qwazse

For your scouts who are having a tough time swimming ... Just heard a great story from Mike Massimino on the Moth Radio Hour. It might be airing on your public radio station this week. It will be available online in a couple of days. When it does, you should be able to find a link here: https://themoth.org/radio-hour/live-from-the-world-science-festival

@@Gwaihir and the ban hammer drop! That just sounds so cool and windlordy.

Well, my church has welcomed athiests, (and other non-Christians) and its creed hasn't changed and its numbers are strong. One or two of those athiests eventually committed their lives to Christ, but not all. They were all as welcome as long as they could stand us. BSA's approach is simply not compatible with how the congregation sees reverence, and therefore has less value as a program for its youth. The premium is on programs that allow for evangelism, and step one in that process: open the door. That's not to say brand dilution won't be a real concern, but I personally would feel more of a Christian in scouting if I could spend time talking to athiests about reverence than telling them not to waste time with an application.

In college a Japanese friend told me about his time (would have been in the late 1970's) as a youth leader of his YMCA. He was asked to lead grace. He told me he had no clue what he was doing. I was pretty skeptical of cemeteries seminaries at the time, so I told him his prayer was no doubt as well received as that of most clergy.

"About 650" per http://adulteaglescout.com/.We have no idea how the numbers in the USA would shake out. Ten or ten thousand, it still represents a valuation of identity over skill. The quote Stosh gave makes clear it is as much about Eagle as anything else. Having taken Venturers into the deep woods, and seeing them find plenty of opportunities for guys to be with guys; and girls, girls, and doing similar for occasional Jr. High Youth. I might be poisoned by "the bug juice." But I'm seeing the pinnacle scouting experience of hiking and camping independently with your mates increasingly occur, when it occurs, independent of sex or faith, without the BSA. Venturing offers no trail to First Class, if it did, gates would go up ... as quickly as they did when Chiefs tried to tap out their female venturing counterparts. Maybe it is important for some boys to have an "identity shelter", and your neck of the woods may need just that. I have my own preferences in the paragons of virtue who advise my kids. But fretting about what someone does with the needs they see in their community in some other nook in the country ... it's making me feel like we've been played via the game of scouting. I'd rather play the game.

Someone gets sick of some adults across the country earning ranks. Result: bookwork badges suitable for school kids become required, field study badges become elective. Someone pitches a fit over some scouter who lets a patrol hike with their girlfriends or over a girl making rank. Result: we don't really know who all of the Eagle Scouts in this country are. Then someone hears about some godless kid in the ranks, and someone else makes a federal case about it. Result: public institutions are not to accommodate, making the organization increasingly beholden to some moral majority. Purges ensue. The boys need more adult leaders, so women step forward, but women never had an opportunity to prove skills by making rank, so we create weekend training because, well, surely adults can learn in a day what it takes boys years. Then someone in one part of the country gets all up in arms about activists in another part of the country riding on the organization's coat tails by touting an out and proud SM. Zealous men an women ask the now polarized organization to protect our boys. Then someone wants us to sift boys for sexual persuasion like we sift adults. Diminishing by a thousand cuts. So, like some lackluster cheerleading squad, scouters get deluded into thinking some of those cuts are what makes us special: Pardon me, but I never really knew that I earned anything besides Eagle Scout. Nobody told me it was at all special because girls couldn't earn it. Once I learned that men used to be able to earn it, it felt a little less special to me. All those SM/ASM who felt they were a little "less qualified" because they missed some opportunity in their youth. Why can't we say, "well, what's holding you back now?" All those venturers to whom boys said, "Your Silver will never be as good as my Eagle." I know some SMs who would have liked to give those young women a handbook and say "Show them how it's done." In fact, one SM quite proudly told me about having sisters work through the requirements even if national won't give them the rank. Compare to your vision Eagle milled boys, I think those girls add value to the badge because they want it's substance, not some line on a resume. We can spout off about youth development, membership numbers, etc ... But don't think for a moment that any pride in my bling stems from it being a boys only (no men, no girls, no women, no godless) award.

