qwazse

For the AoL den, you might have to help them disentangle a rumor about the other troop. When Son #1 was a Webelos, we were fed a line from a disgruntled parent (that evidently stemmed from an O/A election result) of our CO's troop. Our DL actually reached to the SM for an explanation and it turned out that everything was proper and actually quite good about that troop. But you're right to wait until they you are in your sights to take any action. Although the only action might be to ask the WDL, "Have you talked to Mr. SM-of-your-CO's-troop in person about your concerns?"

Like my Pakistani buddy tells me, "You Americans won't believe anything unless it's on a piece of paper." So, that youth-run troop needs to put something into the hands of those Webelos. So, that might mean: A calendar. Ideally, it would be one with the dates of the entire year printed on one side AND scheduled activity days and meetings circled or stamped, then the names of the activities, hand written, by the scouts on the other side. A follow-up card hand-written by a scout mailed to each prospect who visited the troop. It doesn't have to say much: "Thanks for visiting. I hope you had a good time. Please join us on our next campout." A picture post-card of everyone at the last event. (One of your scouts should know how to produce this.) But, @Liz, if you're talking from the perspective of a cub parent to other parents, you don't have much control. Either those girls in the troop are friendly, looking up your Webelos at school and on the bus, and taking a sincere interest in them, or they aren't. If they aren't, "polish" will win the day -- especially with most modern American females. Just look at the covers on the magazine racks and tell me it ain't so.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's troop, nor her Crossovers, nor her helicopter parents ....

This stat is small comfort. There were more than twice as many scouts more than thirty years ago, maybe more than 4x as many. All of these measures, and we've reduced the probability of actionable abuse by 1/2?

Our pie irons are not standing the tests of time that our frying pans and Dutch ovens are. Better to teach Cubs about durable kitchen tools.

I have a love-hate relationship with the page I made for our jamboree troop. I wound up being the only one posting to it, and some people were upset when they didn't see a picture of their kid. The whole 5G wired camping experience kinda weirded me out. I would talk to some of the other community leaders you're thinking of. See if they want to try putting themselves out there at the same time you do.

This is one of those quirky things that can be filed under "Oh, what a tangled web ..." If you think you have to ask the girls, why do you think you wouldn't have to ask the boys under the same roof? If you could ask the girls who would join the troop 7 years from now, what would their opinion be? My bet? They won't be bothered as long as their SM takes them hiking and camping every month of the year! Sometimes, when you get nods from your CO and the other troop's committee for your gut, and the council makes it work for them, you just go with it. I'm not trying to say the unit numbers aren't important to youth. They often are, and in situations like this someone isn't going to like whatever is decided. Part of scoutmastering is helping youth look past these sorts of things. The most important part of the uniform is not the number, it's the smile!

Or, it's possible that that most UCs are unobtrusive and helpful to the point that their good deeds never make it on the Internet.

Yeah, I don't recall getting signatures in my BSHB for SMCs and BORs. We did a lot on a handshake. So, I looked at my handbook (9th edition, published bout three years into my scouting career), and I saw that I had back-dated my T2F requirements ... copying from my pocket-size requirements record. About halfway through 2nd class there were checks. No leader's signatures. I remember at my Star SMC, my SM pulled out a shoebox with typewritten pages for each upper rank for each scout. I guess you could call that box our "troopmaster" software. It's nice to have a scout's book at the BOR, it helps the conversation along. But lacking it, I wouldn't suspend the BOR. I'd just tell the scout to make sure to record the date in his book when he got home.

Don't worry about being ageist, the organization opened that door 60 years ago when they decided that Eagle Scout was a boy's award. We had a UC who was a bit meddlesome. About half his advice was useless. It might have worked for his troop when he was SM, but made a lot of worrying about nothing for our troop. The other half, however, was useful So, UC's are kinda like handbooks. They don't open to the right chapter automatically. In fact, a lot of times they're fine left on the shelf 'cause sometimes you just need to go out with your uniform and a smile.

