qwazse

So, to avoid any and all sense of indigenous appropriation, should the name be changed to Order of the Flintlock?

12 hours ago, mrjohns2 said:

My daughters were like this at first. Over the last 2 years, their GSUSA troops have gotten weaker. They aren’t too sure about continuing in both. They have all said “Girl Scouts never meets”. Likely only my oldest will complete Gold. They are currently 14, 13, and 10 (soon 15, 13, 11). 

That’s a cautionary tale for us all.

12 hours ago, Leehoden said:

…. Are there any games out there that teach how to follow through on leadership positions or who the report to (PL, ASPL, SPL) etc to kind of begin with the basics? …

Yeah. Hide ice cream at a location within a half-day hike. Place the coordinates to that location someplace else. Provide a map with the location of the coordinates. First patrol to navigate to the ice cream gets their choice of flavor.

Search “wide games” there will be plenty.

but, for meetings we do games like a round of basketball, sleeping Indian, or other 15 minute game chosen by the SPL.

11 hours ago, Leehoden said:

…. So do you usually build in time for the scouts to fill out the books towards the end of the meeting? 

Books? What are these books you speak of? 
Scouts master skills, demonstrate them to their PL or SPL, who then signs off. We don’t reserve a specific time for it.

Our general structure in 15 minute blocks in no particular order:

• opening/announcements
• patrol break-out
• game
• guest speaker or skill instruction
• Closing/clean up

During the game period scouts may ask for a conference, have a board of review, or log their progress with the advancement adult.

46 minutes ago, PACAN said:

Let me say you have been extremely blessed in how your girl troop has worked out for you.  I'm not sure that others have been so fortunate just struggling to get leaders.

 

It does make one wonder why the GSA couldn't figure out how to make their program more supportive of what the girls want.   Of course my answer is because they didn't want to.

@PACAN, I can think of three striking disincentives for GS/USA to reshape its program into anything like BSA’s:

1. It is quite clear that by-and-large parents are still preferring to send their daughters to GS/USA over BSA4G. (Some prefer to do both.),
2. Girls in both organizations love both, and
3. in spite of attracting a small number of girls, BSA has not gained membership.

@Leehoden, welcome to the forums!

Not to sound too judgmental, but many of us have acquired adult-to-youth translators. Adult “as a troop we were focused” often translates into youth “this is really boring.”

Once most of your boys have achieved 1st class rank, it’s time to stop focusing on advancement and focus on super activities (what others here may call fun and adventure). So, some probing questions:

What game do the boys play before, during, or after meetings?

When was your last really muddy service project?

Which patrol recently was awarded a totem for best camp gadget, best meal, best campfire song?

When was the last SM conference on a trail, overlooking a canyon, at sunset, while the boys were off to fetch water?

If some of your scouts or family are enduring a prolonged loss of taste (an effect of the disease, not the vaccine) you might want to put them onto a stellar ganglion block.

Both immunization and natural immunity have a limited duration. How long? It depends. Also, although excess deaths in general have decreased in the US, it seems to be a regional thing ... up in some regions, down in others. If you've tolerated the boosters, it's not a bad idea lining up for the next one. If they've thoroughly exhausted you, no one should judge if you take a pass. It's a roll of the dice. But how people respond to the jab does not seem to correlate with how they'd respond to the actual disease.

Anyway, my pandemic guy is all tied up treating RSV. That's all the rage these days -- esp. for the youngns.

Here's to a healthy New Year!

On 12/25/2022 at 2:14 PM, jcousino said:

 "Christmas visitors were alien to anyone who’d have a religious or political connection to the story about to unfold.  that i will respectfully disagree with mostly likely  they were Babylonian... if we review our old testament history where God sent the jews into captivity it was to Babylon "Daniel …

@jcousino, Daniel (thanks to that incident with Darius’ big cats) was a figure of note in Persia as well. By the first century, the Parthian Empire overarched both long-established Babylonian and Persian Jewish communities. So, to say that Magi were more in contact with one community vs the other is too specific for the Nativity text. One can only guess that they had at least indirect access to Hebrew scripture, but none of that was recorded by Matthew. Instead the text noted their obsession with stars and ignorance of messianic prophecy.
The evangelist’s was not so much to associate these travelers with a town or ethnicity as it was with a religion … one that was neither “Jew”, “Samaritan”,  “gentile”, or any other category common to Hebrews under Roman occupation. Like the Jews themselves, 1st century Zoroastrians were scattered across the known world, so in a phrase Matthew captures both their status in their religion (Magi, i.e. priests in Zoroastrianism) and their country/empire (from the east, i.e., somewhere under Parthian control). 

Since moving into he New Year, a fun topic is exactly how long it’s been since the nativity. Useful Charts has a nifty presentation. (Hint: you’ll a +/- 5 in the answer.)

