T2Eagle

Yup, crap piece. No statistical ties of the actual people who are in therapy with whether they are over represented in the various cultural behaviors the author doesn't like. Also no statistics comparing the outcomes and well being of folks receiving help in the time before as much help was available to those with mental health issues with outcomes and well being of folks receiving help today.

Finally, the author talks about an insidious therapy industry, and although there are certainly some therapists who do well financially, the majority of being actually delivering mental health services are at the very low end of the income scale for health providers and other occupations requiring professional training, licensure, and degrees.

We do a trip each Memorial Day and leave the rest alone. We're off to the New River for Whitewater Friday.

Hey T-185, we do the Bruce Peninsula every other Memorial Day, beautiful. Do you make the trip in one evening? We usually stop at Camp Atawandaron on Friday.

What's with the no bussing the cups bit? When you're doing a clean up do you leave the half empty beer cans on the ground? The point of the policy is that alcohol should not be served where the activity is about the boys. It's not an attempt to pretend that alcohol doesn't exist. Our annual church fair sells alcohol, should we tell the our Chartering Org sorry can't help out, can't clean up? Of course not.

I suppose if your Chartering Org has as one of its tenets that alcohol in and of itself is evil then maybe you should stay away from any event that has alcohol. But clearly the KofC doesn't have that view so your participation is fine.

Three sided shelters are also often called Adirondacks. My summer camp growing up was Camp Ockanickon, most of my summer camps we stayed in these. One of our local council camps has a few sites with them, have used them once or twice, usually late fall when the bugs are gone.

My buddies and I used a couple on short overnight hikes on the AT when I was a penniless college student and didn't have a decent backpacking tent.

For camping merit badge these wouldn't count, the requirements are very specific that it's either a tent or the stars, but for OA it's less specific and you could probably count them.

I really wish BSA provided something more than platitudes when it publishes guidelines like the one about private FB groups. What's the difference between a private FB group and a troop website whose access is password protected? And when you use a phrase like "administering the scouting program" do they really mean troops and packs or is this maybe a guideline for camps, councils, districts, etc?

I would not sign a Communications blue card for most of the examples of communication that comes out of National.

One quick note is in order here. Whatever concerns BSA. or we, may have about security of medical data one concern we don't have is HIPAA. We are not a covered entity under HIPAA and so we are not governed by any of their regulations.

HIPAA is widely misunderstood even by people who are governed by it, but it is important to understand at least whether or not you're even a part of it.

Silly stuff…“Sit down and enjoy yourselves, that’s an order.â€Â

I find it’s pretty common that the adults who are planning these types of events just cannot handle the idea of the program having either an extended open/free or truly “optional event†block of time.

I ran into this at a District event where they were showing a movie as the last activity on Saturday night. My scouts wanted to go out and play capture the flag and its variants, and I said sure. Several of the scouters organizing the weekend, all friends of mine, got kind of upset. They had put a lot of time and thought into their planning and felt it was rude and disrespectful to not participate. I explained that we came out to the woods to get away from electronic entertainment and I really couldn't order my scouts to sit and watch a movie.

Several months later during the planning for another event I suggested that they just leave Saturday evening open for the scouts to run around in the woods --- they really just couldn't handle the idea of not scheduling something.

"current pressurized fuel training" How does anyone say that with a straight face? Can I test out by showing I haven't blown up my house with the "pressurized fuel" stove I've been using my entire life?

I haven't seen or heard anything about trying to put together any more "super size" Councils like they did in Michigan. Has anyone heard of any others? Anyone in Michigan want to give an update as to how things are working there?

We always welcome scouts from other troops who want to join us for a weekend or a particular trip. We often have a scout or two from one of the larger troops in the area join us for summer camp because their family schedule prevents them from attending with their own troop. We view it as recruiting and we usually keep them over the long haul.

You are probably OK just letting them attend meetings and camp with you so long as their BSA membership is current. If you're really hung up on membership in the troop they can transfer to your unit for a $1 application fee to the council and then transfer back for anther $1 if/when they want to return to the other troop.

The shutting down for the summer strikes me as odd unless you have a really small troop that is only going to be able to muster 1 or 2 scouts for a meeting because of family vacations.

