SR540Beaver

I don't know the number in our Lodge, but it is something I address as a Chapter Adviser when we do annual elections. Since I took the position a couple of years ago, I've doubled the number of troops in my district that allowed us to come do an election from 2009 to 2010. We still have some who flat refuse and say "we don't do OA" or "our boys aren't interested". We have some who say they don't have any qualifying candidates either. For many of these troops, the SM is not a member of the OA. They don't understand it and in some cases, they have no interest in understanding it. One SM I talked to last year confessed to me that he was in over his head, was overwhelmed, he only took the position because his son loved Scouts and no one else would do it and that he just didn't have time to "add" OA to his schedule. It's frustrating. It's also shocking how many troops there are out there with only 5 or 6 kids on the roster and an SM and one ASM. Not saying that they can't deliver a quality program, but it sure makes it harder. My standard pitch to them is that if they are not a member of the OA, then they as SM NEED to be the adult nominee from their troop for this year. They need to be a member so they have an understanding and can support it in their unit. Still, I have some who just don't want to. We've toyed with putting on some sort of dog and pony show for SM's to educate them, but getting them to actually come is another story. We did election training at our Chapter meeting last month and invited all the District SM's to come so they would have a clue when we show up to do their election. Out of 20+, we had 1 show up. Sorry if I sound negative. I feel your frustration and wish I had answers to give you, but I'm seeking the answers too.

Barry, It's all just a prelude to the world ending in 2012. I didn't feel the earthquake last night. I was sitting on the patio watching and listening to the light and sound show of the thunder and lightening. My wife opened the back door and asked me, "did you feel that, I think we just had another earthquake." I didn't. And I missed the BIG one Saturday night. I was in Dallas for the Southern Region NYLT Course Directors Conference. We did have a few participants who had already gone to bed and felt a slight shake in their beds when it hit though.

mmmmmmmm......pi

I agreed to be the backup CD for our council's course next June. I go to the CD Development Conference the first weekend in November. I have not seen the syllabus yet. We had a course split into two weekends like WB that was this past weekend (Fall Break, Thurs thru Sun) and then next Saturday and Sunday. I drove out and visited for a few hours on Saturday and discovered all of the generic features......much to my dismay. Utilizing terms that bear no resemblance to Boy Scouts or Venturing? Heck, even WB which covers all programs chooses to use the Patrol structure as it's basis. I don't have an issue with making it co-ed and inclusive of Venturing, but doing the generic thing is just silly. If adults in WB can take the lessons dressed in Patrols back to the Packs and Crew, I think the kids can too. Especially when you look at the membership numbers of Boy Scouts vs Venturing. I'm going to follow thru on my commitment and see it thru to completion next June and then make a decision on whether or not it is something I'll continue to support.

The media rarely gets any story right.

Pack, Birthers.....not Tea Party. Is there overlap? Sure. I'm a libertarian, but don't consider myself a TP'er, and certainly not a birther. But I recognize there is overlap between any two sets of groups.

Being the grownup in the room and cutting up the credit card to stop insane spending is not "obstructionist". It's tough love and common sense.

Perhaps I missed it. I don't see where Scott wanted to eliminate arts and humanities. I do see where he wants to shift spending more towards the sciences that will help the citizens of his state and our nation in being competitive in the global market.....not to mention better paying jobs. My son is an engineering student and he is doing the requisite arts and humanities course that all colleges have. He'll get to read poems and listen to music along with learning about his chosen major.

I have no issue with a liberal arts education. I got one. I didn't put it to work though. I ended up in data processing and info technology for the past 32 years. That being said, between my niece working on her doctorate in medieval literature and my son working on an engineering degree in fire protection and safety technology, I'll put my money on his long term prospects. She's going to have to wait for some old codger in a college somewhere to die to find a low paying job. Kids in my sons field of study have jobs waiting when they get out of college.

In general, liberals want to feed people from a magical storehouse and conservatives want to teach people how to be self reliant and feed themselves. Liberals believe that there is one pie that has to be sliced to give each person a slice. Conservatives believe that you bake more pies. The Tea Party simply wants the government to honor the ultimate law of the land, the Constitution, and exercise responsible and sensible spending. The Occupy Wall Street crowd wants to blame the rich for having and them not having and demand a $20 minimum wage. Can you imagine what your groceries are going to cost if the grocery store has to pay all of those teenage kids $20 per hour? Wealth envy, an entitlement mentality and killing the goose that lays the golden egg certainly isn't the answer.