@jcousino, if in jest, it is with utmost seriousness. Some background:

Our common use of the term “wise men” dilutes what the Evangelist Matthew was trying to say. Magi, in Ancient Greek literature, specifically referred to Persian priests — most likely Zoroastrian. The point being that these Christmas visitors were alien to anyone who’d have a religious or political connection to the story about to unfold. But, strange as they might have been to occupier or inhabitant of Palestine — they were specially preparing their whole lives to anoint kings as part of their religious duty. (At least, if they were Zoroastrian, ancient texts tell us that was part of their priestly duty.)

So that brief line in the Bible refers to brazen characters with a very deep backstory centuries in the making. And, for Sunday School students who don’t spent much time actually looking at stars, I frame it as such.

But for scouts who will only give us one minute at the end of the year — in which we’ve had them name stars and navigate terrain and master citizenship — I want them to know that what they are doing now is in preparation for great things they may do later.

Happy Christmas to all.

Hey guys, have you ever heard of the first Zoroastrian scouts? They formed an awesome patrol, and took turns in their unit’s most important position of responsibility: Chaplains Aide.

Well, first they earned astronomy merit badge, then Orienteering . While working on personal management, they built up a stash of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They kept themselves physically fit, studied nature, transportation, and citizenship in the empire. Then one clear night, while watching Jupiter retrograde around Leo, one of them said, “Hey let’s go venturing and see where that will take us. I bet we’ll have a royal time.”

His buddies said, “Okay, wise guy! Saddle up!”

And that, my fellow scouts, is how being prepared can help you find what you’re looking for, and found a holiday that puts smiles on children’s faces everywhere.

9 hours ago, Cburkhardt said:

… organizational cultures, unit operations practices and internal governance/policy approaches are so fundamentally different that broad cooperation at levels above the unit are unachievable.  GSUSA rules also prohibit cooperation with BSA at the unit level.  It is difficult to start something productive under such circumstances.

A lot of words to say that the national leadership of both organizations  is intransigent. An article by Rothschild covered the sewing of I’ll will in the early years. My link to it is buried somewhere on these forums. I’d like to see another academic piece that would bring us into the 21st century. Bottom line, the national leaderships have done their calculus,  and it would literally require a POTUS or Congress to move them toward meaningful collaboration.

5 hours ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

 

Didn't the BSA try that once in the 1970s, and the GSUSA opposed it?

I think, after Gustaf’s insistence that Sweden’s youth organizations work more closely, BSA tried to promote Scouting/USA with the idea of doing something similar. There were people in both organizations who didn’t take kindly to it.

But, there is a big difference between proposing an ultimate merger and inviting your lead youth to collaborate on a national level.

Rebuffed once? Invite four years later. Repeat.

Unlike @Cburkhardt, I don’t see the current approach to membership as irreversible. Market forces could could drive the next few classes of boys to gain interest in BSA and girls to lose interest. Or, my worse fear: sexual assault on female youth occurring at a higher rate than among males  — no matter how much lower than general population and no matter how significant the retailored YP policies — will generate enough of a media firestorm to dissuade parents from enrolling youth of either sex. Narratives of promiscuity among co-Ed youth (be they actual or fabricated) have potential to be equally damming. I do not believe BSA National will have the fortitude to continue this policy in the face of such an onslaught.

Just a note regarding longer attention spans: try not to take advantage of that in meetings. One of the challenges facing women in the workforce is to manage discussion and keep everyone succinct. (Truth be told, I have this problem.)

The young women in my crew were often quite surprised at how soon they could act and how quickly people would respond to their requests for action. The young men generally needed to learn to think, while he young women generally needed to learn not to overthink.

Scouting, historically, involved non-verbal communication. Be it boys or girls, we should work to build those skills. So, if you have a group who is more attentive than usual, fill meetings and activities with wide games that leverage that.

Regarding my at-a-distance opinion of Scouts BSA girls. They have smiles on their faces. That’s my measure of success.

Regarding how BSA could do better for the nation’s young women: make peace with GS/USA, openly invite them to jamborees, and get beyond this family scouting doublespeak.

At its core, scouting (boy or girl, young or old, sport or military) is: observe and report.

Part of the discourse over the determination of what’s required vs. what’s elective is a concern that we are replacing that core with memorize and recite. Doing so moves us off brand.

1 hour ago, Scouterlockport said:

This is a great point, why would it be bad to have another badge about a topic we cover in rank advancement. We have first aid merit badges while also having many first aid advancements from tenderfoot to first class.

@Scouterlockport, the negative effect is that an Eagle-required badge takes up the time that an Eagle-bound scout might use to earn an elective badge. This reduces the diversity of experience that we expect of our youth who earn Eagle.

FYI, at one time, First Aid MB was required for 1st class rank. Pushing it back to Eagle necessitated more components of it to be explicit requirements on the trail to 1st class.