Interestingly here's the last line from that Forbes column: All in [all], anyone running a pure booster club had best avoid individual fundraising accounts, even if they still see them working for [a] Scout Troop.

I went and read the actual Tax Court decision, there are a lot of differences between what the booster club was doing and what anyone using ISAs is doing, starting with the fact that the booster club existed purely for the purpose of raising funds for the athletes. Also the fundraising was all done by the parents, not by the athletes, and it was done to fulfill pre-determined yearly fees that had to be paid in full before an athlete could participate. The court decided that the beneficiary of the fundraising was the parents.

How do you address it with any other group? Are you conversant enough with say Catholocism to judge whether that scout is in compliance with his religion? What about Judaism – would you consider they were upholding their duty to God if they follow Reform rather than Conservative or Hasidic practices? And what about the breadth of Christianity, what’s the standard you use there? Would you say “you should go to Church on Sundays†but the scout’s parents’ say we don’t think that’s what is meant by Sabbath?

If a scout is not being respectful of others’ faith you could certainly say that means he’s not being Reverent, but what affirmative actions a scout should take to be doing their duty to God seems best left to the scout, their family, and their conscience.

Where does it say you can only wear uniforms when selling popcorn? That sounds like either an urban legend being passed along or a Council making stuff up as it goes.

We sell wreaths at our Church for the Troop's funds, in uniform. And we work one of the booths at the annual church fair helping the parish raise money, also in uniform.

Whenever anyone tells you there's a rule, but the rule doesn't make sense, tell them "show me." If they can't show you the rule don't bother arguing with them just ignore them and do your thing.

Stosh,

InIn case anyone ever does ask you to help with this MB: Broiling and grilling are basically the same thing, pan frying is where you cook something in a fry pan with just enough fat/oil to keep it from sticking, think frying an egg or a piece of fish. , simmering is when you cook something in a liquid just below the boiling point, this is usally how you finish off a sauce. A wok would be excellent to use. I would definitely let a scout cook a hot dog on a stick as a kabob, but he would need to put some veggies on the stick too. The trick is cutting the veggies the right size so that they stay on the stick and cook enough while at the same time you don't burn the hot dog. As for the marshmallow, I would definitely allow that as a kabob, but again you need to add some other ingredients to qualify, I would suggest fruit, probably peaches or apples.

As I think more about it that last would work really well, probably roast the fruit a little first then add the marshmallow right at the end. If you're really gutsy put some dough on there too, the timing for that would be tricky. I may try this when we're out next week.

I won't say there's any harm in doing the class the way you're thinking, but I don't think it's capturing the spirit of the merit badge.

First, stop thinking about it as a class, think about it as a skill they're supposed to learn and use. Cooking is something you do to feed yourself, the best way to learn it is to do it, again and again, and get better at it. The best way to have the boys demonstrate their skill and complete the cooking requirement is to have them cook for their patrol and themselves on campouts. Don't have them all come in somewhere and cook a bunch of meals, rather encourage them each to volunteer to be cook for the next campout, then encourage someone else to volunteer the next campout, etc.

You should definitely not have as your goal that all five of these boys will end up earning the merit badge in "x" time frame, unless by "x" you mean a year. This is a badge that, like Camping, can really take a long time to complete.

I hear some of these concerns from even our current parents and scouts from time to time, and sometimes it points to areas to improve sometimes not. Not every meeting is going to be "fun" in the sense that it will be entertaining. Our main focus is our monthly campout, 80% of scouting is outing. And at least part of every meeting involves work related to those outings, planning for them, preparing equipment, restoring and repairing equipment afterwards, and repeating the cycle.

I'm not a great fan of sports analogy but one might be appropriate here. If you think of the weekend outing as the game, the meetings are the practices, and practices can be fun but they also involve drills and repetitiveness to get ready for what's most important which is the game or in our case the outing.

One of the big challenges and changes for a scout that crosses over is that in Cubs the adults do most of the work and the scouts get to benefit from that and do most of the fun. In scouts you only get the fun if you put in the work.

There is almost everything wrong with what you describe. If there is not a compelling reason for your son to join this troop look around for another. If your son joins this troop and you care a lot about his scouting experience be ready and willing to wade in to this issue and get it fixed. It won't be easy and it could get unpleasant.

