SR540Beaver

God bless the McKay family. They are in my thoughts and prayers.

BUSTED!!! LOL

Responding to Cheerful Eagle's post.

I'm a Southern Baptist. The last I remember hearing, there are over 30 different Baptist denominations out there. Some small and some large. You'd be surprised how many folks out there think a Baptist is a Baptist is a Baptist......but they aren't. There are differences. I'm partial to what mine believes. Being the good Baptist I am, I'd have concerns if you wanted to join a "Baptist" church like mine and went to the one with the snake handlers and poison drinkers who call themselves Baptists.

Anything worth doing.....is worth doing right. As someone else pointed out, boys at this age excel in testing limits. Deciding to "change" the uniform in order to get the boys "uniform" is a compromise that will lead to further compromises until your program doesn't resemble a Troop in any way, shape or form. Meetings are boring, lets have them every two weeks instead of every week. It is hot in the summer and cold in the winter, could we cabin camp or maybe just stay home during those times? Fundraisers and service projects take up too much time, couldn't we just count our fundraiser as service time? Sure, you could do those things thinking it might make the boys happier and keep them engaged. They will just move on to the next "limit" to test.

emb021, Yes, we are aware of the "non-stripped" uniform. We as staff decided that we like the stripped shirts and agreed to do it for this course. We will however wear out unit shirts on the last day of the course. We do have some Venturing folks on staff, but they all are involved in troops as well and already have the tan shirt(s).

Beavah, I said in the US of A, not the world. Baden-Powell was around when the BSA started, evidently he didn't take exception to it.

emb021, Odd, I'm a troop guide for the course this fall and our WB Committee and course director are adamant that the entire staff dress identically in the Boy Scout uniform down to the belt buckle and sock length. All shirts are to be striped of insignia except for CSP, flag and world crest. The only thing we will change is the shoulder tabs for the short time we are cubs abd venturers. That is the way our council has done it at least since the WB for 21st Century came along.

Beavah, BSA doesn't run anyone out of business. You can start a competing organization under any name you want as long as you don't call it Scouts. You can even organize it like Boy Scouts and quote Baden Powell. The BSA doesn't own Baden-Powell's legacy, name or writings. The BSA has simply trademarked and copyrighted certain words in the US and their competitors can't use them.....but they can still run a similiar organization under a different name. There is nothing dishonest about it.

A scout doing a fundraiser whether it is going for the troop at large or his scout account is a scout being "thrifty" and paying his way. A scout providing his personal time to volunteer without financial benefit whether it be for Cub day camp or benefiting some organization in the community is a scout doing "service".

I just pulled up the official BSA website at www.scouting.org to be greeted by an adult Asian in a Venturing uniform shirt, Boy Scout red shoulder tabs, a campaign hat and a Woodbadge working neckerchief. Red tabs with a Venturing shirt on the front page of the official site? WHAT THE HECK???

Let's hope that everyone still backpacks and hikes and hoverboards and hoverpacks as well as Star Trek style transporters are prohibited inside the reservation. Of course, if they ever invent the Star Trek holodeck, anyone of any age or gender can load the program and experience Philmont anytime they want.

One can only hope that Philmont is still in operation in 2998. I honestly don't know if slots are available yet for 2008. Our SM is the one who always puts in our bid for Philmont and I do know that we lost out for 2007 and are looking for alternatives.

I'm 49 years old and I've been a professed Christian for 42 years and so far, I've never had my right to publically express my religion infringed. But then I'm a private citizen, not a government sponsored organization. Oh wait, this doesn't really have a thing to do with public expression of religion, that is just a catchy name for the legislation to garner support. It actually is an attempt to keep the ACLU from collecting legal fees when it challenges a government entity for wrongdoing. Why didn't they name the legislation something like the "Keep the ACLU from Collecting Legal Fees when Challenging the Government on Establishment Clause Cases"? Truth in advertising.

"But the BSA's claim to scouting terms and the basic scouting program is dishonest and dishonorable." No, no it isn't. What if every car company wanted to include the word Chevrolet in their name? Or if every shoe company wanted to call their shoes Nikes or every fast food place wanted to be called McDonalds? All of those names are brands just like Scouts is to the BSA. What happens if the Ford "Chevrolet" has a problem that causes the vehicle to blow up. Who knows if it was the real Chevrolet that has the problem or the Ford Chevrolet? If you have the Kid Scouts of America with Troops and Patrols and they have no youth protection guidleines in place and allow kids to sleep in tents with adults, guess who gets painted with the same brush of criticism when a problem arises? Every organization with Scouts in their name. There is nothing wrong with any type of organization protecting their "name" with exclusivity.

campcrafter, Who knows, they have not been in business 20 years. Seriously, it is hard to beat the timberline. That is what our troop uses for the boys. We always use a permanent marker and write the date on the tent and fly and we have some still in service that were purchased in 1983. My son was born in 1993! We repair them when needed and/or save pieces when one goes out of service to use with others. Now I will say that some of the boys complain because of the A frame style, not being able to use a cot and not being as roomy as a dome tent.

