qwazse

Boy Scout: Life Rank, Senior Patrol Leader That says it all, and is enough on the resume` to get you an interview from anyone who admires scouts (and no small number of employers who may despise them). At the interview, they will ask how close you are to getting Eagle and what specific responsibilities you took on as SPL. As an employer, I want to know that you'll call a spade a spade. Trust me, Mrs. Q and I are dealing with an elder care situation where staff didn't have the stones to be forthright with us. Their administrators got an earful, and they are none too please to hear about their staff glossing over an incident that could have been settled with an apology. I'll bet a -1 on this post from you if you don't experience this.

I'm betting it's not what I or anyone else feels, but what skilled litigators have got from negligence cases when plaintiffs were all-male caretakers vs all-female caretakers of the opposite sex.

Or, maybe BSA has been breaking more lofty rules for a few decades, and they are just setting things aright! Player or pawn, she's not the first. She just happens to be present when enough customers are clamoring for recognition based on achievement, not identity.

Wierd, I never experienced anything like this on the iPad.

The one group of youth who I most want to keep are the ones who, for what they save by not registering, go hiking and camping independently with their mates.

We used Google Docs, Calendar, Sites, and Groups. For messaging, the last group of boys used Instagram with limited success. The limit was mostly selfishness on my part because I didn't want to create one more account. Our council VOA advisor is giving GroupMe a trial run. Evidently the regional VOA has been operating with it for some time. If the crew reactivates, I may give this a re-think. Although the more E-hoops I go through, the more I am liking Field Notes (https://fieldnotesbrand.com/products/original-kraft) ... and a cork-board at the CO. (Or, maybe a dead-drop outside it.)

It seems like your advantage is a small community ... at the moment. Basically, you have a patrol of boys and a patrol of girls. My daughter's problem seemed to be that she was the 16th girl in any troop with regular outdoor activities. Thus, venturing. That said, for the other girls in my crew ... We had mostly dual registered (either with a GS/USA or BSA troop) in our crew. Council wide, it tended to be the GS/USA pros who were most vocal about the arrangement. The rank-and-file volunteers made it work with happy faces. In general, I've always known BSA to encourage youth at every level to participate in other service/outdoor organizations as well as their troop/crew -- with the expectation that they bring back what they discovered to the unit.

@cocomax, is your GS/USA troop sticking to the size limit of 15? Or are the bucking that "recommendation"?

@cocomax, as long as you know how to fold a sit-upon, you'll do fine! There's a lotta love out there for GS/USA. I'm making plans to buy me some cookies from the great-nieces next week. But, when a girl wants to camp once a month -- far from outlets and flushies most nights -- she'd better hope there's room for her in the one troop in twenty that will give it a go.

One year sure felt awful busy. I think we had 8 then. I think we're up for another flurry. We have a bunch of life scouts who are about the same age. I'm always glad when we have about 5 times that number who will never get their bird. Those boys add a lot of flavor to the troop.

The SM should know that your husband is picking up a pattern of behavior. There's not much to do about it, but it's always good to see if the older boys widen their circle or narrow it. Boys who widen their circle to other scouts are likely engaging the program. Those who are narrowing their circle may be disengaging and might soon be on the way out.

This is nothing new. In my youth, I was told that arrowmen were not to do a rain dance -- or even a cheap imitation thereof -- because it was mocking a prayer. Other dances that narrated a story we encouraged. Also, certain drums could be replicated, others could not. I have no idea if that was the insistence of a tribe, some advice from an anthropologist (we had a few in our district), or pure hearsay. But making pains so as to honor vs. offend was part of the O/A mystique growing up.

@Thunderbird, you're assuming there's more to life than rank advancement! Oh, the tears of distraught moms you will see!

Well calling any weekend in a cabin "glamping" is just rude. There's no "glam" in a box full of boy-scent or man-snore -- no matter how much lipstick your try to put on that pig! But, the nation is rife with scouters wanting to push-back as the comments in @LeCastor's link and older post on Bryan's show: https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2015/06/24/ask-expert-isnt-camping-night-camping-mb/ https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2012/06/07/ask-the-expert-interpreting-camping-merit-badge-requirement-9a/

Lines on new resumes: Boy Scouts: completed Eagle Scout requirements, save the fee.

I've met at least one young drum circle (the men of which got their start in O/A) who were granted membership in the Lenapi Nation for their attention to detail and respect for the tribe's culture. I don't go following drum circles, so pardon me if I generalize from a small sample, but seems to me that being recognized by a living tribe for your work trumps getting some stickers from an anime fan-club for your cos-play. If that's the kind of recognition in store for even 1% of active arrowmen, we would be fools to deny them that.

Well, in "pretending", we seek to aspire to the noblest traits of who we're dressing up as. That is why we encourage buys to dress up as scouts long before they have any real idea of what Oath and Law really mean.

Our troop operates a lot more like yours. Although, there are occasions when the boys will ask to use paper products instead of mess kits. Anyway, this is what shared activities, camporees, conclaves, and jamborees are for ... so scouts from different units can get together and compare notes.

How I make this simple: Your uniform tells a story. Wear it when it is important for others to read your story.

Okay, first of all, everyone ... vocabulary It's a mystique (fascinating aura about someone or something). If you have that, don't give it up. If any of you have a mystic in your lodge, refer him to the monastery.

We call that helping a CEO justify more than six figures.

Wait a minute! You are telling me that this scout did nothing in the way of service in all of 2017? What kind of scout does no service approvable by an SM for an entire year? A one-minute good turn per day would net 6 hours in 12 months! I'm hoping you mistyped the year of service. If this was a service half-day that the scout did in October, he was awarded Tenderfoot in November, and mastered his Second Class skills in December, I'd count what you have on the books. If not, I'd look a little more deeply as to what the scout's been doing and see if there were contributions that really would have counted, but the boy just didn't think to keep track of them. The reason that so few hours of service are asked for is that the general expectation is that these ranks don't take a lot of time. <insert standard rant about the general moral depravity of counting service hours>

I thought this would be worth resurrecting since there was some dialogue about it on another thread. It seems that some folks treat a down-vote as some kind of scarlet letter. And maybe for other forums, that's true. I stand by my comfort with down-votes for anything that folks dislike. Far from being unbecoming of a scout, I consider them to be a friendly gesture. It's useful to know when someone disagrees with me. That disagreement may mean they are offended by my comment, or they think it is just plain stupid. If a couple thousand points get shaved off of my reputation, that may spare some scouter reading my drivel and mistaking it for ex cathedra of some uber scouter. Most of what I write is to help me think through and hone what I may say to someone in person. "Sad" and "confused" are nice touches. But a comment with a mix of up- and down- votes lets us know that not everyone in the scouter-verse thinks the way we do. If something is patently offensive, ad homenim, or mere money grubbing, use "report post" and ask the mods to clean it up. If it's disagreeable -1 now, explain when time allows you.

The new requirements literally have tag-along scentences with the verb "describe", but I certainly agree that a scouter's observations are important. For transfers (even if they are from within the organization) an SM's (or PL's - if the troop has him sign of on that req) observations may be limited. I've had to contact other leaders to get a fair picture in such situations.

Never had a shortage of parents who valued the outdoors. They may not particularly value my willingness to set up camp in snow or slog a mile through laurel thickets or roll with the orienteering club. But, we somehow manage to complement each other's crazy preferences to cover what the boys are asking to do.