I am hard pressed to think of a good reason to tell scouts not to "slouch".

I'm curious how often most Troops hold elections. We just started to look at this Star to Life time issue in depth. We have elections only twice a year (2nd Mon of May and Nov). This means the May-Nov Scouts will always be short 3 days (which seems stupid to me since Nov-May span is actually fewer days). They can wait for the next monthly BoR to get advanced, but they also must have some type of position or special SM project to cover the extra days (assuming they aren't re-elected into another one that counts). To me this seems rather unfair.

 

Maybe our Eagles have been lucky to not have been Star during the May-Nov cycle or it just got dismissed as Troop error at their EBOR. I figure we should fix it so it's never an issue, but don't see how to do it simply. Yearly elections definitely won't work. So what are you doing to get around this issue?

My understanding is our Council hasn't lost any units. The most conservative/fundamentalist Church in our area has a long time very active Troop, they still don't have any women leaders, but they are sticking around. I lost one scout, which is odd because we're a Catholic unit and the new policy is pretty much the same policy our schools have. I never had to confront the issue, but I think the previous policy was as much a violation of our rules as it was consistent with them.

 

I wonder how well the level of political activism in the Church correlates with the likelihood that they are leaving.

Our troop wants to go rafting on the new, I found a good outfitter for the rafting but we're trying to save money n other parts of the trip. The outfitter wants about $10/night per head for camping --- reasonable for a commercial campground but I think more than a government owned facility. I can't really figure out the WVA state park camping situation. Has anyone camed in the state parks near the new? Have any recommendations for us?

Good Gawd. I wish we would go back to just teaching our Scouts to do a good turn without reward, recognition, or even thanks because it is the scout way of doing the right thing. Instead we have created generations who expect something more for doing the right thing or even just doing their job.

 

What's in it for me, Mr. Schiff?

 

 

How many would answer "if he didn't write them down in his book then he can't claim them, tell him there will be plenty more activities and this is a lesson in writing everything down."

The scout didn't say I'll come if I can count it. He came, he did the work, he wants to record it. If you say no you can't use this one is he going to undo what he did?

Yes, we should be teaching our youth to do service for others without requiring reward.

 

However, then why are we REQUIRING service hours?

 

While not all service hours are service in a time of crisis, they are all a service to someone in need. Why is it OK to acknowledge some service, but not others.

 

What makes it rude to ask for acknowledgment of service at a vigil, but not service to an 80 year old neighbor, or service to your local VFW at a recognition of deceased veterans?

 

Seems a bit hypocritical to me.

There's a T21 requirement for troop and patrol activities outside troop meetings, so we make scouts write them down and show us they hit the number. The requirement is signed off, the scout never bothers recording that kind of stuff again and goes the rest of his scouting career pretty much going to all the activities he would go to anyway, his participation level neither better nor worse as a result of whether he had to write it down.

My understanding is our Council hasn't lost any units. The most conservative/fundamentalist Church in our area has a long time very active Troop, they still don't have any women leaders, but they are sticking around. I lost one scout, which is odd because we're a Catholic unit and the new policy is pretty much the same policy our schools have. I never had to confront the issue, but I think the previous policy was as much a violation of our rules as it was consistent with them.

I wonder how well the level of political activism in the Church correlates with the likelihood that they are leaving.

I attended an ECOH this weekend, and most of the high exposure speaking parts were done by adults not scouts. The MC was a scout but the Eagle Charge, Meaning of the Eagle Award, Eagle Rank Requirements, and the scout's Trail to Eagle were all given by adults.

Got me wondering why. The scout's Trail to Eagle, at least in our Troop, is the story of the boy's scouting experience usually given by a scouter important to the scout. But it seems to me the other parts of the ceremony could just as well be done by a scout.

How do your troops do this? Does anyone know if there are any actual rules or guidelines?

I have always been curious about the notion that not believing in God is automatically a violation of the Oath and Law. I'm an attorney, iin our legal system one of the general rules regarding duty is that you cannot breach a duty if you don't have the duty to begin with. So a scout who doesn't believe in God can promise to do his duty to God believing that if God doesn't exist then no Duty to God can be breached. And Reverent is about practicing your own beliefs while being respectful of others. So how is being an Atheist in and of itself de facto a breach of the Oath and Law?