Beavah

Yah, Yah, OK. Ill join in the biting, OGE. So ders a troop in da next town over, chartered to a church. I was UC for them a few years back. About 50 kids, very active, very popular program, great older scout retention. They often have to turn kids away because they dont want to get too big. The Institution Head (minister) was very involved. It was always clear that the troops policies were his policies, even if it was the boys who set the policy. Lets see: no age-based patrols, they used vertical patrols like my troop. No first year patrol, the kids entered into existing pa

Likewise, the CO has no right to modify or otherwise redefine the BSA program. Well, dat's true. Why would anyone believe that a CO could modify the BSA's copyrighted works? They're owned by the BSA. The point is only that the CO gets to choose how to use the BSA's materials in running it's own youth program, according to its own policies and guidelines. If that is the case, then you, or your CO, would then be altering the aims of Scouting to suit the desires of the youth you serve. As admirable as that may sound, that is not scouting. As strange as it may sound, that

A charter organization enters into an agreement with the BSA and is granted a license for one year to operate the BSA's program. Nah, fellow Beaver. Yah gotta read those program materials everyone talks about all da time. A charter organization enters into an agreement with the BSA to license the BSA's materials for a year to operate their own youth program. The BSA "respect the aims and objectives of the organization and offer the resources of Scouting to help in meeting those objectives." So the CO's Aims, not the BSA's, are what controls. Same goes for councils, which are s

Yah, well... I'm not too big on being judgmental about how fellow volunteers run their programs, or how other Chartered Organizations operate. Da BSA ain't McDonalds. It's a resource provider for community organizations to use in running their own youth programs. Emphasis on their own. Those are the terms of the BSA's congressional charter, and each council and unit charter. What Catholics, LDS, VFW, the council the next state over, or Joe's Pizza shop do in terms of structuring their youth scouting programs is really none o' my business. Nor anyone else's. BTW, the reason C

the 2% has become 4-6 % Yah, and both of dose are bogus numbers, eh? Da BSA reports the number of Eagle Scouts in a year divided by the total number of boys in scouting that year, which works out to around 5% these days. But the percentage of boys who join Boy Scouts who eventually earn Eagle is much higher. Say you get 100 new boys each year, eh? And each year for one reason or another you lose 10 to moves out of town, fumes, etc. After six years, they either earn Eagle or don't, stay in or drop. Half earn eagle, half are Life for Life or whatever. Yah, yah, they really h

Yah, yah, whatever. He's not talkin' about dat, eh? He's talking about the equivalent of federalizing everything. One standard way of doing things across the nation. For schools, a national standardized test, a national curriculum, no more local school boards who can make adaptations for urban, or rural, or transient kids, or listening to da kids parents. And every business has to look like WalMart. BAH. Humbug. Ain't good for schools, ain't good for businesses, ain't good for scoutin'. Give me liberty, or give me death.

Bah, humbug. Standards would work if people were widgets. People ain't widgets. And personally, I think it's insultin' to people and mean to kids to treat them as though they were a standardized widget that can be reached with one-size-fits-all programming. If standards really worked, you'd see only one type of successful business or one type of successful school. Thing is, you see all kinds of successful businesses and schools, and they're DIFFERENT. And when businesses and schools try to standardize on the people-side, far more often then not they become WORSE. Plus, I kno

Yah, Calico, I hear ya. There is dat small risk that a particularly obnoxious DA might try to subpoena a scout leader to extract an indirect confession. Of course, that comes with da risk that the scout leader, being up in years, might simply forget exactly what was said... or may decide that the boy was in fact a patient. My first rule is that "help other people at all times" has no exception for worry of legal risk exposure. First do what's right. If that means listening to a boy, crying with him, or whatever, you do that. Yah, our legal system is occasionally weird, but it gets it

While it's important to understand that the field management of various snakebites is still an active area of research, a few comments/corrections to Calico's last are in order. 1) Pressure immobilization is generally advised for Elapidae (coral snake, cobra, and other snakes with high levels of neural toxins). That should be done with an Ace bandage, starting at the bite site and wrapping toward the heart as Calico suggests, but wrapping the ENTIRE LENGTH OF THE LIMB, not just a few inches. The pressure should be eqivalent to 40-70mmHg for an arm or 55-70mmHG for a leg... call it just

Nah, constricting bands went out after morbidity studies some years back. Drop #4. For an American pit viper (rattlesnake, copperhead, etc.), clean & dress the wound, remove jewelry (rings, bracelets, etc.) and constricting clothing because the area may swell (and cut off blood flow). Splint loosely. Keep limb neutral (not above, but not distinctly below level of heart). Transport to professional care rapidly. No suction of any kind (recent studies show the Sawyer Extractor uneffective or in some cases problematic). No constricting bands of any kind. Don't bother wi

Ours don't. Dat's been true for as far back as the memory of our oldest scouter. Guess it's not "traditional" in a scouting sense, but da modern neckerchief ain't nuttin' more than a foo-foo fashion accessory anyway.

