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First, thanks for all your hard word on behalf of your youth. Second, you're in for a wild ride. Throw the gauntlet down with your DE. Say "my people will be available for X hours on the . Send us a trainer, and well jump through your hoops". Hopefully it will be the same day as VLST. If not, ask your people if any of them can make the Charter training. If not, punt. JTE is filled out by your crew president. If you can be humble enough to apologize to him/her and ask her forgiveness for costing them a couple hundred points, you're done. Warning, if your DE does take up the gauntlet, it'

I think scouting does engender the level of respect for military personnel that most enlisted folks would like to see. They don't want youth holding them up on a pedestal, but they do want to be understood and respected for what they are doing for their country. I remember watching one parade in a AnySmallTown USA, my host told me to make sure my son knew to take of his hat as the vets came down leading the parade with the flag; otherwise, a member who walks down the sidewalk beside the color-guard will chastise him for being disrespectful. I told my host "After all of the training in s

Here's a thought ... I think honor expresses itself in groups. That's why I push youth to "put themselves out there". This is one of the prime distinctions between my ventures who come in from a troop environment, and the rest (i.e., some girl scouts, and boys and girls who were never in scouting). In a troop it is taken for granted that you will hold a position of responsibility (not talking about patches here, talking about a job that everyone expects of you), and you will put some effort into it and nobody is going to take any excuses from you, and you are not going to make any excuse

By tent stakes, I'm assuming you mean something of the longer stakes you can buy in your camping supply store. No, they won't work. If your talking what the circus uses, that's a different story. 30" rebar (steel) works. Some people have that more ready than wood stakes. If you have a landscaper among your parents, he/she might be able to make a generous donation. But the general ideas was to go out in the woods, size up the plot of land, find the hickory trees with suitable branches (easy enough if you're somewhere with harsh winters and plenty of deadfall), and hack away.

I remember in college (a little later than you would have been going, Stosh) a buddy of mine and I were in the same class. He was always looking sharp, and I -- well let's just say I never left the wilderness too far behind. The prof was just a few years older than us (maybe more, but she looked very young) and a very competent instructor, who was generous with office hours. I remember going her office and he was just leaving -- in full dress ready his ROTC meeting. Her first comment to me was "Students didn't dress like that when I was in college! Times have changed." "For the better?" I

"Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain." -- If he heard an "Oh my Gosh" (or even a "Golly gee" or "by Jove") from our lips, he'd bust us on it!

We'll need Richard B to direct us to an after action report. And that, IMHO, means every "near miss" should be followed up this month. Many spiral fractures (like the one my daughter acquired to her wrist this spring) aren't diagnosed at the ER, but rather a couple of weeks after the fact. I know in recent years, I've had one boy with a sprained wrist backpacking. Estimate that at 1 per 1000 boy-days, multiply by 40, and you're pretty much right at the same #. :0 For my modest statistical consulting fee, I can compile the published research on skate park and BMX injuries and give you a p

If that was true, then why do the "leadership skills" types go nuclear when we suggest that the Boy Scouts of America (in exchange for our lucrative monopoly on Scouting) be "trustworthy" enough to "obey" the statute that we include all those requirements from June 15, 1916? For the same reason that we pay the morbidly obese a million dollars a year to mock that law, to promote Wood Badge, and to explain why it is wrong for the Boy Scouts of America to expect a twelve (12) year-old Boy Scout to sleep in a tent away from his mommy and daddy: Not a ten (10) or eleven (11) year-old Boy

Yeah, what he said ^_^. Except for the "adolescent view" thing. But, I guess that's one more reason I like the BSA. It's not a perfect compromise, but one that keeps a lot of houses of worship in the game. The alternative could be very much like what we have with the school system: fiefdoms of public works that alienate all manner of folks ... leading to them build their own highly coveted schools.

When I had become an atheist (around the age of 12, I started reading the Bible and very quickly realized that I couldn't believe what I was reading), I toyed for a few minutes with every Christian teenager's wet dream of total hedonism by being an atheist*, but I immediately realized that that was a false concept. So since neither Christianity nor the Bible would be my guide, what would? The answer came to me immediately: Scouting. Every moral precept that I could ever need was embodied in the Oath, Law, Motto, and Slogan. Decades later when I read that Baden-Powell quote, it certainly l

I think it's more a question of where your blind spots are. My SM wouldn't took the 3rd commandment very seriously (not even an OMG). But he'd let us tell some pretty rare jokes. Also, some scouts are coming from a different starting point than others. Each boy is a negotiation between you and his parents. Then, we make it clear to a boy when an action is unbecoming of his oaths. Some boys need quite a lot of "warning." From the outside, it could look like we are very lax. But from the boots on the ground, if a boy is always on "lock down" you will never know if he's learned. (Of co

