Cleveland Rocks

51 minutes ago, 69RoadRunner said:

Also, if you're not registered, you can only spend 72 hours at scouting events per year.  In that 73rd hour, you become a predator.  Apparently.

However, at the beginning of the next year, you're safe again for another 72 hours.  Not sure what spell or curse was cast that only protects a person for 72 hours per year.

That 72 hour rule is per event, like a Summer Camp. If the event is longer than 72 hours, and you're there for longer than 72 hours, you must be registered. This has been discussed at great lengths here and on other forums.

If it's, say, a weekend campout, which are typically less than 48 hours, you're okay.

Note the word says "at the activity", not "not activities".

"All adults accompanying a Scouting unit who are present at the activity for 72 total hours or more must be registered as leaders. The 72 hours need not be consecutive."

The "need not be consecutive" part is so that you don't stay at Summer Camp for 70 hours, leave for a while, and then return for the remainder of the week, thinking that the clock will reset.

This will surprise many Cub families, as many Webelos camps in the summer are longer than 72 hours, meaning the parents must be registered as leaders if they plan to attend with their Scout. The local council in my area just sent out a notice about this to families who were thinking of signing up to accompany their Scout to Webelos Exploration Camp.

This was recently discussed on a forum on Facebook, and someone from the Supply Division on there said that if you contact them (I believe at the 800 number) they will mail you patch strips for free as replacements for as many shirts as you need them for. The patch strips have embroidered lettering instead of the iron-on type they had on these.

6 hours ago, thrifty said:

I'm wondering if there will be any opportunity to trade with other scouts during the day while we are there.

Absolutely. There will be Scouts (and some adults) set up on every free piece of grass, picnic table and open spot you can think of doing trading. Trading is quite brisk in the camping areas, too, but of course that's off limits to visitors. Scouts would haul out their cots and set up on the service roads along the campsites to do their trading.

Check out the lower portion of the Consol Energy Bridge, where there were good spots for trading during the '13 and '17 NSJs. A lot of trading also took place at the Scott Summit Center, but there were areas there where trading was not allowed to take place, to give people an opportunity to sit and relax without the barrage of patch trading.

Trading will likely be different than at the NSJs, since trading in countries outside the U.S. tend to trade a lot more neckerchiefs and uniforms than they do patches. That's not to say there won't be lots of patch trading, just that the internationals do a lot more with neckers and uniforms. We've advised our Scouts to not bring a uniform with anything on it that they wouldn't want to part with in a trade. In other words, don't bring your everyday field uniform, because you might end up trading it.

According to a New York Times story in 1973:

"Scout officials felt that travel time to a single national jamboree was too long for many scouts and their families. And, in past years, some scouts were turned away from jamborees because the sites were full."

You could also maybe change the sentence to say something like, "You are no longer a Cub Scout. Welcome to Scouts BSA," or "Your journey in Cub Scouts has come to an end. Welcome to your new journey in Scouts BSA."

It would seem weird, sentence-wise, to say, "You are no longer a Cub Scout; you are now a Scout."

Here in Ohio, there was a change made a few years ago where instead of requiring students to be in school for a specified number of days, they have switched to hours.  School districts have built in so many extra hours into the school days, that you'd have to be out of school for at least a month before you'd have to make up any time.

Ohio used to give 5 "calamity days" (to be used for anything, not just weather) but since switching to the hours-based approach, those calamity days have gone away.  You just now need to be in school a specified number of hours during the year.

And now that so many schools plan ahead for this by providing "blizzard bags" when they know there's a good chance for school to be called off due to weather, that that has cut down on the number of actual missed time. That and the fact that many school districts provide students with laptops, they can continue to do work from home, even on snow days.

I can't recall any school districts around here that have had to make up days since they switched to the hours structure.

Our Troop at Summer Camp has our first-year Scouts work on Leatherwork MB in camp, as we have an ASM who is a registered counselor for that badge. He spends more time on it than the group offering that the camp has and the Scouts tend to enjoy it more, we've found.

We used to also offer Wood Carving MB in camp as we had a registered counselor for that badge as well, but that ASM has retired so we don't offer that in the campsite anymore. But it was very popular and well-enjoyed by the Scouts. They would each make a walking staff as one of their projects. Scouts still bring those staffs with them wherever they go. My son entered his at the County Fair the year he made his at Summer Camp, and took home a blue ribbon.

