SR540Beaver

I have another idea. Perhaps the Issues and Politics forum should be password protected like the OA forum. Only the kids who demonstrate an ability to play nice with others would be allowed. I had half jokingly suggested a week or two ago that people should be restricted to one post in I&P for every 5 or 10 posts in other forums, but there is really no way to monitor that.

Hi my name is Beaver and I'm a newsaholic. I've been clean and sober since the election. I used to watch Fox, CNN and MSNBC EVERY night. I spent much of my day on the internet reading blogs. I always listened to talk radio while driving. I'm a fairly intelligent guy and thought I was doing what I was doing in an effort to keep myself informed. I've always been too high browed to watch the mindless professional wrestling or Jerry Springer type drivel. Slowly but surely, it dawned on me that all of the punditry in the world is NOT "looking out for me" as O'Reilly suggests. These guys were selling entertainment disguised as news and analysis. They were out to make a buck. Do some of them believe what they say. Probably, to some extent. They present it in the partisan and polarizing way they do to get you to watch, just like driving past a car wreck. I lay the hateful state of American politics directly at their feet and I refuse to patronize them anymore.....any of them on either side. Well, here in Oklahoma, the only talk radio you can get is right wing. I'm tired of the spin and talking points. Don't let these guys fool you and DON'T allow your view to be "informed" by them. They are only interested in selling you their latest book and coffee mugs. Beware! I've been clean and sober since the election.

Brent, What Hunt said. The Silver Beaver goes to recognize the average Joe who spends years of outstanding volunteer service at the local level. The Silver Buffalo goes to "celebrities" who can or do help scouting. One is an attaboy and the other is for favors and PR. No double standard, just fact. I didn't get riled up, I just corrected a misconception where someone had a small picture view based on their individual council as opposed to the bigger picture nationally. I'm well aware or the facilities at AP Hill. I was there as a Jambo ASM last year. The Jambo has been held there since '84. Rumsfeld is the current Sec of Defense, but had nothing to do with the infrastructure built there over the past 2 decades.

Let's have a big shout out for the editing staff member. THANK YOU!!! You are far more patient than me....perhaps that is why you are staff and I am not.

AkelaT, All I can say is that I am glad I'm not in your council if all of your Silver Beavers were awarded for political favors. I personally know a fair number of Silver Beaver recipients in my council and all of them deserved the award. The SM of the troop I serve just recived the SB a couple of months ago. You'd never meet a more dedicated scouter. He has been the SM of an almost 45 year old troop for the last 5 years. He turned it around into a true boy led troop. A year ago we had about 45 boys. Due to his excellent program efforts, leadership and training of boy leadership, we were sought out by boys from 4 to 5 different packs and crossed over 20 boys this spring. We now are running 60 boys at meetings. He is a great asset to the OA, district and council. He was selected as one of the SM's for Jamboree last year. He earned his SB. So did everyone of the others guys and gals I know that received the SB. Many didn't earn it until their own children were aged out and gone and they continued on serving scouting because of their love for the program. I'm sure it is political in some places, but not around here. You have to be nominated and the person nominating you has to fill out a fairly extensive form listing why they feel you are deserving. A committee reviews the forms and selects the most worthy. As to Rumsfeld, purely political.

Our unit has recently invested about $1600 in climbing and rappeling equipment. Harnesses, helmets, ropes, belay devices, etc. We have had at least 4 or 5 adult leaders get BSA training to run our climbing program. A few months ago we did our climbing campout at a wildlife refuge where the boys got to climb on actual rock instead of a tower. We had over 40 boys and probably 15 adults go. They had a blast, but due to the number of boys, it was difficult to get more than 2 or 3 climbs and rappels in per boy.

For the past 29 years, the White Buffalo District of the Quivira Council in Kansas has put on a Trappers Rendezvous during the third weekend of January. There are usually in excess of 4,000 in attendance. It is a sight to behold. Many Polar Bear patches are earned. You might try contacting their District Executive for information. His name is Dave Dennis and his number is 264-9415 ext. 240. His e-mail is ddennis@bsamail.org. The council website is www.quivira.org and there is a link to the White Buffalo district there.

kraut-60, Welcome to the usual suspects club! Make sure you pay your dues at the door before digging into the chips and dip.

You can get a charter without a COR. If you do things "by the book", an institution decides they want to have a unit. They are given the charter by the council and then they go about recruiting a COR who in turn recruits a committee chair who recruits an SM/CM/CA and additional committee members. The CM/SM/CA recruits their additional help. We started a troop during the summer of 04 that lasted about a year. A COR was selected by the CO, but we never ever saw the person and I'm not sure if we ever actually got her registered before the troop folded.

