SR540Beaver

I will gladly dispense legal advice at half of Beavah's going price.

Dean, You just lost three corners off of your diversity card! Watch it buster!

Buffalo, I wish I could tell you more. A good number of our scouts and crew members have purchased and used Alps backpacks for Philmont, the Pecos Wilderness and other backpacking trips in various places. Our SM is a gear aficionado and has recommended their gear to the boys and girls. I have never really heard any complaints about them and they have proven to be decent gear at a decent value. One of the things they liked was that the hip belt was removable and replacable and, they had an attached rain cover and the top part came off and made a day pack.

Trev, I just love Scouter.com. I'm acting SM tonight and I needed a SM minute to close with. Since we have boys moving from our new scout patrol to regular patrols tonight, my fellow NSP ASM suggested a minute that talked about kindness. I googled "scoutmaster minute" and "a scout is kind" together and look where it brought me! Four years old and still helpful!!!

On the road somewhere between Amarillo and Tucumcari at the moment. What, is no one thankful for anything this year?

Don't worry Hops, Obama hasn't even taken office yet and the talk radio scene is already laying fault for all of the nation's future problems at his feet. It seems they want to avoid the rush and start blaming now. There is enough vitriol to go around for both sides. I'm sure Obama will make his mistakes and get blamed for plenty. If/when he does......the buck should stop with him just as it should with Bush. The guy with the veto pen can stop much of the madness and make Congress go back and revamp their bills until they are responsible in nature. Bush simply did not do that when he had a majority in Congress for six of his eight years or when he didn't for two of his eight. If you want to sit at the big desk, you have to take the lumps that come from both your actions and inactions.

When I get off of work this evening, I'll be doing some laundry and packing to head out of town in the morning for Thanksgiving. So, if I'm going to list the things I'm thankful for, now is it.....and I beat everyone else to it! ~ I'm thankful for...... - a loving and forgiving God - a well paying job - a nice home - a wonderful extended family - a good wife. She flew to New Mexico on Saturday for Thanksgiving with her dad and step mother. - a son any parent would be proud of. He turns 16 in February and is a straight A's honor student who is a merit badge and a project away from making Eagle. He is also the troop's SPL. He has never caused his mother or me a single problem. He is the apple of my eye and the light of my life. He will be driving himself and me from Oklahoma to New Mexico to join my wife/his mom and to visit the grandparents for Thanksgiving. - good health for me and my family. For the past week, I've had a picc line put in and am taking a twice daily IV to fight an infection of a resistant strain of staph. Fortunately, other than the infection under the skin in my leg, I have not been sick or had to take off work except for a few doctor appointments. By having the picc line put in and being able to administer my own meds, the doctor is allowing me to travel for the holidays. The antibiotics have worked quickly to almost eliminate the infection. - good friends - scouting - the love and compaionship of good pets.....one of which almost died recently and has made a full recovery. Now if his hair will just grow back where it all fell out. - freedom from want - being an American - etc., etc., etc. oh yeah......and scouter.com too!!!

GHB, You must be from Missouri, the SHOW ME state. This comes directly from the LNT website. Cap letters are mine for emphasis. Leave No Trace is an national and international program designed to assist outdoor enthusiasts with their DECISIONS about how to REDUCE their impacts when they hike, camp, picnic, snowshoe, run, bike, hunt, paddle, ride horses, fish, ski or climb. The program strives to educate all those who enjoy the outdoors about the nature of their recreational impacts as well as techniques to PREVENT and MINIMIZE such impacts. Leave No Trace is BEST UNDERSTOOD as an EDUCATIONAL and ETHICAL program, NOT as a set of RULES and REGULATIONS. Regardless of how some bonehead may misinterpret LNT while teaching it, this is how LNT defines itself. I ask you, which should you pay attention to, a poorly informed instructor or the organization itself? The purpose of LNT is for you to be able to enjoy nature just as you described in your last post, but to minimize your impact so folks coming in behind you can enjoy it just as much. Consider this, Pappy's view of enjoying nature was to have his boys cut down trees, dam creeks, dig holes and to kill an animal with their bare hands. Do you want to take your boys to the same location he just visited? What a lovely view......not to mention the scattered animal parts laying all around. Unfortunately, a lot of those kinds of activities occured in years past. LNT's goal is simple. Good stewardship of the nature surrounding us so we can enjoy it today and our neighbor can tomorrow. No lie is necessary. Teach what it is instead of what some over zealous misinformed person took as gospel. Let me tell you about one of our best loved annual campouts. We do a turkey cookout each November. Prior to the scouts arriving, we have a backhoe dig a pit about 3 feet wide, 4 feet deep and 30 feet long. The boys build numerous fire lays in the bottom and stack it with small brush. At midnight, we pour some kerosene on it and light it. From midnight to 6 AM, the adults feed numerous ricks of wood into the pit to build a deep layer of coals. We butter 14 turkeys and wrap them in multiple layers of foil and enclose them in baskets made from chicken wire and bailing wire. Then we bury them in the coals at 9 AM, throw on some dirt and let them cook for 4 hours. After removing them, a tractor comes in and fills the pit back in. This is all done on private land with the permission of the landowner. The wood we use comes from downed and nusiance trees he wants removed. Is that LNT? Heck no. But it is on private property and we have the landowners permission. Do we act that way when we take the boys backpacking in the Pecos Wilderness in New Mexico? Heck no. We try to follow LNT principles as BEST we can. GHB, you are trying to make LNT a black and white, all or nothing propostion and it simply is not. My suggestion would be for you to get the LNT materials and teach it yourself to correct the misinformation out there that you came across. (This message has been edited by sr540beaver)

GHB, What specifically is this "lie" we all are perpatrating on our youth?

