Proud Eagle

Never underestimate Kentucky weather. Just when you think it is August, and so it should be 90 with a 90 percent humidity, you will instead wind up with some freak cold front moving in and drop the temperature down to 60, but still with that 90 humidity, so everything winds up cool and very soggy. Then throw in a tornadic thunderstorm on the second night for added kicks, and then you have a weekend. Or the previously mentioned 70 in November. Heck I think it hit 80 on Halloween this year. Some years it snows on Halloween. Most years it seems to rain. Really, Kentucky weather isn

Another area is to take the time to try to get your local paper, radio, or TV station to cover specific Scouting things that may be of interest. This is more workable in small towns where there isn't so much other news. If there is a big district camporree at the local state park, someone should make sure the local TV station sneaks it in someway. Around here, the weather men actually do a lot of that, they will say have a brief shot of some event while summarizing the days weather, that sort of thing. Our troop used to have the troop picture taken at camp published in the local pa

Just a thought. Perhaps using sports analogies to explain the imporance of that once a year event may be a good idea. Let everyone know it is the Cub Scout equivalent of the final tournement or something along those lines.

For the troop I am a member of... It must be either the current, or an older version of, the troop T-shirt. Most of ours are red, with large screen printed logo on the front. The logo includes a large BSA emblem, troop number, and home town. There have been others, but that has been the norm. We have also been one of those units to use an A, B, C, method of identifying uniforms. With A being the field, B the activities (w/troop T-shirt), and C being a Scouting T-shirt with appropriate looking other clothing. The camp I worked at requested that all staff and Scouts wear eithe

Long diatribe to follow. Please skip if you don't enjoy that sort of thing. Sports does a better job of marketing to society as a whole. They also have a better starting position. Every school has many sports teams. Almost all colleges have major athletic programs. There are pep rallies for sports. There is entire section of the newspaper dedicated to sports (and at best a page per week on community groups). There are sporting events on radio, broadcast networks, satellite, and cable. Heck, card playing gets more TV time in a week than Scouting does in a year. Then there are a

Eagle, Good advice I would say. However, I don't think he will have any trouble reaching his destination even if he doesn't have any navigational equipment at all. It also happens that he is right, the compass was the only thing on the boat that can tell which direction is which... when the boat isn't moving. I don't know why the builders didn't include a nice marine compass, or one of those digital ones. Maybe they figured you would never need it unless you were moving fast enough for the GPS to calculate it. Eamonn, GPS is nice, and it comes in handy on occasion, b

I recently had the opportunity to tour the new house boat that had been built for a couple that is friends with my family. The couple were in the process of taking it down river from the builder to the lake they vacation at, and they made a stop in the local area. Anyhow, this was by far the nicest boat I had ever set foot on. It had the latest GPS with moving map display. It had a RADAR system. It had all the modern electronic controls. Yet, what did I notice sitting beside the massive steering wheel on the console? An old BSA compass. I asked the owner abo

In my council the District Advancement Chairs organizes the Eagle BORs. This is great for my troop, since our DAC is also our unit's COR. In other districts, this is not so good, such as the one where the DAC spends a couple months every year down south on vacation. Now, I have the experience of my own Eagle BOR, as well as two others to draw on. The SM for the Scout was invited to attend, however, some choose not to. Generally, the other board members are often the District Commisioner, and some leaders from other troops. For my Eagle BOR, the DAC, my SM, the SM

Well, we had another troop meeting last night. I can't say that it went very well. In fact, it was a pretty poor meeting for the youth. Fortunately, I was able to meet with the committee which helped get some important subjects out of the way. Among the ideas I pushed was the value of training, the need to ensure we have adequate and current publications, and the fact that we can not do a good job of planning the next calendar year until we conduct a thorough examination of the troops current situation, evaluate our past performance, and determine in a broad sense our future go

Thank you all for the information. There is one item that would seem to be just the sort of thing we need given our current circumstances, but that I am unable to find in the catalog or on the scout stuff web site. That item is the Selecting and Recruiting Leaders pamphlet. If anyone has any idea if perhaps this has a new name, or where it could be found, I would appreciate it. Thanks again.

In KY there is no electioneering within 300ft of a polling place. They even post notices about this at all the polling places. In my town most polling places are churches, with the second most being schools. I have to drive past one church used as a polling place, and then one school used as a polling place, to reach the church that is my polling place.

I voted a little before 2:00 central time. One other guy slipped in the door just ahead of me so I had to wait a few seconds while they found his name on the list. Then they found my name, I showed them ID, signed the book, voted, got my sticker, and left. As I was pulling out of the parking lot an older couple showed up. Pretty slow going at that hour. My parents on the other hand encountered a line out into the rain when they showed up a couple hours earlier, so they ran some erand and went back to find a much shorter line. I have only missed one chance to vote, and it

While it is a bit frustrating that they hide things, it is not suprising. I know the oa-bsa.org site also has a good amount of information that can only be accessed if you know the exact address. An example would be the information presented in a NOAC training session I attended this year. The sylabus, power point presentation, and other information are hidden in the OA shows web site, simply because one of the guys doing the training knew someone in shows who could get it online.