My father was a Marine in WWII. That is a fact I will always be pround of. I love the Marine Corp and probably would have served had I not been an insulin dependent diabetic. Oliver North disgraced the Marine Corp uniform when he chose to ignore his oath and knowingly and willingly broke the law. He didn't do prison time because of a technicality. It is beyond me why so many people admire him and treat him as a hero. He is a criminal and one of the thinks I have against Fox News is the fact that they employee people of questionable integrity like North, Geraldo and Newt Gingrich. I turn the radio or TV channel when North comes on.

Longhaul, It all depends on a variety of circumstances. Could you keep the NSP together as a new regular patrol. Sure you can. But now you have boys who have not been around long enough to have the experience to make a good PL. The hardest group of people to be in autority over are true peers. I saw it with my own son in a small troop we started with all 11 year olds. He was the most mature and that was recognized by the boys. They unanimously elected him as PL and promptly set out to defy him at every term. Next election when we had new bos join and had enough boys for a second patrol, he was elected SPL. Again, he got absolutely no cooperation because, "he doesn't know anymore than we do". There is plenty of interaction between the patrols, so boys get to know each other and make friends with other patrol members. Also, they have been stuck with kids in their NSP that have driven them nuts. There is this romantic view that patrols are a "gang" or group of buddies who naturally came together in their school or neighborhood and one of those boys is the natural leader that rises to the top. Maybe 80 or 90 years ago. Not today. We've done patrols a hundred different ways, always with the boys input. The problem with trying to hold the NSP together as a patrol until they age out is that the size of the patrol often dwindles down to one 16 year old boy. Why would there be more of an advantage of only merging patrols of older boys late in their career? By merging patrols, keeping 3 or 4 buddies together from the NSP, you end up with patrols that stay fairly constant in size, have a nice age spread and allows for the new boys to become more fully oriented and integrated into the troop structure. In our troop, they will not be ready to run for an elected position until they have reached a certain rank and a certain activity level. Obviously, having a troop of 60 boys from 10 to 17 years of age gives us a whole lot more possibilities of how to structure and run things than our old troop of six 11 year olds. I don't know if the meds I'm taking for a pinched nerve caused me to ramble or not or if I answered your question. Basically, we are fairly flexible and try to do things as the situation calls for it. It might be normal one year to keep the vast majority of NSP boys together while another year we need to reallign patrols across the board.

Beavah, Nope, don't recall it. We had something similiar here in OKC though. The city finally decided to follow suit and build a new state of the art "skate park" for the kiddies. The city ordinance stated that helmets were required for the park. For the grand opening, a bunch of the extreme sport pros were scheduled to attend and put on a demonstration. They balked at having to wear a helmet because, "like dude, we're like pros and like helmets are not like part of our culture and are like not cool". They wanted kids to buy the products that sponsored them, but could care less about whether or not they followed safety "rules" and cracked their head open. I don't recall if the city gave them a waiver or not. My take was that the rules were the rules and they should wear a helmet regardless of their pro status.

BelieveinScouts, There is a simplier way, training. No offense, but there really are not that many restrictions, forms to fill out or red tape to deal with. There is a reason that each district has a trainer, training is provided for free and classes are held on a regular basis. Some classes are even available on-line. Each month from September to May, your district has a roundtable meeting for adult leaders. Often classes are held in conjuction with roundtable. Roundtable provides a wealth of information of what is going on in your council and district and then there are breakout sessions where you can get program ideas and network with your peers. All of the things you are finding out now in Webelos, would have been easy and beneficial to learn in the first couple of months as a Tiger......if someone would have pointed you in the right direction. Usually that person would be the Cubmaster of Pack Committee Chair. In a well run and staffed Pack, you should have a committee member who is responsible for training and encouraging new adults to get trained.