Reader Harold Theurer sees another angle. Noting the passing of Steve Jobs, he wonders how many protesters carrying Apple products understand how those gadgets came to exist. What started out as two men in a garage with ideas and passion would have been nothing more than two guys in a garage with ideas and passion had it not been for an IPO on Dec. 12, 1980, when Apple went public at $22 per share, he writes. Big Bad Wall Street raised $101 million for Mr. Jobs to expand his ideas, create jobs and change the landscape of technology. The next time any of the Wall Street occupiers makes an iTune purchase, it can be traced back to some Big Bad Bankers belief in Mr. Jobs and his company. Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/aimless_obama_walks_alone_OUgoMTkORRJioLl7B6ZYmN#ixzz1aP0i72o1

Appeal to their manhood! Explain how the world is our bathroom and how liberating it is when they realize that they can live without the recently invented modern conveniences. Every boy likes peeing on a tree. Take it to the next level. One of the funniest stories from one of our scouts was when a crew from the troop backpacked the Pecos Wilderness in northern NM. He found a nice fallen tree to hang his hiney over and dug his hole. He was doing his business and felt a "presence" behind him. He looked over his shoulder to find a spectating mountain goat that had snuck up right behind him.

True Pack. I like to blame the good for nothing Texans when bad things happen in our region.

Unfortunately Pack, my Jambo experiences were in the Southern Region.

Moxie, when I went in 2005 we had port-a-potties and open top showers built from 2x4's and black visqueen on concrete slabs. Just about every port-a-pottie you came across was thouroughly soaked with urine within 20 minutes of the honey truck swinging by to clean it. Not to mention they were always set out in the blazing sun. We had issues with older guys at the showers. They didn't want to take their turn and would grab a smaller kid and toss him out of the shower. Kids would also take the clothes of the person in the shower and toss them over the wall to the outside. If you didn't have a buddy with you to go find your clothes, you were sunk. We ended up having to have our older guys go to the showers and protect our younger guys. In 2010, our region hit the jackpot. We had airconditioned latrine and shower trailers. The showers were built in 18 wheeler trailers with stainless steel stalls with hot and cold running water. The latrines were smaller trailers of the construction office variety that had flush toilet stalls, sinks and mirrors. Very nicely decorated. The air conditioning was phenominal!!! There were some scheduling difficulties right off the bat because the youth had a curfew and some had waited in line for 2 hours for a shower. Some less than friendly adults would tell them it was adult shower time now, come back tomorrow......but I digress. We worked that out. The issue was kids vandelising the showers and latrines. Same as mentioned before, a kid would find an empty shower stall and someone had taken a BM in it. There were some trailers marked for just adults, Those stayed open, but the company that supplied the trailers and cleaned them each day refused to clean them or allow them to be used. They locked them. The kids had to go down the road to some common use port-a-potties if they needed to go to the bathroom. It wasn't until our council's kids stepped up to clean them that they were reopened. Adults then stepped up to police the situation. First, I know boys will be boys, but it is beyond me how and why scouts would act this way. Second, this is a known issue, why weren't the regional staff in charge of facilities set up to handle the situation? I'm hoping this is on their radar for 2013.

Shortridge, It varies from council to council. Our council runs two course a year and this is a typical staff design. Course Director SPL ASM Program Scribe and 2 Assistant Scribes under ASM Program ASM Physical Arrangements Quartermaster and 2 AQM's under ASM PA ASM Troop Guides 8 Troop Guides under ASM TG's That's 19 people on staff. At least 1/3 are new staff members. New staff members typically fill most of the TG slots, but not all as there is a need to have some who know the ropes. They also might fill Assistant Scribe or AQM spots. The rest of the positions are filled by experienced staff. Our QM staff isn't burdened with cooking. They design the menu and procure the grub, but they don't cook and clean and stick to the moving and heavy lifting type stuff. We have "support staff" which is made up of previous course directors who have to be asked just like regular staff to help with the course. This is not a glorious or honored position. they literally are up at the crack of dawn preparing meals and washing dishes and spend 90% of their time in the kitchen out of site of the participants.

