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@johnsch322 paints with a discriminating broad brush. African Americans were advancing in European American troops from the early years of BSA … https://aaregistry.org/story/first-black-eagle-scout-awarded/ They we’re also advancing in segregated troops, Martin Luther King, Jr’s troop being one of them. I would suggest that it is harmful to one’s soul to conflate evils. There is a big difference in troops being founded by black leaders in segregated communities and the nation’s black scouts being “very segregated” from the nation’s white scouts.

I think the best thing that can be done is to encourage BSA4G scouting alumni associations (e.g., subsets of NESA and O/A) to follow up with young adults who were members of Scouts BSA girl troops and ask them if they’d be willing to give a presentation (maybe a video interview) of their experience as a scout and how they would like to see things evolve for our scouts of tomorrow. These presentations could be at troop meetings, round tables, or council and even community events. In fact, a repository of videos from adults speaking to future youth and parents about the positives and negatives of their experiences as scouts would be a tool for course corrections as well as recruitment. Another very-long-term tool: World Jamborees and other international scouting events. Getting our capable female youth and young adults to experience how coed and unisex organizations around the world make things work will yield the best results in developing better training and facilities management tool.

GS/USA tried to impose these strictures at a regional and council level in response to the advent of Scouts BSA. Memos regarding multi-organization activities began to be circulated. E.g., from https://www.gssne.org/content/dam/girlscouts-gssne/documents/GirlScout_Participation_in Activities_with_Other_Scouting_Organizations.pdf … I believe language of the sort made it into some troop training materials. (I say “some” because I suspect many trainers knew their audience was more focused on policies that helped their girls grow strong and good, and would not countenance time wasted on admonitions to protect a corporate brand.) In light of GS/USA backing away from trademark litigation this past July, one would hope that an encouragement to “play nice,” with other scouting organizations will also be disseminated. But, I won’t hold my breath, @InquisitiveScouter, for you to post such a memo from your GS/USA council.

@InquisitiveScouter, I once commented on discussions.scouting,org (back when they let us actually talk about administration and not just scoutbook) that an SPL in a small troop is superfluous. Boy, did I get raked! I couldn’t have drawn more fire if I spouted off about politics or religion. So, just accept that it is not so much a PoR as it is a cult for a small troop.

A CoR really needs to stay above this very good learning experience for your scouts. One of them may be on the community’s elections board in a few years! FWIW, a club I was in settled ties with an arm wrestling match.

To be clear, “cultures” don’t “decide” to be offended. Some who associate with a culture claim a privileged position to speak for all of its members, and assert offense on their behalf. The may go so far as to demean those of their fellows who on record as seeing things differently. It’s a big country. It’s been that way long before European conquests and waves of immigrants.

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

That’s a cautionary tale for us all.

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. 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.

@PACAN, I can think of three striking disincentives for GS/USA to reshape its program into anything like BSA’s: 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.), Girls in both organizations love both, and 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!

@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.

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.

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.

@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.

@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.

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.