Quick question related to applications- When is a boy considered a member? Is it after completing the application and paying the fee or after completing all the joining requirements in the handbook? At what time should the temporary membership certificate be given to the boy? I agree that these are all things parents should read and pay attention to. In fact, it might be worth giving everyone a new application and asking that they read over it just to get the point across to the current Scouts and parents.

Actually, you are close, but not quite right. My understanding is you may be a member of as many councils as you wish. However, you may only be a member of one OA Lodge at a time. That OA Lodge must be the lodge for a council in which you are registered. That being said, it is possible to pay dues in multiple lodges so that you recieve their mailings and such, and to attend events at multiple lodges. The trouble is making certain they understand which lodge you are actually a member of. An example of how this sort of thing could happen may go like this: A Scout turns 18 an

I have taken both Youth Protection and Boy Scout Fast Start on-line. Both were located on the servers of scouting.org. However, the only on-line training I can find now is the Venturing Fast Start. What happened to the other on-line training? Why is BSA apperently backing away from on-line training? It seemed like such a good way to offer those early trainings. The interactive nature of the on-line versions was much superior to the videos normally used, in my opinion. It also makes it easier to update the coarses, since new videos don't have to trickel down to the leaders.

Bob White suggested training as resource number one on another thread about the books, manuals, materials, and resources that a troop needs. I happen to agree that is probably the most important resource we could provide is training. Unfortunately, it is also by far the hardest item to get access to. If that wasn't enough, it is also the hardest thing to get people to use even when they have access to it. Now, in my district, training is pretty much non-existant, and it has been non-existant for quite some time. Also, the council only conducts a very limmited schedule of cou

Thanks for the feedback thus far. That seems like a reasonably good list. There are a few items on the list I either am totally unfamiliar with, or have very limmited knowledge of. Chances are I will need to be able to offer an explanation of why we need these items, and since I am unfamiliar with some of them, perhaps someone could give me a very brief discription of these items: cooking for small groups selecting and recruiting quality leaders historic trails brochure Also, is the merit badge counselor application a national or council produced form? My council has what

What books, manuals, and materials would you say a troop needs to keep current copies of? I don't really know for certain what we have on hand, but my best guess is not very much. Most of the things have always belonged to individual leaders, but this seems to be a less than optimal approach since often no one has the latest edition, or the resources are lost when leaders move away from the troop or Scouting in general. I am most particularly interested in the program related materials since we are preparing to plan out the next year, and preparing to select new youth leaders who wi

I don't much care for siblings on Scout outings. I also don't much care for leaders turning Scout trips into small family vacations. Now, here is why I don't like siblings. Usually the one in the unit doesn't like it but isn't willing to say anything to the leaders or their parents. However, you can tell from their reactions to their siblings they would rather not have their little brother or sister following them around. This is particularly a problem when a parent has the Scout keep up with the younger brother or sister. It very seriously takes away from the Scouts ability to enj

Tonight was the first meeting without the SM. We spent most of the meeting working on a service project with some members of the church's mens group. That went pretty well. Then we ironed out some details for a camping trip this weekend. That was a little less organized, but went OK. We also had a discussion about the fact that things will continue as always, but that it will take an extra effort from everyone, and that we will have to pull together a bit to get through things. We then cleaned up and then circled up for the closing. There were final announcements, then I rea

Good question. I know my troop certainly hasn't recieved any benefit from the commissioner staff in at least 3 years. Chances are we don't even have a UC, though it wouldn't be anything new to have one on paper that does so little of the job that they haven't even bothered to contact us to let us know they are the UC. The only involvement with the commissioners I remember lately was a bad incident of the District Commissioner yelling at the troop's adult leaders at a troop meeting for not submitting the charter early, something that no one had even asked them to do. Then there

Now my experience is just the opposite. Around here the quotas survived a bit longer than the actual policy did. So, I remember several elections with quotas in place. In every case, the quota was filled. On the other hand, I have both conducted and witnessed elections under the current rules where not all those on the list were elected. I have even had a troop decide that no one was worthy. We should not say select the best. We should select those who are worthy of the honor. Scouts are not more or less worthy. They either are, or are not. It is a yes

Considering this is getting absolutely no play in the press, and that there seems to be no attempt to use this in campaign speeches or ads, I would say this is not some sort of political trick. If this was some big political thing, there would have at least been a major press conference by the Secretary of Education, which I don't seem to remember hearing anything about. Plus, no one can really claim that they have done anything about this, since these roles are not yet in force. The only people that can possibly score points off this are in Congress, and they certainly have no interest in

The challenges of inducting 1000 members per year would be quite substantial, I do believe. I do think there are a great many ways to limmit the degree this creates a problem. For example, the lodge could conduct a greater number of induction weekends. This would likely spread them out so there were fewer per weekend. Perhaps a more practical approach would be for the chapters to conduct their own ordeals on the behalf of, and with the approval of the lodge. This would spread the work load of planning, preparing for, and hosting the Ordeal over a greater number of Arrowmen.