Also note that the Cub Scout inspection sheet does not mention a 15 point handbook. It does mention the 5-point registration card.

But, do they? Are they to them bring their book to: Pinewood derby? Parades? When they visit the fire house or police department? The Pack campout? The Blue and Gold banquet? Crossover? It makes perfect sense to have your handbook at a troop meeting or summer camp. Other occasions, it makes sense that the standard-issue cloth, plus your smile, are the only things needed to identify you as a uniformed scout. Even the membership card, if I recall, counted for no more than 5 points.

One theory: after 10 years of EDGE method -- without "reference" in the acronym -- reading the HB is no longer seen as an essential step in teaching a scout skill. Therefore, it's place in Personal Growth or Leadership Development is merely implicit. Well, there's still books to sell, so it's got to go somewhere!!!

New this year, the latest uniform inspection sheet from national accords 15 points to a handbook: ... without any further specification as to where it might be placed on the uniform. Perhaps it can hang from one's belt -- opposite the rack for the MB sash. Suddenly, a patrol of scouts looking sharp for a parade or an honor guard at a memorial are only 85% uniformed if they each don't have a SBSAHB? How on did this tome become part of uniforming? A couple decades back, we had a UC turn scouts away from a BoR because they didn't have book in hand. That kinda makes sense. But, no that I think if it, we never went up (literally, my troop was housed the basement of a manse and our committee met in the parlor upstairs) for a BoR with BSHB in hand. Did any of you?

Of course, one upstream reason for camp sell-offs is the increasing cost to hire qualified youth staff. So, any such deal would require hefty contributions from a local Leadership Foundation. Most such foundations might at least buy into covering registration fees of qualified applicants. If you've paid to be a member of BSA until you're 13, why not pay only $5/year from age 14-18? But, @David CO, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Compensating youth for an intrinsically rewarding program might be inappropriate, but compensating young adults who put their careers on hold by saying "no" to an overwhelming work schedule may be quite appropriate. Let's dream of doing one better. Pay 1.5*interest on student loans while every qualified 20-something serves as an ASM or SM. Qualifications would include First Class rank, at least 2 years of college or trade school, and full time employment or part-time employment and part-time enrollment in trade school or college.

And this is where scouting must catch up with the locally sourced attitude of the 21st century. A guy in my hometown makes custom backpacks ... for profit! I bet he'd gladly have a troop visit and learn to assemble their gear. I bet he's not the only one. No offense to the hardworking Vietnamese laborers who assembled our USA Contingent packs for Osprey, but there is something to be said for "patrol built, patrol carried." Metalwork, welding, textile, and backpacking in one fell swoop.

I'm not entirely certain that COR's would behave parochially. A well-managed board would encourage partnerships across CO's in the narrow domain of scouting ... even if they otherwise compete with one another in other spheres. A council who successfully engages COR's will likely have them encouraging other organizations to consider fielding troops. In the failed motion to get my church to sponsor a unit, it the CORs of other churches in the denomination encouraged our board to adopt the motion. Perhaps where I fell short was in not getting a COR to present his/her experience. Building use was the primary concern, and a COR testifying that their scouts left the facility better than when they found it would have gone a long way.

BSA up and got itself pegged as faith based, so it does not have access to the federal $ that B&G clubs do.

That's a really nice camp BTW. It surrounds a nice trout stream which is accessible to the public. It wasn't just Bucktail council who was robbed, but the entire community.

Some of our units' numbers are already four digits. There simply is no none-size-fits-all solution to this non-problem.