As Sm or ASM we do not run the troop, the boys do. The troop leadership should be hands off as much as possible. Lynda, Ahhh yes.....but who is responsible for training and ultimate oversight of the boy leadership? The SM and ASM's. Train them right and hopefully your oversight will mostly be at a distance. But a troop is an ever changing and evolving thing and your leadership is changing every 6 months. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Boys age out and young boys come in. The troops whole complextion, level of ability and expertise changes constantly. Our own EagleDad gave me an excellent definition of boy-led over lunch a year or two ago. To paraphrase, boy led is different for each troop. If you have a newly chartered troop of all 11 year olds and all they can do is put together part of their meeting agenda, they are boy led to the extent they can be for their age and ability. If you have a large troop that has a wide range of boys and mature seasoned boy leaders that can plan every aspect of the troop's program, that too is boy led. Both are different, but both are as boy led as they can be given where they are at. WE adults are responsible for getting them to whatever point they are at and to do the quality control on the job being done. I have become a strong believer in the NSP and adult involvment with new scouts as opposed to taking a hands off approach. We are a big troop with 60 registered boys. 20 of those boys are new crossovers and it is my understanding that we might have another 4 crossing soon. We are also blessed with a good number of registered adults. I am one of 3 NSP ASM's and we have 4 troop guides divided between the 2 NSP's. The SM has an orientation meeting with the parents when the boys cross over where they are given some handouts, but also have an indepth Q&A session. We ASM's meet with the TG's on a monthly basis to plan out the program for the NSP's. The TG's report back and coordinate the NSP program within the troops overall program. We separate the NSP for skill time during troop meetings. These can be led by an adult, a TG or one of the older boys. While the NSP often participates in the monthly outing program, we often have program geared toward their advancement built into the outing. I guess to a degree, one could say we are holding their hand thru the NSP. I don't think so. They still participate in troop meetings and are only seperated for skills. They still participate in the outings and campfire program, they just sometimes do a different activity than the rest of the troop. Many of the Tenderfoot, 2nd Class and 1st Class requirements are being worked on at the same time. For the first month or two, especially for things we are doing as a group, we remind them to being us their books to be signed. At the same time, we are telling them that they will be responsible for obtaining sign-offs in the future and we won't be asking. Everything is designed to ease them into the troop environment in the comfort of a peer group. The TG's serve as their PL and APL and do much of the training. We ASM's make our presence known and assist with some training to get them used to adult association. After about 9 months in the NSP, we move them into existing patrols and if we and the boy leadership have done their job right, they are ready to hunt with the big dogs. No, we don't run the troop.....we just make sure it runs right.

Congrats!!! I used to be a Beaver.....a truly noble creature!

I'm with Acco and R7V on this one. If I'm walking around with my fly unzipped, I would appreciate it if they discreetly let me know rather than shouting across the crowded room, "Hey Beav, you left the barn door open!" Proper uniforming is not difficult. There is only one shirt, one pant, one belt and one style of sock to pick from. They are all part of the complete uniform. Patch placement isn't difficult either. Certain patches go in certain places and in a certain order. They are supposed to touch each other. It is printed in plenty of places. It can be found on the internet. It isn't rocket science.

#7a : The person really does know better than the rulemaker, because of unique personal expertise, or insufficient time/attention paid by the rulemaker. Beavah, I'm a fairly intelligent, perceptive and talented man. Infortunately, I've yet to master the art of mind reading though. How am I, who might be in charge of an area at camp and therefore the person responsible for enforcing a rule supposed to know of your unique personal expertise when you chose to break the rule in front of me? Wouldn't it be better for you to first follow the rule (lead by example for those boys observing), introduce yourself to me and explain to me why you think you individually want to be treated as an exception to the rule?

I'm think of checking into the possibility of a "Tubing" MB. The only requirement is to find an old truck innertube, inflate it and float down a lazy river. Paddling will NOT be allowed.

E, You guys do an outstanding job. I'm sorry to see Kahuna go, but that is his decision. I have not gone back and reread what he took as a personal attack. What I recall of it was that it was a different perspective. Whatever.....it is Kahuna's right to be offended and chose where he wants to go and be on the internet. I wish him well. I have participated in a variety of forums on the internet for a good number of years. I've seen some extremely rude and obnoxious people who take full advantage of being anonomous. I've seen boards where moderators kick people off right and left simply for ideological reasons that have nothing to do with manners. For instance, the Sean Hannity board has what they call "contempt of affiliate". It is your responsibility to know the rule exists and also know which radio talkers are also aired on WABC in New York City and if you say anything bad about them, you will get banned from the Hannity board. They call that Fair and Balanced. I appreciate that Terry allows the board to be governed by the Oath and Law for the most part. It is rare that we have a Yaworski/Fat Old Guy that comes along with the express purpose of poking people in the eye with a sharp stick and causing general meyhem. It is people like him who need to get the boot after a number of chances. My only gripe are those who joined the forum and seem to only hang out in Issues and Politics. There are a few folks who evidentily are scouters, but never contribute at all to scouting threads. They seem to only want to show up and "mix it up" on an issue that pushes their buttons. They have a right to be here and post like anyone else, they just sometimes let their ideology get the better of them and tend to forget about using the Oath and Law to guide their behavior. It is then that I would hope the moderators would send a friendly little PM telling them to take a breath and consider their tone.