Our troop drove down to Irving this past Saturday and visted the National Scouting Museum. I seem to recall that Seton had the Woodcraft Indians and (Uncle) Dan Beard had the Sons of Daniel Boone. They were very similiar to the up and coming BSA and eventually merged with the BSA. You can have an organization very much like the BSA without calling it "Scouts". To use the term Scouts as part of your organizations name is to try to ride the coattails of an organization that did all the heavy lifting and has legal claim to the name to boot. You can call yourself the Adventure Rangers or the Extreme Outdoorsmen or the Monkey Treemen, just not Scouts.

I agree with Lisa on the combined Webelos 1 and 2 approach. We had a boy who had dropped out of Webelos and came back right before our Web 2's were to cross over. He wanted to earn his AOL. He stayed with the pack, met with the Web 1's and worked on his AOL and crossed over in May after the rest of the boys crossed in February. Unfortunately, he ended up leaving his troop about a year ago.

Kristi, I certainly can't speak to how the troop they would crossover to would feel about it. I am the new Scout ASM for our troop and while I will accept a new boy(s) any time, I'd prefer that they roughly crossover at the same time in the February to March time frame. Here is why. We use new scout patrols and we gear up with Troop Guides and plan a program that tries to move them thru the requirments.....in other words, First Class/First Year. There is always a boy that is going to miss summer camp or a monthly campout, but if we move them thru the requirements as a group, we keep them engaged and can do the requirements without having to go back to sqaure one. Bringing in new scouts in the middle of that process puts them way behind everyone else and disrupts what we are trying to do with the new scouts that crossed in February. We actually only run our new scout patrols for about 9 months and integrate them into our mixed aged patrols around November. We can and will take new boys thru out the year and just took one in last week, but I'm not quite sure how we are going to catch him up with all the others while we are busy moving them down the path.

E, You and yours are in my thoughts and prayers.

yel, A closer reading of the original post will reveal that they went to pick him up on Friday, not Saturday. Since you have worked camps, you know what a Friday is like trying to wind everything up for the big exodus the next morning.

Eagle, The boy's dad can join the millions of other dads who are disappointed that their son won't make the "bigs". The world is full of them.

Troop and patrol size. Over the last few years, I've been from one extreme to the other. A troop we started up had 6 or 7 scouts who were all 11 years old. Guess how many patrols we had? Yep, one! The PL did double duty as SPL. His official position was PL, but he planned and ran the meetings to the best of his ability as an 11 year old Tenderfoot. Talk about hard to function at troop meetings or campouts when only half the patrol showed up!!! Fast forward to today and a different troop with 63 boys on the roster. We have 5 patrols. Take out the SPL and 3 to 4 ASPL's and 4 Troop Guides and you end up with roughly 50+ scouts to spread between the 5 patrols. Our troop decided to make patrols with a size of around 10 scouts because it is rare to have all 10 show up all the time. Even if only half of them show up, the patrol can still function with 5 to 6 members present. While a regular scout doesn't really have an attendance requirement, the elected boy leadership is expected to attend all but one meetings and campouts over his 6 month term. This is known up front and boys who are obligated to other activities are urged to run during their off season if they want credit for their POR. I have heard of some troops limiting their size due to logistical problems due to rapid growth and space, equipment and adult leadership limitations. Crossing over 20 new boys to our troop did put a strain on us equipment and space-wise. Our dedicated room at the churh is just about maxed out and not "everyone" at the church sees that as "their" problem. The pastor who just left was pretty supportive, even if not everyone in the congregation was. The new pastor is very pro-scouting however. If push came to shove and we needed more space, I beleive he would work ot make it happen.

We have 63 boys on the current roster. 11 boys went to Northern Tier this summer. 8 of those 11 also attended summer camp. 51 went to summer camp. 20 were new scouts. I believe it is the largest "freshman" class the troop has ever had. I've heard rumors that we had 18 or so a few years ago. We have an Eagle who was a JASM and just aged out and is going to college. I believe he will be registering as an ASM. We have roughly 25 to 30 registered adults. We have a very decent spread of both rank and age from 10.5 to 18. The troop has been around for over 40 years with a little over 140 boys earning Eagle. Obviously, we don't retain every single boy until he is 18. We had 3 boys earn Eagle last year and 2 boys this year who have become basically inactive in the troop. They are in the 16 to 17 year range. I know of a few other boys at lower ranks and ages who are on again off again in attendance and a few boys who are rumored to claim they are dropping out. I've only been with the troop as an ASM just under a year, so I can't give hard numbers on attrition. What I can tell you is that we are truely boy led and they create a great program each year with the support of a great group of adults and we keep more than we lose. We attract more new boys than other troops have on their entire roster. That is due to the troop's reputation. I believe we might be the largest troop in our district. Believe it or not, there are two other troops in two different districts that have well over 100 scouts.

red feather, God bless you and your family in your loss. I lost my dad 5 years ago at the age of 78. He was one of the finest men you could ever know. The pain and sting of his loss is gone, but not a day goes by that I don't miss him and desire just one more hour with him. My thoughts and prayers are with you and yours. I'm sure he is warming himself at the campfire of the Great Master of all Scouts.