When I had become an atheist (around the age of 12, I started reading the Bible and very quickly realized that I couldn't believe what I was reading), I toyed for a few minutes with every Christian teenager's wet dream of total hedonism by being an atheist*, but I immediately realized that that was a false concept. So since neither Christianity nor the Bible would be my guide, what would? The answer came to me immediately: Scouting. Every moral precept that I could ever need was embodied in the Oath, Law, Motto, and Slogan. Decades later when I read that Baden-Powell quote, it certainly l

When I had become an atheist (around the age of 12, I started reading the Bible and very quickly realized that I couldn't believe what I was reading), I toyed for a few minutes with every Christian teenager's wet dream of total hedonism by being an atheist*, but I immediately realized that that was a false concept. So since neither Christianity nor the Bible would be my guide, what would? The answer came to me immediately: Scouting. Every moral precept that I could ever need was embodied in the Oath, Law, Motto, and Slogan. Decades later when I read that Baden-Powell quote, it certainly l

I have a pretty low bar for vacations. My scouting training has taught me to be content with the bare minimum!

Of course! But in high-demand years, each council is allocated so many slots. And if the majority of venturers who sign on are not Sea Scouts, then they'll all wearing green and grey. The way this could work would be that a council would announce that one of the crews in its contingent would participate as a sea scout ship. Maybe they have 2 dozen slots for venturers, and they allocate half to Sea Scouts. Let's way a half dozen Sea Scouts from that council sign up early. Those youth would then advertise throughout the area and region that they have six openings for any venturers who wa

Mt Hope would be hard on those dress whites!

NJE92, Agree with BD to a point. My boys do look for those silver knots, so wear that one proudly, but don't clutter up that field uniform pocket with so many other knots that it gets overlooked. You don't need any pins on your hat. Hats are not where anyone looks for your scouting history. They are for keeping the sun out of your eyes and the rain off your back. I've taught my boys to regard highly the fella with the weathered hat. Finally, keep in mind that the OA sash should only be worn when OA business is being conducted. I disagree with your opinion that the cubs need to know that th

P18A, you will find that crew advisors love to grouse about getting short shrift from National. But then again, why should National bother about the most rapidly shrinking program of the BSA? It's not enough to have one or two flash-bang crews in a district. To be of national importance, dozens of crews need to be in every district, touching base with one another and encouraging one another. We're simply not there yet. Think about it this way. Until parents in our packs start worrying if the troops they visit are partnered with crews, venturing will be of marginal relevance to the progr

Nice write-up! I hope a lot of boys read it. After a potentially sample-destroying equipment failure that one of our IT interns stumbled upon, I sat down with him and broke down the gravity of the situation. He had asked if we had to report this failure every time we reported from any analysis of these samples. My line was simply "We are nothing we we don't have our integrity." Life is riddled with attempts to avoid sweeping things "under the rug."

K. It's not a matter of slacking. It's a matter of the boy actually learning something. It sounds like you helped one boy learn. Now if I were the SM of the other boys in that class and knew what happened, I would not honor the blue cards because doing so is hurting the boys. I would probably have them go over to your campsite with a fresh pot of coffee or flowers or whatever and ask if you'd help them complete the requirements as written! Then I would have a sit-down with the camp director and tell him to not offer the course any more this summer until the MBC knows his material and pr

I think BD, brings up an important point. You are now a servant of your district. This shouldn't be too hard for you to handle because as CM, you've already know folks at your roundtable. So, if there is something unique that you can offer by way of adding variety to the program (especially for the Medicine and Geocaching MB's), don't hesitate to put yourself out there. Some troops might like the opportunity to have an introduction to the MB as a meeting topic. So if you have time to offer that sort of thing, you can. But, like BD said, avoid walking through all the requirements of th

Just putting it out there: "It's the Economy, stupid.". The centennial was three years earlier. Usually volunteers for things like is have four years to recharge the wallets. In a good ecomonmy, most of us would have a little fat to burn. In this one ... most of us are just trying to stop the bleeding. Lots of us have done that by passing on the big ticket items.

Plus keep in mind that anything you spend as an essential volunteer counts like a charitable deduction.

I think the general rule was about half fare.

I think most of us write here because we do like the BSA -- even if some of us had to deal with a dose of rejection. Some ways National has helped me: Jamborees - 'nuff said. Seabase - I wouldn't have a crew without it. Venturing - made scouting work for my entire family. Advancement - put my council in line when it questioning crew positions of responsibility for Eagle. So, I may be a bit of a scofflaw, but not hardly an anarchist.