Reading all da constant blah-blah about not adding to requirements, Im surprised at how little folks comment on the other half of that (one, isolated, out-of-context) policy statement not subtracting from requirements. How many of us take to heart that BSA badges are awarded for what a young man is able to do, not as a reward for what he has done skill and ability, not sign-offs? How many of us hold our summer camps accountable for making each individual boy actually demonstrate the requirements that say demonstrate, and do it without help? And without someone doing it for them and them j

Gotta disagree with Calico on this strongly. When teaching children, whether our own kids as parents or other kids as scouters, the standards for responding to behavior have to be something much less, and much more personal, than adjudication by a court of competent jurisdiction. We don't want to teach kids about legalism. We want to teach them about character. I worry, too, about what we do to a boy in trouble by telling him he can't talk to trusted men & women like scouters; the goal is not to avoid punishment, but to help heal. Besides, all of da requirements for Eagle

They specifically prohibit bivy sacks, in writing, in the printed material they send out. I can understand not wanting 12 single tents in some of the tight campsites in Philmont. But da rule on bivy sacks makes no sense whatsoever.

Yah, well, I'm a conservative, and there are some Boy Scout values that I wish would go out of style. Mail and fundraising fraud. Inflated membership numbers. Gross financial mismanagement. Selling off camps for kids to pay salaries for "executives." A rule for everything (best used to attack other volunteers). PC "safety" prohibitions banning fun kids games. High-impact camping.

The Boy Scouts have a military history, a patriotic history, and a proud one too! The Father of Scouting was a Military Officer, the basis of the movement started with the military. Yah, right. And the boys in Germany wearing tan brown shirts and running around doing scouting were a great example of what can happen when the movement continues its association with a patriotic, proud military history. German scouting since has done OK without uniforms. Da Scout Uniform is supposed to be a game uniform, not a military uniform. The current U.S. one ain't, as demonstrated by t

MY CHILD is in the GIFTED AND CHALLENGE program and has a very high IQ Then if it were me, I'd be sending the SM a gift certificate to his favorite restaurant as a "thankyou" for trying to hold my kid to the standards he should be reaching.

Yah, but only if they have very high attendance.

A nylon tent doesn't offer much insulation, and you need substantial ventilation to prevent condensation. So, really, there's no particular way to make your tent much warmer than the outside air, beyond the little bit of heat retained by reducing convection. Try a bivy bag.

What ticks me off is the fact that the week before these posters speaches were due they had a drug/alcohol seminar at the troop with a local representative. So they fulfilled this requirement. Well, no. They had apparently participated in part 1 of the requirement. This "troop program on the dangers of alcohol and drugs" had a part 2, which was to make a poster. It's the troop's program, they can decide what it consists of. If your son did a school or community program, it very well might entail making a presentation or writing a report (which may also be judged on quality). My f

I'm with acco and molscouter. I often wonder how folks who get an angry parent further riled up to go make a stink with the troop leadership feel that they're helping the situation. Even when "right" in terms of technicality it strikes me as being "wrong" in terms of Loyalty, Courtesy, and Kindness. As a parent, I'd use my time more productively to support the SM and help my son a bit to add some "polish and practice" to his poster presentation. Presentation and communication skills are good things to learn; they can even be tied into Communications MB. What a great opportunity to w

Kids haven't changed much over the years. They're still just as capable at age 14 as they used to be when Ben Franklin was running a print shop. If you want to look for a cause, the most obvious choice is the aging of the general population. The older it gets, the less it trusts the abilities of the young, and the more it votes and acts to impose restrictions/"care" on them.

Please do NOT teach any scouts to wear damp (with perspiration or rain) clothing to bed on a Winter camping trip. Hypothermia is a very real problem in cold weather & has been known to kill. Riiiight. Yah, dat damp polypro dat has about 4 teaspoons of water trapped in its fibers is going to be a real killer. Not. Fact is, drying things out with body heat is a common, ordinary, and professional thing to do in da winter, especially on longer trips. It never killed anybody, but may have saved a few toes here and there. Just don't try it with the cotton sweatshirt, or too many it

Oi! I have never seen such odd winter camping advice. An alternate scientific view, from a guy who has about a full 365 days campin' below freezin... Less is NOT more. If ya think less is more, try going to bed tonite wearing long underwear and fleece, and see if you're cooler. Not wearing leg insulation will not help da rest of your body stay warm. It's less efficient for the legs to heat the air and then heat the body, compared with the legs/body not losing the heat in the first place. Blood is a much better heat transport mechanism than air. If you want your feet to stay

Yah, they're much safer about using liquid fuels than I was at their age. Only issue we've had is with the initial training/learning, which obviously needs to be supervised.