Everyone has given you good and correct information Jill. One of our more problematic MB's is the Snow Sports MB. I can't tell you the number of boys who are going skiing over Christmas break and come ask the SM if one of their parents can be the MBC for them for the MB. Nope. While it would be convenient, it bypasses the whole adult association aspect of MB's. Plus it creates an expectation to make exceptions for all sorts of other MB's.

sheldonsmom, The last I checked, a President either vetos or signs a bill sent to him by Congress. If he vetos a bill, a majority vote by Congress can override it. Evidently Bush lost his veto pen and only had the pin that signs legislation into law. HE signed off on all that spending regardless of who may have proposed it. So yeah, ultimately the buck stops with him.

GHB, My apologies for using "you" too much in my comment. It was meant generically for the many instances on these forums where the folks like Kudu and a few others see Wood Badge as the boogeyman of scouting and suspect it as the evil that is killing scouting. Yes, I am a Wood Badger (I'm a Beaver from course SR540) and have staffed two courses with a third opportunity in 2010. Having been a Scouter pre-WB and then attending WB and then staffing WB, I have a perspective from both sides of the fence. I can assure you that any misinformation you may have received at the hands of a WB'er conducting an IOLS course (which I have staffed also) has nothing to do with what they were taught at WB because they are apples and oranges. As has been mentioned by other posters, WB is a leadership skills course. That is ALL it is. IOLS is a course to teach scouters working directly with boys how to teach the skills needed to meet Tenderfoot to 1st Class ranks. Since I do know exactly what WB actually is, I can and do find it amusing when people who have not attended either blame of find coincidences involving WB. Look, I'm not trying to be a WB elitist snob. I know the value of the course, but I recognize not everyone wants to attend and that there are excellent non-WB scouters out there. I just get tired of people thinking it is some sort of elite crowd and standing on the outside looking in and being critical when they really don't know what they are talking about. Hence my suggestion to those who "think" and "suspect"......GO. I promise they will be surprised at everything WB is NOT that they thought it was.

I always find it amusing that those who are critical of the BSA program always blame Wood Badge. GO! You'll find out what it really is as opposed to what you "think" it is and then will realize how silly you sound making it the boogyman of scouting.

I survived GWB for 8 years, I'm now bullet proof and can survive anything.

Jeff, I hate to break it to you dude.......but Indiana Jones is not truely representative of a career in archeology. Indy is fictional just like Lem and his troop. You might want to swap the rose colored glasses for a pair of clear reality specs.

Pack, Well heck yes!!! O'Reilly is "looking out" for us and Hannity says he has the hardest hitting, most comprehensive analysis available on the radio.

scoutldr: "Socialism is when the Government decides how I will donate my money, and I will fight that to the death." You do realize that the government (as alternately controlled by the Democrats and Republicans) was doing this since before you were a wage earning tax payer don't you? This is nothing new.

Let's not forget another factor that we have lost a ton of middle class manufacturing jobs to other countries. Those lucky enough to find another job usually do so at a lower salary.

Personally, I could care less what the politics of a company are. If they have a better price or a superior product, I'll buy it. I'll gladly sit in my "green" company big man's leather recliner rather than sit on an orange crate to satisfy/validate my bitterness over something like an election.

"They've also brought back "Service Dress Khaki"...the WWII style khaki coat with shoulder boards that you see in the old John Wayne movies." Michael Jackson will be pleased.

Gunny, I just read your response above after our PM's to each other. My bad. I guess I messed up reading your RR and RA references. I recently had an eye doctor do a procedure that has affected my vision somewhat and reading can be a frustrating thing when my eyes get tired.

Anyone who has ever watched Stargate SG-1 knows that the AF wear special services uniforms while kicking butt on all those off world missions. (This message has been edited by sr540beaver)

Royal Rangers originated as an Assembly of God program. Royal Ambassadors originated as a Southern Baptist program. I was an RA some 40 years ago and my son was an RA about 5 years ago. Not to argue with you Gunny, but I would be highly surprised if RA's are used in other denominations. I've been a Southern Baptist all my life with a degree in Religion from a Southern Baptist university, work towards a Masters in Religious Education from a Southern Baptist seminary, an ordained Deacon and spent some time in the youth ministry in my younger days. I've never known of RA's being used outside of SB churches. That isn't to say that it isn't. Anyone could probably order and use the RA materials. But the materials are developed by the SBC for the SBC churches.

Speaking of voter's rights, you should hear radio talker Neal Boortz go on his occasional tear about who should be able to vote. He firmly believes the average American are idiots and should not be allowed to vote. He says there should be an intelligence test administered in order to get to vote. Also, any person who is jobless or doesn't own property shouldn't be allowed to vote. He honestly believes that being able to vote should not be a right, but earned based on certain criteria. He can get really worked up and just go on and on. I will say this about Neal, he is my favorite radio talker because he is honest. He tells you that he is an entertainer and not to blindly accept anything he says. He tells his listeners to take what he says and weigh it against their own research and what they know and come to their own conclusions. Now that is a rarity in talk radio and agree with him or not, he has my respect for it.(This message has been edited by sr540beaver)

Kahuna, Hooey! Saying that Democrats dislike the military is a talk radio talking point. I hate to break it to you, but the military is made up of people of all stripes within our society. The military is not made up soley of big straping, square jawed, blue eyed, high school quarterback, card carrying Republicans. A good number of Democrat politicians served our country with distinction.