :-)
  21. On the weekend before Memorial Day weekend, my troop helped the local veterans place flags on the CO parish's cemeteries. It was also on that weekend that the troop took a trip to Valley Forge to learn about what our country's first veterans experienced at the low point of our battle for independence. As is our long-standing (40+ years) custom, on Memorial Day itself we marched with the CO parish cub pack in the local town's parade.
  22. Sounds like a well-planned project that your grand-nephew will be able to look back on with pride. I'm especially impressed that it falls outside the "construction zone" category of project (not that there's anything wrong with those!). I wish him and his team all the best!
  23. I give the official requirements a big thumbs up. I really like how the requirements for building a robot are platform-neutral. Lego is a natural for this, but there are other kits (cheap) out there these days that offer enough flexibility for meeting requirement 4. I also like how the fourth requirement expects the scout to confer with the merit badge counselor on specifying a task for a robot to perform *before* building the robot. Sure, there's always the possibility an MBC will say, "Oh, you wanted it to grab a foam ball, turn around, and drop the ball, but all it does is turn around? Sur
  24. Thanks for straightening me out, Moosetracker. I didn't notice the reference to the crossover depletion. While I'm in favor of the JTE objectives in principle, it's amazing the number of unintentional gotcha's that seem to have sneaked in to the measures. Oh well, back to the thread....
  25. @pchadbo: (and, I guess, moosetracker, too): I was surprised to hear that the JTE gold requirements would lead to you needing to get 31 *more* scouts recruited beyond the 35 you already have, so I went to do some more research (my own troop and pack were just going over the standards and goals) on this, and now have a question to make sure I'm not missing something. Item #3 on "Building Boy/Cub Scouting" says Have an increase in membership or be larger than the average size troop/pack. The levels then say: Bronze (Troop): Have a net gain of one member over last year, or have at
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