One of this town's favorite weekly monologues opened with our hero reading Boy's Life in a waiting room ... He isn't a scout dad (evident by lack of experience completing medical records), but many of us relate on multiple levels.

'bout time someone started to heard these renegades back into the loving arms of their exclusive progenitors.

@@RivetSmasher, welcome to the forums! And, thanks for all of your service to the boys. So, one of them post-modern nomads, eh? Contact your new council's lodge advisor, I'm sure he'll plug you in.

Sounds like you want some out-of-the-box thinking, so here's a Confucian, Wile E. Coyote mashup: If you can't build a bridge, paint a valley. Get a large white canvas tarp and blue, green, red and yellow paints. Half the canvas hangs from the ceiling as is painted with a two hillsides in the background, one with a Cub Scout symbol, the other with a Boy Scout symbol (or cub camp, and boy scout camp), with the "sunset" portion of the AoL shining between the two valleys. The inside half of a bridge is in the foreground near floor level, with the "arrow" portion of the AoL on the bridge as part of the "railing". The other canvas spreads across the floor, and is painted with a stream down the middle, and painted wooden planks crossing the stream. If your gathering place has a stage, the canvas could fold over, and you could paint a waterfall! You would want props (campfire ring, wood pile, etc ...) in the foreground to hide weights that keep the floor portion spread flat. Your wheel-chair scout could then cross on his own, just like the other boys. This should fold and store easier than any wooden bridge. Some parents have experience at stage management, so they could give you an estimate on the materials, or you could talk to a high school if some of the students in theater would want a service project. You could also use large pieces of colored tarp for different parts of the background, but you'll want the part on the floor to be one painted piece so things won't get ruffled with lots of foot traffic. Whatever you do, try and post a picture of the final product!

Welcome to the forums! The only thing your son has control over is the invite list. The troop has control over their participation. Your son's friends have control over their participation.

File under "you've never truly lived unless you ..." The national guard handed down a 24 man (Lord knows how many boys) wall tent that we called "the circus tent." Center-pole was a good 12' trunk in two pieces, which the smallest scout would climb to hang the canvas peak ... which was held together by crossing chains. Typically, we got it out for klondike derbies. We'd all put down individual ground cloths, which gave everyone a fair collection of packed snow for "pillow fights." (God bless my SM.) Yes it was fun. But it was also a good way of keeping an eye on our youngest scouts for signs of frostbite or hypothermia.

We're not much for skits either. I think it is mainly because the school district has a championship theater program (a couple of my venturers have gone on to professional careers), and our youth have pretty much had it with play practice when they finally can make it on a camp-out. That said, I can be blamed for pushing boundaries ... making white boys read "Negro" out loud for MLK day. It was not something they were at all comfortable with. But, it was their first time reading the "I Have a Dream" speech in full. And having done so, we could see light bulbs turning on for the first time. A compass is only good if you know where you're coming from.

3/4 will work, but as an uncoordinated kid, I always felt more stable on a 1" rope. A splice sounds like a great way to increase stability. 1/2" Might not withstand the tension in a 30' span. Has anybody modified the monkey bridge design with Kevlar, a.k.a. slack line?

SBmom's den has come up with examples -- four at the time of her first post. What's in these boys' way is a willingness to defer to one another and come to a consensus. I'm not sure pointing out that they won't earn AoL will motivate them to break that log jam. But, it could be worth a try.

This is typical of Area/Regional Venturing officers. They see more of professionals than most scouts.

