SR540Beaver

Just got official word of syllabus changes for 2010. "Participants 18 years old and older may attend Wood Badge regardless of their registered position (18 20 year old Venturing Youth may attend)."

So, Snopes is always right? If it's on the internet, it has to be true.

Ea, Good point.

Sanctuary for old donkeys? You have a retirement home for professional Scouters? (This message has been edited by sr540beaver)

I traveled by plane, bus, camel caravan and crawling for miles and miles across burning sand, over mountains and thru thick forests from one side of the Jamboree to the other to catch Eammon in his site in 2005.....not once, but at least twice. Never found the bloody bloke there once. I wasn't sure if he even really existed anywhere except here as a figment of my imagination. On the off chance he was real, I did leave him a CSP and he was kind enough to mail me one to my home after the Jamboree.

Brent, You are making an assumption that his opponent is receiving contributions from out of district. For all we know, some of Wilson's constituents disliked his behavior enough to give to his opponent because they do not want someone eho acted like that to represent them any longer. Others appreciated it because of their similar dislike for the President and are showing their support. His election is local and not national. Until his outburst, no one knew who he was outside of his home state and the beltway. Why would folks outside his district care one whit about contributing to he or his opponent's campaigns?

Brent, Let's be honest here instead of partisan. There is no mind-reading needed. It is called common sense. You "support" what you support. Why would I give money to a group that wants to legalize drugs if I oppose drug legalization. I believe in liberty and freedom......but I'm not giving them money so they can fight the good fight. I don't think Wilson should resign over a moment of childish behavior either, but I'm not sending him money for his campaign. The vast majority of folks who are sending him money are doing so to make a statement about their similar feelings towards our President.

@Brent - "I would disagree. Are those donating to his campaign doing so because they agree with his behavior, or because they don't think he should lose his seat because of it? Two separate issues." Kudos to your blade sharpening abilities.....because that is one extremely razor thin edge you are using to split hairs.

Democracy in action. In part, the boys live with the results of their votes and hopefully learn from it and put themselves up for election later and vote more wisely in the future. I second all the comments about mentoring, counseling and coaching. There have been a number of threads about the purpose and value of a JASM. Here is where a good one is worth his weight in gold.

@Brent - "I fail to see where Wilson's behavior is either accepted or encouraged." Really? I have a short memory, but not that short. Didn't you post this, "Source: Wilson breaks $1 million"? Sounds like someone accepts and encourages his behavior. That was money he never would have received had he not blurted out "you lie" during a Presidential address.

As my JASM son pointed out to the new scout patrol that was working on their menu for the upcoming outing........anything you can cook in an oven at home, can be cooked in a dutch oven at camp. DO cooking need not be high carb or calorie.

This past weekend, MTV held their annual video awards. Country artist Taylor Swift won best female video. Hip hop artist Kanye West once again proved what a major ass he is when he took the stage during her acceptance, took the microphone and said that Beyonce had made probably one of the best videos in history. He handed the microphone back to her as she stood speechless. He is publically taking a drubbing from all quarters about what a king sized and arrogant jerk he was already known to be. Why is it that in politics, this kind of behavior is accepted and even encouraged? I'm 52. If I had acted like Wilson did, my 80 year old mother would have justifiably taken me to task for it.

I'd say we use charcoal about 90% of the time. I've been around long enough to know that there are troops that fire up the fire ring as soon as they get there on Friday night and the last thing they do before leaving on Sunday is put it out. We typically don't have a fire until the campfire program on Saturday night. But we have a fairly structured and scheduled program each outing. The boys are usually out all day doing whatever program they designed and get back to camp in time to cook dinner. We can't leave fires burning or wait for a fire to burn down enough for cooking coals. Add to that that we have 5 patrols and a usually large adult patrol that share up to 16 DO's and using fire coals just isn't very feasable for us. But occassionally in cold weather it does. I find both methods equally successful.

Great bumper sticker slogan Ed. Does your city, county, state have the manpower and resources to track them all down, jail them and transport them? Mutiply that many fold and you begin to see why that talk radio sentiment isn't really viable. It is the old, "somebody ought to do something" mantra.

As long as there is capitalism and a free market, there will be a desire for cheap labor. While harping on illegal aliens is a red meat staple for talk radio, all of those conservative capitalist small business owners will continue to want to hire them and the big companies will continue to cater to them by making all of their labeling bilingual so they can sell to them. That is why Republican politicians only pay lip service to the illegal alien problem.

