qwazse

True story: last weekend, I had cracked open a new mini flashlight that came with its own AAA battery. I was having a heck of a time closing up the light until I realized the battery was wrapped in plastic. I gently pulled it out with some pliers, peeled off the plastic, and re-installed the battery. No light. I unscrewed it and tried to reseat the battery, which was gradually feeling warmer ... then hotter! (I thought it could be my paranoia, so I had my SM check it.) Sure enough, the somewhere in the process of packing and removing that battery it became what I'd call a "short" stack. I dropped it in a mini-solo cup (a.k.a. hillbilly demitasse cup), scooped some snow in the thing, and set it out side. It melted about half the snow until it decided that I wasn't going along with its mission-impossible antics!

You will have days like this. The balance between discipline and fun is always hard for young ones to figure out. (My poor Webelos DL ... we kids sure gave him a run for his money. And this was back when parents dropped off and picked up.)

Many buttons, e.g. T.V. Remotes and older calculators, have lodestones in the plastic buttons. They were used to close circuits without worrying about narrow guides that would wear away after repeated use. Those little buggers have pretty weak fields, however, and make for terrible compasses.

$100 on the spot would go the the scout who could fashion me a wide brim (3.5") leather hat ... or patch the gaping hole in my old one. I can't even find my make and model in any western store or online.

It is the Committee's job to support the Unit Leader as he/she delivers the program. I would tell the CC that tails don't wag dogs, but as I'm watching mine, I'm not entirely sure that's true.

Some scout associations in he world do not use advancement as a method, especially for their mid teen and later programs. The youth I've met are fine with that. @gblotter, you may have missed some of my musings on the subject, but I'm of the opposite perspective. Not only do I favor rank advancement, I favor granting direct-contact adults the privilege of working on rank advancement while they serve our scouts. First class rank should be a goal for all SMs and a requirement for any member of the national advancement team, and no member of that who hasn't earned Star, Life, or Eagle may draft policy regarding that rank. A lot of us sit in judgement of MB programs, but our only evidence is our boys who go through them. I've actually been quite pleased with the experiences our scouts have had with their various counselors (be it district, camp, or MB pow-wows) - rarely needing to complain about it. But, I do wonder if I missed something that could be caught if adults were motivated to try and master the same skills as the boys.

They always to seem to find something ... Hang out and give sage advice to younger scouts. Talk with adults around campfire after taps about how to solve the problems of the world. Master a specialty like BSA Guard, Medicine, Shooting Sports, Climbing, Snorkeling, ... Ask the camp director for a service project. Retake a favorite merit badge, helping out the counselor in the process. Walk around the lake (it's a 5 mile hike) with some younger scouts trying to master land navigation. Walk around the lake and chat up the girls running the trading post at cub camp. (I later conveyed my troops apologies for that one.) Build a giant hamster wheel out of lashings and sticks for a scoutcraft competition. Convert a tarp named Bruce to a coracle named Kaitlin for an anything-that-floats competition. Use up my bailer twine to rig a lakeside bivouac in the trees. (Think basket weaving, but beds instead of seats.)

@UncleP l feel your pain. During the rechartering process, I have generated far more detail than BSA has ever published. For example, for each member who doesn't renew, I have to explain why. There are some check-boxes and one open-ended field. Those data of how many quit for which reason have never been in this report to the nation. The annual report does include financial statements. If you have nothing better to do, you could fish through those and see how they stack up over the years. I don't like the belligerent tone this POTUS takes, but I wouldn't mind if he asked our VIP scouts, "Where have the rest of your mates gone?"

Yea, about that Venturing growth ... 2008 was about when we insistedd that our DE stop feeding us numbers from paper crews whose youh hardly even knew they were registered with the BSA. I wouldn't be surprised if the number of Venturers who actually ever read their oath/code never exceeded 1/4 million. Registration fees, adult applications for 18-20 year olds, and YPT demands didn't help. But, I was surprised last year when my crew couldn't drum up even five youth who wanted to engage the program.