Having recently gone through a similar situation, I think that's about all that can be done. I explained to the aggrieved scout what scouters had done wrong, and what his options were. There was some back-and-forth about it. But at no time did I try to assign any more motive to it than, "Looks like this new committee is trying to address a skills retention problem." The scout eventually made peace with the committee, knowing he was well within his rights to keep digging his heels in. Follow-up: as crew president, he is centering meetings on refreshing those first class skills. A process that is much more fun when the only award is bragging rights, and the promise of some real-world challenges in the near future.

Institutional head. For our CO (a Presbyterian church), that is the Clerk of Session. For other churches it might be the pastor. For a fire/police station, it would be the chief.

Is it ... Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, or Reverent? And not the striking opposite of any of those? Most of your limiting cases might fall under not being kind. But not always. Some really good skits might get precluded by your tight boundaries.

@@Stosh, I was talking about a blown out heel or sole of a boot. For actual feet, yes the duct tape, and/or a thin sock layer (I've become addicted to merino wool liners from the army surplus store, but they didn't have them this weekend ) will do the trick on most people's skin. Please, everybody who may have means to acquire it, only use incendiaries on the boot WHILE IT IS REMOVED FROM THE FOOT, and at appropriate safe distances from any body part (yours or your buddy's) as advised by your munitions instructor!

Loved my tin whistles. (The first one was probably from my oldest brother's scout gear.) Then, as we became a kayaking family and I volunteered supervising aquatics, the Fox 40 became my friend (no waiting for a cork ball to dry before the volume kicked in). Then National Camp School came out with the philosophy that life guards shouldn't have whistles -- undue sense of superiority and other such truck. Someone, please introduce me to the guy who asked for a ruling on that .

I find most adhesives give way without heat and pressure. Now if the 1st aid kit came with a little plastique and detonators ...

@@ShutterbugMom, I was one of those who led off with the "not your problem" shtick. But I was dead serious about making the boys go to the library to research this. Especially if they are at loggerheads over it. As long as they aren't getting into wrestling matches and breaking furniture, they need to go through this forming-storming-norming-performing process on their own ... perhaps with the guidance of an older scout. You know when your troop will use them. I'm assuming they do too. They might even be getting a rise out of you being irritated by this. (I was an 11 year old WEBELOS once, and getting our DL to blow his stack was a favorite pastime of ours. So, pardon me if I've wrongly generalized my childhood to your boys. ) So, feeding them concrete ideas from strangers on the internet will just reward their drama. Don't get me wrong you absolutely must keep the heat on (e.g., "You guys might look a little like Tiger cubs at the end of the meeting if you don't settle on a yell."), but you must at the same time distance yourself from the problem ("I'm sure you guys can figure this out. Just remember the 4th and 5th points of the scout law while you do.") There are somethings that are sacred. And boys' patrol "image" is one of them. Unless it's blatantly obscene, we keep our hands off.

Once upon a time, we called it a single-strand rope bridge. The materials now make it much more feasible for a lot of boys. And where on that old rope bridge the best we could do was dash across, a quality slack line enables the obsessive practitioner to master some really cool acrobatics. Our museum/library (the one with the to-scale bronze diplodocus) has a really nice cut of lawn with evenly spaced old sycamores, where some CMU/Pitt students set up their lines in the evening. Definitely fun to watch. But you have to watch out as their skills increase. For example, our troop for a while had some pretty athletic boys ... really good climbers and hikers who were pretty cautious in the wild. But, as soon as a Frisbee or football was introduced to the mixed, you could almost count down the seconds until a boy reported to us with a broken bone. Skills increase: more challenging maneuvers: get more padding and more spotters and maybe even send the boys to gymnastics class.

Scouts purchase/fabricate their own tents or borrow their buddy's (or go without). Quality varies. But, as boys share different tents over the years, they get a good idea of what they want to invest in when they come into their own $$'s. If anyone asks me, I tell them that over the years Eureka has become my brand to trust. After exploding in 100mph winds, I could keep one patched and serviceable for a decade of use by two active scouts. The Venturer tended to prefer the 6-man Coleman, or the 50-cent pup tent.