On 12/8/2022 at 10:33 AM, Ojoman said:

... Re: first and second: BSA is a private organization and the president (Honorary president of the BSA) and congress have no real say in how BSA runs. Regarding girls not doing enough to recruit buddies to form a girl troop... that would be a moot point if our units ran like other countries with blended programs. Great piece on that to read here: https://www.scouts.org.uk/volunteers/inclusion-and-diversity/including-everyone/girls-and-women-in-scouts/

 

@Ojoman, do you know what tipped BSA to change its attitude towards scouts and scouters with a permissive sexual ethic? This clip from our president

Titular power is quite real. And the fact that no POTUS has issued an opinion on co-ed scouting, nor has congress made a non-binding resolution in favor of it ... that should speak volumes to your scout. Politicians have gladly done photo-ops with our female scouts, but they have not asserted that co-ed is or is not the way BSA should go.

A few years ago, I made a rough calculus (too lazy to dredge the post and link it) that for BSA to shift policy regarding sex-segregation, it would take a couple of thousand girls across the country wanting to be part of BSA troops. The reason BSA began the "family scouting" doublespeak when it realized that there were 10,000 girls knocking at the gate.

With all due respect to @InquisitiveScouter's position that local council ineptitude and parental apathy contribute to the problem, I will assert (again): if it really mattered to the bulk of citizens, councils would not be inept. If parents thought really needed the program, they would give a care.

So, either elected officials step up and tell our citizens to support co-ed scouting (or every girl working the BSA program), or your scout rallies like-minded girls to tell their parents how much a BSA4G troop really, really matters.

As to "why", DuctTape shared the link to our discussion.

Our scouts who have taken it so far enjoyed it. I'll opine no further.

Strangers on the internet… great shoulders to cry on.

Tell your CC that it’s time to start the search for your replacement. Before passing the patch, you want to get one or more of these great parents trained … possibly including Wood Badge or Powderhorn.  That takes time.

Keep working for smiles.

53 minutes ago, Ojoman said:

... Most other countries have 'blended' units. Girls can be in their own patrols or a blended patrol but in our country just because only a couple of girls, or even 1 girl is graduating with AOL and when there isn't an all girl unit to join, why should their Scouting path come to a halt? I see this as a serious issue and one that needs resolved soon. 

Define “other countries” the largest organizations (India, Indonesia) are segregated. Some of the fastest growing (Pakistan) are unisex. Some of the slowest growing or declining (like ours) are facing negative growth. The most successful associations with blended organization are that way because their royals insisted it be so. Scouts UK has only just recovered its losses in male membership after decades of decline. And that was a result of a concerted effort of their leaders of Girl Guides insisting that everyone play nice.

So, why should a girl AOL lack a troop to crossover? Two causes:

• The president and congress have no interest in making  BSA and GS/USA “play nice” by (at the very least) sharing participation in Jamboree.
• The scout failed to recruit her friends (or enemies) and a trio of caring adults.

It is indeed a serious issue but as far as I can tell it’s not ours to solve until we are demanded to do so by 1) our youth or 2) our elected officials.

23 hours ago, RainShine said:

... A branch or something cast a shadow on his face and he dreamed it, and he probably sat upright scared out of his wits. full on nightmare type thing. 

The only knock on that theory is the guy is 15. He aint some little kid anymore. ...

Or, this painting might have have caught his attention at one time.

I’ll should wait for part 2. But what you’ve recounted so far emphasizes the importance of two-deep leadership and no one-on-one contact, and the difficulty ensuring it every minute of 240 hours of summer camp.

Good luck. I’ve worked with committees faced with these kinds of decisions where every solution sounds like a bad one.

I’ve known scouts who finished their Eagle advancement while in juvenile detention. So I’m quick to say anything’s possible. But …

When a seasoned scouter has his doubts, it’s time to ask hard questions. What will a Lone Scout program offer the scout that he may not already have via his treatment program? Are you sure nobody in your council is trying a scouting program for kids with behavior disorders?

There’s no boiler-plate. So, you need to find the scouters in your council who may handle a program specifically for this. This is one of those situations where a note to your SE might actually be productive.

11 hours ago, MikeS72 said:

That puts me and most of my Scouts out of the picture!😄

8 hours ago, KublaiKen said:

Right? Same here. What happened to achievable goals?

All minus most equals some of our scouts carrying for the rest of us.

For a few years, Buttercup was the troop song. And no, it was not great. Then one choir boy decided to take the lead by opening with that guttural “Why do you …” just like on the record. All of summer would be up and dancing at evening campfire.

The Good Book says “Make a joyful noise …” no mention of tonality.

I can’t even believe I’m about to say this …

… make peace with the electronics. The boys in my troop become singing fools when they start streaming old-school pop tunes. I constantly remind them that I loath whatever the tech name is for their pathetic excuse for a boom box, but I’ll abide it as long as I hear their voices rise above in passable melody.