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I've been trying to reply for a while. We'll see if it takes my post this time. In general your link is how we see things. If your kids and the CO is after a specialty program focused on aquatic skills, be a ship. If they want to specialize in something land based (outdoors, sports, youth ministry, a hobby, etc ..), or be more general interest (like ours) and evolve their program in various directions over time, be a crew. Also, what do the youth in your community need? If there already is a vibrant sailing community with a youth program (as we have just an hour north of us), you probably don't need to fill that niche. Some units have tried to form ships along our three rivers (I met one youth who was a member of several crews and a ship), but they haven't held together for very long. Boating is a subculture here, so only a few kids really see it as something they want to commit to. But, if you've got that few kids who are really interested (and maybe someone who'll donate the slip and the water craft), it may be the ideal program for you.

So, would a church youth group who performs charity work be required to allow athiests. Better yet, if there was an atheist youth organization involved in public activism, would they be required to grant admission to the hundreds of evangelicals who would just love to preach Jesus to them while volunteering in leadership positions?

I should add (no pun intended) that I'm not seeing any banner ads. Maybe maintenance costs have dropped and you don't need as many advertisers? Maybe advertisers are paying more, so they don't need to be as ubiquitous? Or maybe it's one more thing your software vendor sold you a bill of goods on.

Except for this one

Past 5 attempts over the last week, I have not been able to post a thing in these formums.

Much to my wife's chagrin, we took the kids on camping vacations before they could walk. Son #1 asked to be in cub scouts the minute he got the tiger cub flyer from school. Never had to push him to keep signing up year after year (including helping start a crew) until he went to college. Daughter didn't like girl scouts, so she waited until she could be a venturer. Likewise, she enjoyed it until college. Son #2 started as a tiger and is likewise enjoying troop and crew life. Makes me wonder if I should let him go to college?

Likewise. They go in a box with my O/A necker and sash until there's some woodbadge stuff to be done (e.g. beading or announcing the next course). I'll probably wear the beads to crew meetings if our crew ever settles on a uniform. (This might be the year, a lot of the boys are talking about getting it done and aren't bothered about my "no capes" rule.) I would never wear them routinely at a troop meeting because I do not want to one-up the SM who hasn't had time to take the course because he spends his weekends hiking and camping with the boys. With or without beads or necker, the scouts who care know that I am officially an old crow. That's all that matters to me.

BD, I had a lovely reply. But I got a JSON error and the page crashed on me when I tried to post. Anyway sounds like you've got a good plan. The best ones happen when you interrupt a video game!

Limbo was never church dogma. So there was nothing to eliminate. Ratzinger merely felt that the importance of baptism stood on its own merits without the need for limbo to motivate believers to baptize their infants. Others have disagreed.

Not much to add to this except: pick your battles. Boys (and most people) get overwhelmed with a laundry list of goals. Pick one thing, then at your conference ask "Hey, by next week [end of the month if you think it will need it] can I see you do more of X instead of Y?" This probably means you will see no more than a half dozen changes by the time your next election rolls around unless your really lucky and find the 'linchpin' that precipitates a flood of improvement. And, stand by your man. Your committee [possibly even some of your boys] may be impatient with him. Your reply "Well, the boys are now going to learn how to work under a less-than-qualified leader. Let's see how they step up." If you've got an ASM who is good with the nuturing and coaching, team up with him/her to back you up - especially if the boy sees himself as inferior. It'll be one thing if he hears it from you that he improved something. It will be another if your ASM sees it too.

The good news is you have a clear understanding of what is important to the committee. Remember they are your allies, and they are supposed to see things in the boy that you don't. So, really you all now have to feel like you can be a better team. Have the members of your committee been going to round-tables and other district meetings? Are they trained? Is there someone they trust who can give you all constructive feedback? On the boy's part, ask him what he thinks will help him to be a better scout: appealing the board's decision or working on a few of their suggestions? Let him know that you'll support him in watever he decides. If he chooses to work with the board, set a reasonable time-frame for the next BOR. This means you may need to set aside some time for some mini-SMC's each week, what he thinks are good answers to each of the board's issues. Be positive in all of this. Especially with the parents. Remind them we all have to work together. Frankly, when our board turned down my son (once and I forget for which rank, but it involved not having his book), I made it clear that the only option for him was to go back the next week looking sharper. Oh, and yes, our troop expects the boys as they advance in each rank to look sharper, say the oath and law in proper form, be able to express what those points mean more clearly, and give us a better evaluation of where he and the troop is going.

As always, it's the details that matter. Pappadady, is your council having family camp every week? Or, is it creating more weeks of family camp? Is there a week or two that are strictly cub camp? I would not have minded my daughter in camp. She camps with us a lot. But for it to really work, I would have wanted a female den chief for all of the sisters.

You omitted a third option. A national policy that requires units to present homosexuality as an example of morally straight to all of our you.