Moxie, Evidently you've never spent 10 days at a National Jamoboree have you? We actually had staff close latrine and shower facilities because the people contracted to clean them wouldn't as a result of the vandalism. We got them reopened when the boys from our council contingent took it upon themselves to go clean them and the adults stepped up to literally police them with a time limit per person and a check before and after use. Sad, but true.

jrush, While I agree with some of what you said, WB has absolutely nothing to do with teaching participants about the "corporate" side of scouting. If that is what you got out of it, your course director didn't present the course as designed.

I've staffed four WB courses, so I'll try to answer your questions. This Blue and Gold you speak of sounds like a pre-course meeting. I can't say 100%, but I believe national now discourages them because of possible hardship to pariticipants as you describe. We still do them in my council, but they are voluntary. They have been very helpful to have a face to face between staff and participants so questions can be asked and answered in front of everybody. Many people don't know how to pack and what to expect. The meeting takes care of that. Can it be done in an email? Yes, but many questions lead to other questions and doing it in a large group helps provide more and better information. Often, the information given in a pre-course meeting can't be done during the first weekend becuase it is too late to provide the information that is needed before you arrive. That and the course is designed to be presented in a certain order and time. A course director takes a pledge to offer the course as written and not deviate from it. While there are ways to tweak the presentation, you can't just add other things in to it and stay on schedule. Are you saying that this pre-course "Blue and Gold" took three hours with participants doing skits? That is not part of Wood Badge. Someone cooked that up on their own. Of course you are tired on Sunday. The staff is too. As mentioned above, the course must be presented as designed and you can't take portions out or add portions in. You should have been told before ever arriving when the course would begin on Friday and when it would end on Sunday. Much of what you have had presented to you had to do with different leadership styles and how people use them and respond to them. The movies presented in WB display these different leadership styles in an entertaining form to supplement the presentations you've set thru. What did it have to do with anything? What kind of leader was Homer? How did he communicate his dream and what style of leadership did he use with his rocket boys? What about Homer's dad? What kind of leader was he down at the mine? Not to brag, but my council puts on two course a year and we kind of have it down to a science. All of the course materials are warehoused and used from course to course. We have a WB committee made up of former course directors who help to ensure the quality, value and continuity of the courses. I sometimes have to stop and remember that there are councils who only do one course every few years and basically have to reinvent the wheel each time. We have a small neighboring council who has not done a course in years and now can't because they have no WB trained scouters who can serve on staff. I can't say why you didn't "get it", but it could be that you had a very inexperienced staff.

I'm a huge fan and promoter of boy led. We as adults need to listen much more to what they want so we can have a program that interests them and attracts new boys. That being said, you have to have adult guidance. Imagine if we let the schools be student led or if we just handed a kid the keys to a car when he turns 16. Good ideas? Probably not. Whether we like it or not, Scouting would cease to exist without adults. BP knew that boys form gangs by nature. He didn't design a movement that let the gangs do whatever they wanted willy nilly. He designed a program with structure to channel their energies in a positive way towards self reliance, citizenship, leadership, etc. A troop with a bunch of adults barking orders at boys isn't scouting. A troop where the adults allow the boys to do anything they want isn't scouting either. It takes boys with dreams and adults to mentor to have scouting.

Nah Beavah, my troop is fairly well to do with a sprinkling of really well to do folks and less well to do......and all of the boys are rumpled. The degree of rumpled is miniscule.

At the risk of hijacking the thread, here is where I put in my plug for the "uniform". It is the equalizer (ties in with checking your lifestyle at the door). If all boys are in full uniflrom, how does one know which is rich or poor. I used to Campmaster with a janitor. I scout and sit on the district committee with a State Supreme Court Justice. Both are friends of mine. If I were to introduce both of them to you while they were in uniform, you'd be hard pressed to figure out which was which.

Tampa, There are questions as to who may have actually created the quote, this my disclaimer. Regardless of where it originated, there is much historical truth evident in the words.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: "from bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage." Attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, published in 1776. Regardless of whether he actually said it or not, it is wise counsel. We are increasingly dependent. Unless we recognize where we are headed, we are doomed to repeat history.

Beavah, I have to assume from your opinions that you are not an Arrowman.