SeattlePioneer

> Hmmm. If she knew what she was marrying in to, that seems like marriage agreed to in bad faith to me. I also wonder about the reasonableness of making such extreme demands on staff that might make divorce an expectation of the job. The last two DEs in my district were both survivors, and they both made it a point to develop and use volunteers whenever possible. Our current DE on the job nine months, tends to take the job on the chin, and has not been using volunteers as effectively. Unless he changes, he is making the job harder on himself than perhaps it needs to be. That said, the past two DEs in my district both used volunteers pretty effectively to get district business done. The new DE, on the job nine months, tends to take the job on the chin and has been doing things himself that volunteers were doing. That has got to make the job a lot harder on him.(This message has been edited by seattlepioneer)

What's the problem? Alcohol is only prohibited if youth are present or you are at a Scout Camp or facility. The aim here is to create a friendly atmosphere for new parents. Some people have a glass of wine, others do not. Den and Pack meetings are for youth. Pack Committee meetings are for adults. A former DE suggested that it was as important for adults to have an enjoyable time as for youth, and he suggested making wine available as a means to achieve that end. I've had a Pack Committee meeting with wine a few years ago, which went well. The Pack Committee meeting I attended Saturday as a Commissioner was the second, and that went very well. The reception I've suggested here is a proposal I've made to the Pack Committee Chair. We'll see what she wants to do. Getting new parents brought into a friendly, welcoming Pack Committee sounds like a worth end upon which to sacrifice a bottle or two of wine, to me, anyway, and I don't drink at all. Furthermore, don't you think a lot of parents these days are rushed, harassed, and lack a friendly, sympathetic group to which to belong? If we can make the Pack Committee that group of friends who work together, isn't it likely we will have a stronger program? Anyway, these are my thoughts.

If you make a big enough stink about it the school will probably refuse to let either pack recruit at the school. > Ummm. Who told them that? As the District Membership Chair, the District Executive and I aim to avoid turf wars of this kind. I'd be looking for other schools the new pack can recruit from, and suggest they look at those possibilities. The council doesn't really have the POWER to enforce such recommendations, unless the council wishes to refuse to make recruiting materials available or yank a unit's charter. What other schools are available in the area which could be used for an expanded recruiting campaign by someone?

As I understand it, those entering the US military are routinely offered a promotion if they earned the Eagle award. Does that apply to the Venturing Silver or other top awards offered by Girls Scouts and other youth groups? I suspect the US Navy would respect the Sea Scout top award --- Quartermaster or whatever it is.(This message has been edited by seattlepioneer)

You'd have to be more clear with your question. I'm supposing that two Cub Packs want to do recruiting at one school, and someone is objecting to that and dragging the District Executive into the issue. But your question isn't clear enough to know if that guess might be correct.

> True, but I see National expanding its role by taking advantage of those economies of scale, such as making increasing amounts of training available on line. The "Best Practices" portion of My Scouting.org is kind of a national Roundtable. Keeping track of unit visits by Commissioners through the Unit Visitation Tracking Service! And so on. I imagine we will see more of the same.(This message has been edited by seattlepioneer)

Heh, heh! I imagine that that option was lost once the cookie fundraiser was adopted by a competing organization!

If aspiring whale hunters don't get a whale, they ought to be able to harpoon one of those "Whale Wars" inflatable boats pretty easily. Environmentalists frequently use Indian tribes as useful fools to support their political campaigns. But when the Makah Indians started harpooning whales in the far northwest corner of Washington State a few years ago, the greens declared war against them, and the US Coast Guard that was protecting their right to take whales. The Coast Guard wound up using their boats to collide and sink the boats of the green antagonists, then fishing them out of the water and arresting them.

Extensions: The Senior Patrol Leader in a small troop I worked with got a three month extension past his 18th birthday. I wrote a request for that extension. I don't know that my request was persuasive, but it persuaded ME! The Scout had spent his entire tenure as a Life Scout doing a very fine job as SPL with Scouts who were mostly much younger than he was. Arguably, he had a choice between working on Eagle or concentrating on doing an excellent job as SPL. He chose the latter. I had proposed a six month extension until he graduated from high school to complete Eagle. He got a three month extension and did receive the award.

My pack will be doing spring recruiting Monday. Of course I'm hoping we get a good turnout of new families joining the pack. If we do, I'm floating the idea of turning our April Pack Committee meeting held at the end of the month into a reception aimed at welcoming those new parents into the pack. I'm thinking of written invitations to those new families to attend, perhaps a couple of bottles of wine and snacks, name tags for all, and giving everyone a chance to introduce themselves. Supplement that with a little discussion of upcoming pack activities and things families can concentrate on, such as earning Bobcat. And making new families feel welcome to ask questions about things they don't understand about Cub Scouts. Asking people to help out with things at upcoming activities such as our June campout. Does that sound like it would be a good idea?

In the Puget Sound country of western Washington, there are three councils. Chief Seattle Council is in the middle and headquartered in Seattle. Mt Baker Council is at the north end and headquartered in Everett, Wa 30 miles north of Seattle. Pacific Harbors Council is South and headquartered in Tacoma, 30 miles south of Seattle. At present all three councils are reasonably prosperous and successful. I don't see any particularly good reasons for messing with success. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the councils is the rural eastern half of the state are having serious issues, but there isn't much Scouting contact across the mountains in my experience.