Okay. Here's the deal. If I am "not allowed to create this post" don't tell me after you give me a "Post Reply" button and a box to write some text! Anyway here's the reply that I wanted to write in "New to Forum!" Hi KM! I'm a tent stake guy too, although I operate with a hand ax and whever branch there is to spare in the axe yard. It kinda freaks a few boys out when I knock out a set of pegs faster than they can place an order with their i-thingies. However, I wouldn't take it up as a proffession. Margins are slim, and the patent office won't honor my claim, so the boys wind up cranking out knock-offs instead of buying me ice-cream for a custom set!

I'm getting logged off randomly. The page just refreshed while I'm typing a post (I think because Guy's post came in), and erased a post. I'm felling a whole lot of postmodern dystopia right now!

Tried to post a reply to Bearclaws topic, got a JSON paste error, so here's that reply ... We are strong on boy-led, weak on patrol method so take our example for what it's worth. We don't say no to the boys when it comes to program. So, if they want to try an MB class, we do it. When they are sick of MB classes, we stop. If they would like a completion, we plan one, if not we don't. Advancement is not a priority, skills are. So, for example, SM brings in a couple of spars, pulls out some sweatshirts from the lost and found, and says "Make a stretcher, go!". While he's giving a boy a conference, and right when the other boys think they've done all they can with the task, a step in and ask some leading questions like "Can you move the biggest guy in the toop with this thing? How far? When would you use a two-man carry?". So we go through a lot of design, implement, evaluate cycles.

I'm still having a problem wi posting in other forums, so no I haven't bothered with sticky whatever's. Anybody else get JSON errors when ey click the "Post" button?

I posted my reply under the debugging thread because it gave me an error when I tried to post here.

I got the error again after two successful post. It said JSON ... Illegal character. I'll try to paste here and see if I can replicate it: I tried to reply earlier, but got an error that seems to be fixed (for the moment). BD - some boys take more pride in these particular awards than Eagle scout or venturing Silver. Drives parents nuts. Gives me the giggles. Emom - The answer is really "sometimes yes, sometimes no." It depends on how much the boy was in control of the float plan. Or how involved he was in arranging the provisions for the unit. At most HA bases, which are really training facilities, the answer is "not much." So I wouldn't double count. Here's an example from some boys who never bothered to apply for the award: the first time they went to Philmont they loved it, and hiked a lot, but there was a lot of spoon-feeding to get them to that ability level. I would have counted it once. The second time, they were more intentional, chose their adventure (one of the toughest hike plans) during troop meetings where some of the younger boys could look over their shoulder and see how to do it, arranged food swaps on their arrival to provision to their satisifaction, hiked their little hearts out, and gave the adults a run for their money. I would have counted that twice. Same applies to Seabase vs. a sailing trip. In fact on our last trip, for some youth in the same boat, it would count twice, for others it would count once. Why? For some it was about the sailing. For others and their life centered on the ship and working with the captain to drive the biggest boat in their life to date. For others, it was about hopping to the next island and touring and stopping at each resort and trying their local flavor ice-cream. The other factor is how much the trip translates into the life of the unit. If a boy only does 18 miles, but did so to accomodate the needs of his patrol, or to get to a particular "sweet spot" on a map, or because the river simply wasn't any longer, then I'd let him count it if he asked. That may sound like I'm "tweaking" the requirements unfairly. But I'm trying to stick to the spirit of the award. Usually, when a youth asks me about this stuff, I'll ask them "What would make you proudest?" That changes the process from "rubber stamping" to actually working with youth.

I was going to reply to my last post with "odd, it just worked", but it said I wasn't allowed to post a reply fo 30 seconds. I guess that's one way of preventing double posts. Another way would be to compare text between the previous post and the incoming one, and only send a warning if they match. So, if this takes my reply, I'm going to try and respond ot MomToEli's pleasant little topic.

I'd try to post, but keep getting this weird JSON error.

The recent activity tab doesn't seem to show all new posts, just new topics. Advanced Search from yesterday sorted by date - updated gets a lot more hits. Seems to work almost like the old one-click link.

So, DS, are you saying we should paint our Eagles yellow?

It's a little bit stupid. But not as stupid as changing the total count of MB's required. Tampa, let your boy take the MB when it suits him. It's just a bookkeeping thing. Come Jan 1, there will be one too many spaces in his book for elective MBs and one too few spaces for required MBs. He can fix that with two strokes of a pen. It's just like now when a First Class scout earns his first 6 MBs are all from the required list. We have him fill in the six MBs on his Star page, write "(required)" by the last two, and scratch the "(required)" from two of the blanks on his Eagle page.

Here's how I think you should help a boy manage things in his book: For now it goes in a non-required slot. Probably, since 2C's scout sounds like he has all of his electives for Star, he should write it in on the page for Life electives. Next year, or whenever he goes for his bird, it will count as a required badge. All he'll have to do is jot "required" beside the line where he recorded that badge. He still earned it, it still counts for something. It's just at the end of the year it will count in a different way.