Contact your district or council advancement chairman. You might not like hearing what he/she has to say. But he/she is the one who schedules Eagle boards of review. In general, I have been coming across more 17 year-olds who just don't do paperwork. We had a boy come back to us in consecutive weeks with an incomplete Eagle app. You'd think at SMC #1 when we said, "Go home, look at all of your blue cards, and fill in the dates," he would do that that very evening, call the SM the next day for a signature, and take that paperwork downtown as soon as office hours opened! But, evidently that's not how post-modern nomads operate.

Good luck. But, I suspect the name will get changed to something like "mats and macrame" -- which is the art ... of which paracord is only one medium.

This ^^^ The method in Venturing is not Leadership Development, rather, it is Leadership. (The equivalent of "Don't try, do.") The working assumption is that from age 11-13, youth have been picking up skills from different spheres of life, and the Crew becomes a crucible where youth can leverage what they've developed, learn from one another, and grow. So, when those freshmen come together with some of them having picked up just enough of a "take care of your mates" mentality, and I suggest "To achieve X, Y must occur by Z date," they step up and begin to soar. It really is something to behold. When that leadership development hasn't been happening ... or when your natural leaders break bad ... collapse is imminent. Also something to behold. And, if I knew how to stop that train wreck, I'd write a book on it.

If the current distribution of arms has given our communities well-regulated militias capable of, for example, defending school-children or concert-goers from nihilists bent on robbing souls of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then we have achieved the goal of the 2nd amendment. If, on the other hand, we give such enemies of The People an unbalanced advantage in their assault on free society, we collectively find ourselves in violation of the 2nd amendment. The question then becomes: how to bring us all back into compliance with the intent of a well regulated Militia? Wrapped up in this is a profound mistrust of government, neighboring communities, other nationalities, recent immigrants, the opposite sex, bloggers, etc ...

And join the 10,000 other scouters who've had that door slammed in their face? Great strategy for masochists. Exactly ... that's what rogue troops did. BSA4G is the result. We're all victims of their success. ^^ Understatement of the decade!

A case from this weekend ... A couple of boys wanted to work on 1st class navigation requirements. The ranger had a binder full of headings and copies of camp maps, so I borrowed those and told the SPL I would be available before lunch for a refresher on compass parts, etc ... and after lunch to start anyone on the course. It was damp and snowy so I told the boys they could use their phones to take pictures beside each marker. Four boys took me up on the challenge, which was fine by me. I wasn't prepared to run a full-blown timed and scored course. Two, slightly older, came to get the refresher before lunch. After lunch they found 4 of 5 markers and were able to explain what threw them off of the other two. I later learned that the one boy's compass lost its numbers from the housing (which were decals, not painted), and he and his buddy had to adjust by brute intuition. We reviewed what they did and they had a clear understanding of what went wrong. I let their PL know, and he signed off. Two first-years skipped the refresher and consequently found 2 of 5 markers. They had pictures of themselves beside 3 markers for other courses! The one scout asked if he passed the requirement. As kindly as possible, I explained: Cub Scouts try, Boy Scouts master. I did offer them another course for them to try, and they turned it down. I was available that evening to train both groups of boys on the SM's GPS. The SPL was getting increasingly vexed trying to get them to see me to complete one more requirement. I called him over and encouraged him to just put out an invite once for each opportunity that arises during a weekend. It's not his job (or mine) to force kids to do requirements. It was a bit hard for him to grasp because he came up in the spun-off troop that did a bit of pencil-whipping. In another post, I'll go over how I (hopefully) laid the groundwork for this group of scouts to improve their approach skills mastery.

Everybody wants adventure, few want to condition for it. Girls are beholden to generations of moms who have been taught not to sacrifice creature comforts, their great grandmothers are shaking their heads. But, if across this country, there were 1000 girls who will master camping and hiking and camping with their mates, what should someone who's sworn to be helpful do?