Come on E, you practiced leave no trace without realizing it. Your bean cans rusted into oblivion decades ago!

Aye mate......and what a lovely young lassie she is.

7. You just think you know better than the people who make the rules. These are the guys who bug me. They usually don't care why a rule exists. They simply dislike any form of authority and challenge rules just for the sake of challenging rules. It is usually driven out of selfishness, immaturity and arrogance.

Ozark, I'll send you all of my neckerchiefs as I am totally the opposite. It is the part of the uniform I dislike the most and only wear one when I absolutely have to. I am very hot natured and having multiple rolls of a fabric laying against my neck ensures getting a really good sweat going. I will be staffing a Wood Badge course this fall and am looking forward to it very much with the exception of HAVING to wear a necker the whole time. I do like the necker worn over the collar and often turn my collar under when I do wear one. It isn't all that comfortable, so removing it would be the better option. But since I go without a necker the majority of the time, I would prefer to keep my collar.

I don't know, I fail to see how or why 1st Class/1st Year is hard to accomplish in an active program. Tenderfoot thru 1st Class advancement happens naturally on almost every campout. Look at just a few of the requirements. -Present yourself to your leader, properly dressed, before going on an overnight camping trip. Show the camping gear you will use. Show the right wa to pack it and carry it. -Spend at least one night on a patrol or troop campout. Sleep in a tent you helped pitch. -On the campout, assist in preparing and cooking one of your patrol's meals. -Using a compass and a map together, take a 5 mile hike (or 10 miles by bike) approved by your adult leader and your parent or guardian. -Explain the rules of safe hiking. -Identify local poisonous plants. -Identify or show evidence of at least ten kinds of wild animals found in your community. -Identify or show evidence of at least ten kinds of native plants found in your community. -Since joining, have participated in five separate troop/patrol activities, two of which included camping overnight. -Participate in an approved (minumum of one hour) service project. -Using a compass, complete an orienting course that covers at least one mile and requires measuring the height and/or width of designated items. -Etc., etc., etc. If you don't do a lot of these items on your average campout, just WHAT the heck are you doing on them? The new scouts can participate in a program designed for their skill and rank level while older boys are doing the same and still be part of the troop on the same outing. No rule says everyone has to do the same thing.

Lisa, I am the ASM for new scouts in our troop. I have two other ASM's assisting me. I'm new at this position and am learning as I go. Here is what the SM and we three ASm's for the new scouts have worked out. We have 20 new scouts divided into 2 new scout patrols. Each patrol has 2 Troop Guides that will serve a 9 month term. While the whole troop of 60 goes on the same campouts and share "program", we also coordinate a new scout "program" into those campouts. A couple of months ago, we did a pioneering campout. The new scouts got to participate by learning some lashings and fiddle with making a camp gadget while the older boys built larger and more involved structures. But the main thrust of their program on the campout was the Troop Guides setting up an axe yard and the new scouts earning their Totin' Chit. Because the skills the new scouts need to learn are different from the skills the older scouts need, we split the new scouts out into their own skill session during troop meetings. We meet on Mondays. The Monday following a campout we instead have a "Leadership" meeting. It is an indepth PLC meeting to discuss the coming month. The SM wants the new scout ASM's and Troop Guides to start having their own seperate meeting to plan for the new scout patrols. Our plans will be incorporated in with the whole troop plan. We also have a mini-PLC 30 minutes before each troop meeting. The Troop Guides take part in these and that is where the cooridination of the two programs comes together. We highly encourage our new scouts to attend summer camp and we utilize the 1st Year program at camp. I will tag along and monitor the class to make sure the teaching meets our standards and that the boys actually learn what the course counselor says they did. Tonight, we are having a special troop meeting at a park close to our CO. We have new dining flys that some of the patrols have done a really sorry job of setting up properly. The older boys will be competing against each other to set the flys up correctly. At the same time, the new scout patrols will be doing their physical fitness requirenments for Tenderfoot. Afterwards, the whole troop will be having dutch oven cobbler. We all meet together and share common elements of meetings and activities, but we have seperate activities based on where they are in their scouting career. We will keep them in the new boy patrols for about 9 months before integrating them into existing patrols. Most won't be 1st Class yet, but will be well on their way. I kind of random thought my way thru the post. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.