Sorry, @ParkMan, I cited where a previous poster quoted her. But that post has been subsequently revised. Many at national leadership are on record as being very much opposed to a co-ed program. Mike Surbaugh was one of them. I understand how @njdrt-rdr would like to see it as new-troops, cut-and-dry. BSA does ... but I've felt that that's for marketing purposes so they can blather on about starting all these new units. But many are in effect an additional patrol to an existing troop. And pitching that it's a parallel to asking dens or districts to have the same number is a trip into non sequitorville. I agree that the alphabet is hard. That's why some councils opted for appending 4 to the number. On your numeric pad 2=B, 4=G and I guess we could also add 3=F and 6=M without any loss of ambiguity. The question then becomes, do you foist it on everyone, so you now have to thank Pack 872, Troop 872, Troop 992, and Troop 994? Indeed, I would have far rather the program name remained unchanged, and declare that we are starting a new program. BSA4G was my choice. Heck, we could have repurposed "Team" to designate the units.

Before going to World Jamboree, I thought that co-ed was inevitable. Not so much now. My troop of boys saw a variety of configurations -- in some cases a country's girl-scouts and boy-scouts camped together for just this event. In other cases events like this were nothing new. And, in other cases it was a little weird that opposite sexes could not share a tent at Jambo. There wasn't all that much excitement that we just opened the program to girls. I didn't get the impression that our boys were considered backward. I did get the impression that other country's boy scout and girl scout programs play a lot nicer together. So, assuming that the 10K other BSA members at WSJ got the same impression, there's not a lot of push for change. There will always be rogue troops who will thumb their nose at Ellie Morrison and live co-ed under the linked banner. But, it will take a generation of girls who work the program to decide if that needs to be pushed nationally.

And Mickey's men's store. The first pen-knife I ever bought was from there. Mr. Bruno stopped selling scout stuff there because, at least in our area, BSA started cutting exclusive deals with JC Penny. If BSA stopped trying to big-box it, and would focus on exclusive delivery to small and minority-owned businesses, it would go a long way to producing good will on the side walks of this city. Frankly, a really nice catalogue in every barbershop (every few pages with a Boys Life or Scouting article) could change the face of scouting in this town.

Yeah, @njdrt-rdr, it doesn't flow very well. But this was permitted in response to boots on the ground. Numbers usually track with the CO. So, each of the CO's units -- be it a Pack, Troop, Crew, Post, or Ship -- asks for the same number. And those numbers are held with a lot of pride. To give someone under the same roof a different number is tantamount to telling them they aren't one of us. To ask someone to change numbers in the face of a merger is asking them to abandoning their heritage. (I've been in the middle of such shenanigans for as long as I've been a scouter.) With the addition of BSA4G, units demanded an option to be linked, by number, with their female counterparts. In retrospect, maybe we should have thought of a parallel name for "troop": squadron? platoon? eyrie? Regarding your immediate problem let's try thanks from : Troop 87, Pack 87, Troops 99b, & Troops 99g Troop 87, Pack 87, &Troops 99 (b&g) Troop 87, Pack 87, & Troops 99 When I acknowledge the youth who help me place flags at the cemetery, I include the GS Troops and their long numbers. If they all became BSA4G units, I'd save ink (well, pixels).

It is truly maddening. When youth are surveyed on depression ratings, American youth report the least sadness compared to kids throughout the world (although the difference between USA and UK kids was so small as to be deemed insignificant). Yet, when they decide all their good days don't amount to much, US youth can dispatch themselves more efficiently than any other youth in the world. We've walked a long road with a friend whose son got a hold of his dad's service revolver when he and Son #2 were 16. It's hard to describe the void when you reminisce about sitting on the porch watching your two 5-year-olds play, and you think that only one is going forward. We stop by her shop from time to time (as Mrs. Q and Son #2 did last night) and she loves to see us. It means the world to her. She sees bits of him in his brother, his classmates, and his teammates and it means the world to her that his buddies are growing strong and good. Needless to say, much of our discussion with scouts is about valuing their lives and letting their peers know that their lives are valuable and not to be squandered. "Cheerful" isn't just about skits and songs. It's a survival skill.