Laurel Highlands Council holds Haunted Guyasuta in October for Cubs. Scouts help staff various activity tables. This year, however, they "didn't have room" for a scouter to set up Jamboree on the Air, which was occurring on the same day ... a pathetic mark against an over wise outstanding program.

Death is such a cruel description for a program that is no longer being used ... but yeah. BSA is no longer providing a Varsity Scouts program.

Welcome to the forums. Do submit your idea via the Email using the address in the link that Bryan's blog sent you. Be patient, it takes years ... sometimes decades ... for an idea to congeal into a Merit Badge.

Call me contrarian, but Webelos really don't need to engage with a troop at all. Be nice if they do so they earn AoL etc ... But, they'll do just as well learning from scratch in a troop that their buddy invites them to the following year. I think we would all be better served to revise the AoL requirement to simply say, "Make friends with a Boy Scout, have him teach you about the Scout rank." Then revise the First Class Rank requirement to say, "Befriend an AoL Scout or someone your age, teach him/her about Scout rank, with your PL/SPL's permission, invite him/her to visit your troop on a meeting night or other activity." This takes the onus off the DL to be the perfect patrol leader, etc ... and puts it on the community of scouts, not just the den chief, to acclimate a boy to troop life.

Regardless of those slight changes, our Webelos are coming in a little sharper than before. I remember when I was a cub, Webelos made you tenderfoot-ready. (Plus, in my den, we had some skill with the DL's '38 special.)

Don't worry HT, E94 has his bright moments. But graft an corruption -- especially from volunteers and pros -- cause him to squeak. We really emphasize this point with the boys. If they don't know a scout, abstain. (Yes, we have to teach them what the word means and how to spell it!) Some first class scouts in a troop that's only been doing patrol-oriented activities may only be known to their patrol, SPL, and ASPL. For them, 6 honest votes (up or down) out of 10 is all that should matter ... unless between school and meetings other scouts know that he robs liquor stores to buy drugs. The opposite could be true. A scout could be in a patrol full of bullies, and he's going against their current. The thugs don't notice it, but boys in other patrols do. Either way that's why you want as much of the troop as possible to weigh in and vote: yes, no, or abstain.

I'll let someone else spin this about something like who's got any news about WSJ acceptances ... @FireStone, don't get me wrong. I want boys to master first class skills ASAP. Girls too ... my crew, when active, goes for wilderness, and we only go as deep as skills allow. The sooner those skills are mastered, the sooner we can make better hike plans, do better service projects, build honor guards, support civic ceremony, cook really good meals, etc ... But, I'm in no hurry to put a patch on a scout who hasn't mastered the skills in those requirements. And for all but disabled boys that is met, not by time spent in the program, but rather time spent on the program. A boy spending 5 hours a week and an overnight a month working on advancement will rank up right quick ... an hour a week and camping once a quarter will take a good couple or five years.

Hey guys! WM crossed over to the dark side! One FCFY down, umpteen thousand more to go!

It's a national policy. I think the general idea is if a scout is favored by the majority of half his unit, that's a 25% of the boys registered in the unit weighing in on his election. I'm pretty sure they didn't spend a lot of time examining the properties of the multivariate binomial distribution for this one. They just figured it was a good enough number of boys to judge if the lodge was getting a decent candidate or not. Obviously, if you've screen your boys and 3/4 of ballots from 40% of the troop endorse each of them, the other half of the troop would make no difference. We've had some "just-by-a-vote" elections. So, if we ran one with less than half the membership present and the absent majority found out that they we railroaded the results, we'd catch a lot of flack from our scouts. We used to have elections at summer camp. I liked that. But then our boys started going to different camps. That made it tougher to get a majority, so we arranged for a meeting night. And, it's pretty much like @Back Pack's troop. We make a plan to collect ballots early and announce well in advance.