As Arrowmen in our troop, we try to support our boys and adults going thru Ordeal by providing transportation and simply by being at Ordeal for/with them. So, we basically have two deep leadership even though I don't recall that being a requirement by our Lodge.

Brent, Can you document widespread illegal alien voting? Not isolated incidents, but widespread voting? I live in Oklahoma City and we have our fair share of Hispanics. I know because I drive thru little Mexico to and from work every day and I can guarantee you that a number of them are illegals. They tend to work in the Mexican restaurants, lay bricks, roof houses and do other day labor to send money back to their family in Mexico. On occasion when my mother has needed to go to the emergency room per doctors orders after hours, the ER is full of Hispanic folks. Why? Because the hospitals can not refuse care and because they don't have health insurance. While I'm not in favor of a government provided healthcare system paid by my tax dollars, I sincerely do not believe the government could get away with providing healthcare to illegal citizens and hang onto their jobs very long. Voting? Same thing. I've been voting for 30+ years and I have to sign my name and show my registration. Never seen any illegals hanging around the polling place. My experience is that they like to keep a very, very low profile. IF they drive, they usually do so about 10 MPH below the speed limit to avoid law enforcement. Much of the illegal aliens living on our dime is talk radio myth from where I live.

During an Ordeal, some type of strenuous work is performed. In the event of an accident, our Lodge requests emergency contact information as well as some basic medical information like limitations and medications. I assume that your Lodge likes to either have a parent/guardian present in case there is a need or that a temporary guardian is assigned. That is just a guess on my part. But a "guardian" is not part of the Ordeal process.

I'm interested in the answer as I have attended a number of Ordeals and even served on the admin staff and I have never heard of a quardian.

Brent, I'm not up to speed on the NEA thing, so I won't comment on it. The department of education has always churned out lesson suggestions like Johnny Verbeck under both Democratic and Republican administrations. My guess is that it gets overlooked about 99.9% of the time. As noted earlier, The Dems rasied a ruckus about Department of Education "propaganda" when George H W Bush spoke to the school children back in 1991. Both sides do the same thing and complain about the other side. Business as usual. What most people fail to realize is that while the cabinet secretaries change, the multitude of folks working there and churning out material don't change. Many of the same folks who were there under Bush are still there and might go back as far as Carter or Reagan.

We typically take 40+ boys on an outing. If we don't have some parents coming along, then we won't be able to transport the boys. That being said, we make it clear to parents beginning with Webelos Den visits that we are a boy led troop and adults stay out of the way. No sashaying over to the patrol site to see how Timmy is doing or barking orders at them to get tents down and the trailer loaded. Adults provide transportation. Once at camp, they function just like a patrol and set up their own patrol site and cook and eat in their patrol. The SM and ASM's have direct contact with the SPL, ASPL,s TG's and PL's when needed during the outing. Them's the rules and many parents along for the first time see it in action and learn by the example of the parents who have been along for years. What to do when little Timmy decides to visit the adult area to "ask mom a question"? First off, he has to stop outside the adult area and ask permission to enter just like the adults do at the boy's patrol sites. Then Timmy is usually handled by an adult other than their parent as to why he needs to ask mom a question. This isn't done in a mean manner. It is done in a friendly manner to help the boy understand the boundaries and to go back and "ask his PL". Works very well for us. When we do have the occasional parent "go off the reservation", a friendly discussion about the boy led patrol method usually gets them back on track. Our unit simply can't function without enough parents willing to go on outings to provide transportation. That being said, we don't want or need 40 boys and 40 adults on an outing. We need how many we need to cover transportation only.(This message has been edited by sr540beaver)

Brent, You do realize that the previously proposed materials put out by the Department of Education are not mandated don't you? No school system or teacher is forced to use them. Think of it like the Den Meeting in a Box or the monthly themes put out by BSA. If you don't want to put forth the effort to create your own lesson plan, we have some stuff you can use. Your choice.

Presidential indoctrination of childen is nothing new. Why I remember the 2005 Jamboree where George W Bush indoctrinated 40,000 Boy Scouts.

We had a national guy as keynote speaker at our council program kickoff meeting a couple of weeks ago. He stated that the mandatory training is being piloted in a number of councils in 2010 and will roll out in 2011. What will be mandatory is This is Scouting, Fast Start, Youth Protection (all of which can be taken online) and leader specific training. If you are a committee member, you can do your specific training online.

OGE rolls off of the keyboard so much better than OGSITM or OGSAOF.