> Probably other documents you aren't aware of that do that. Running parallel organizations for girls along with Cub Scouts is where AHG got started, and where it remains most influential, I would suppose. I don't doubt that in a parallel universe, liberals are proposing to merge AHG with Cub Scouts and end the "boy only" Cub Scout program.

> The flyers delivered to schools has an invitation in Spanish on the back of the flyer. The invitation was written by a council District Executive who speaks Spanish. My aim is to hope to find a parent who is bilingual in Spanish and English, and give them the task of being our contact person for Spanish speaking families. At this point I have a few ideas on how to improve the number of Spanish speaking families in our English speaking pack, but no successful experience in this area. So I'm trying to learn how to do this.

In my experience, the most powerful and effective method to recruit new leaders is found in the BSA publication "Selecting Cub Scout Leadership" found on line at: http://www.google.com/url?q=http://scouting.org/filestore/pdf/13-500.pdf&sa=U&ei=SRJ4T4-AD8iLiALZ6JCnDg&ved=0CBAQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNEBYlNc7WX92ol-CsaLpX34Mzh0kg There is a similar publication describing the same method tailored for Scout Troops.

Frankly, I don't know what council look for when recruiting new District Executives. My theory is that people interested in that position would benefit by volunteering as district leaders, especially as District Membership Chairs and District Finance Chairs. District Membership Chairs learn to do effective recruiting campaigns, and District Finance Chairs learn how to conduct effective Friends of Scouting campaigns. Membership and raising money are two major responsibilities of a District Executive, so I would suppose learning to do those jobs effectively would be a big plus for someone interested in a job as DE. I would suppose that many District Executives and District Chairs would be delighted to have an eager volunteer interested in filling one of these positions. Helping do both of those jobs well would lead to some good recommendations and support by your District Executive and his Field Director, I would suppose. You can come and work in MY district, anyway!

I was just at ANOTHER terrific Pack Committee meeting, this one for a Cub Pack for which I'm Commissioner. The Cubmaster has been running a fine program, but he hadn't been getting the help he needed and he was tending to become "the Cubmaster who does everything." Pack Committee meetings haven't been held for several months, which didn't help. He's planning on giving up the Cubmaster position after August, when his son will be a Webelo II and looking towards joining Boy Scouts and leaving the pack. His theory is that it's better to leave as Cubmaster after August and make the Pack responsible for recruiting a new Cubmaster before he actually is gone, so he will be available to help with the transition. Anyway, he's made a strong plea at meetings and E-mail for parents show up for a parent meeting today, and 15 adults turned out. Wine, crackers cheese and such helped create a nice social atmosphere as he reviewed the parent volunteer issues and appealed for more help. Quite a number of people agreed to help with various tasks and positions. At least one Assistant Cubmaster was recruited, and a first pick to be Cubmaster identified. Leaders will be inviting the prospective Cubmaster to a coffee at Starbucks to tell him he is the Pack's first choice to be Cubmaster, that several new people will be filling positions and that he will have the help he needs to make the job a reasonable one. This is the classic method of recruiting a unit leader recommended by BSA. I wouldn't be surprised if it works again.

Ones that fit?

When our council was filling a DE position for my district, I suggested that they look for someone with familiarity with Spanish and Hispanic/Latino culture to help recruiting in my district, which has a lot of Hispanics but few Hispanic Scouts. To what extent can councils look to recruit people with those qualifications should they wish to do so?

> That would have been my preferred approach.

I see that AHG is listed as part of the program of the Seattle Archdioces Catholic Committee on Scouting: http://seattleoyyam.org/programs/catholic-scouting/catholic-committee-on-scouting

> Those are substantial changes. If you don't think those issues are substantial then join and listen respectfully if someone offers up a prayer or whatever. If acknowledging God is a big deal for you then you should understand that it's a big issue for BSA too.

350 labor unions are Chartered Organizations across the United States. Many local unions have meeting halls, newspapers and are pretty sophisticated community organizations. I'm eyeballing the Boeing Machinists union as a possible Chartered Organization for a Cub Pack if I get the time to get involved in organizing one. I'm supposing that there are union members with families that might like to organize a Cub Scout program around their union affiliation and use their association with Boeing for field trips, visits and such. There is also a low income population surrounding their very nice headquarters building that could form part of that membership. Possibly people in other areas might want to look at union locals as possible chartered partners for reasons like this.

Sorry Baden P, I'm not especially interested in one Christian labeling other Christians as being not true Christians. There is a good Catholic Scouting organization that is a part of the Seattle Archdiocese. Were I to pursue the idea of creating a youth group for girls that would parallel Cub Scouts I might run the idea of AHG past the leader there and see what he thinks. I might do that anyway just to see what kind of opinion I get back. Frankly, I'm not much impressed with the obvious hostility because AHG requires that leaders be legal residents of the United States and such. Characterizing such requirements as being anti immigrant and bigoted and such is unreasonable at best, and bigoted itself at worst. Perhaps one of the advantages of having a Catholic Church as a Chartered Organization is having reliable, expert opinion on such issues pretty readily available.

That's true, but those Webelos can produce some sharp looking Pinewood Derby cars! But not "art"!

> No. That's the first time I've heard mention of that. Can you describe it?