We also have the first-years work on other badges we're confident they will be able to complete during the week, so we work with them to schedule badges such as Art, Basketry, and Sculpture. If they're a strong swimmer, they could take Swimming, if they'd like.

Other badges we will work with them on whether it would be appropriate or not as a first-year Summer Camper. For example, we might discourage an 85-pound 11-year-old from taking, say, Shotgun Shooting, because they might have trouble with the heaviness of the gun and dealing with the recoil, unless they could demonstrate that they'd be okay with it.

As others have noted above, we also tend to discourage all our Scouts from taking First Aid at Summer Camp, because the group setting makes it difficult to devote the individual attention this badge requires. As we tell our Scouts and their parents, this is one badge that we give greater scrutiny to because it's one life skill you will learn that could very well save someone's life.

And while merit badges at summer camp are not the be-all-end-all, it has reached the point, unfortunately, where you see a lot of scrutiny from families expecting their Scout to come home with merit badges, because they see it as a justification for the hundreds of dollars they're paying to send their Scouts to camp.

Time to run this further up the food chain. I think you, your COR and your Chartered Organization head should contact your Council Executive and make that person aware of what is happening, and that this is happening with the blessing of one of their unit commissioners.

There's no "dismissing" necessary. This person is not a registered adult, so there is no dismissal that needs to take place.

And yes, you are correct, Scouts are not permitted to operate power tools per the Guide to Safe Scouting, "Age Guidelines for Tool Use and Work at Elevations or Excavations." You must be 18 or older to operate power saws and other power cutting tools, and 14 or older for most other power tools.

Regardless of whether you or anyone else signs this application--and you'd have to be off your rockers at this point if you did that--this application won't make it past the registrar's desk, for reasons that you mentioned in your original post. This person refuses to sign the religious principles declaration, he refuses to authorize a background check, and has admitted there are some issues that would potentially preclude his application from being accepted. That alone should make things a non-starter.

The mistake, I think, happened, when you called a committee meeting, then had this person take over the meeting, dismiss the committee, and run the show.  You need to remember that YOU are in charge. Always will be, even after you get a Cubmaster. The Committee Chair and the Chartered Organization Rep are the two who are in charge of the unit.  You have the ultimate authority over the hiring and firing.

And I don't think it would be a good idea to have his girlfriend become the Cubmaster, because we all know she will just be the puppet Cubmaster with the boyfriend calling all the shots.

You as CC and the COR are both responsible for approving all adult leaders in your unit. Since you're both on the same page that this person should not be your CM, and it sounds like there are some red flags that would pop up on a background check, this should be a short meeting.

You need to let this person know that their services are no longer needed. Inform your DE and unit commissioner of your decision.  But ultimately the decision is all on you. Your council will let you know that this is a matter between you, your chartered organization, and the individual who wants to be your Cubmaster. They still, though, need to be kept in the loop on what is transpiring. The council would get involved only if this application ever made its way to the registrar's desk with all that missing information.

Because this person has not had his application approved by you and the COR, submitted to council, or had a background check passed, he should not be at meetings attempting to perform the duties of a Cubmaster.

His actions alone should disqualify him: he refused to sign the religious principles declaration, refuses to authorize a background check, and I'd be willing to bet he hasn't taken YPT. He needs to be informed that his services are no longer needed.

We sort through the donations our troop collects for SfF before we deliver it to the food bank. We separate out all the expired items, and we also sort it all into boxes by food type (all the canned peas in one box, all the creamed corn in another, etc.) The food bank we work with says they cannot distribute anything to people with an expiration past today. If the expiration date is 30 days past, they said they can set it out for anyone to take, but they cannot legally distribute it (so if we were doing it today, October 22, they could not set out anything for people to pick through with an expiration past November 22). It's my understanding that all the food banks in our area operate the same way with respect to expiration dates.

We still do door-to-door pickups in our town, and unfortunately it seems to often be an excuse for people to just empty their pantries, even though we put on the flyers in big bold letters, "UNEXPIRED". Most years, anywhere from 25-33% of what we collect cannot go to the food bank because it's expired.

Our Scouts have an unofficial contest every year to see who can find the oldest expired item in what we've collected. We've had some items with expiration dates that were 15-20 years old. We've gotten canned items with grocery store price stickers still on them from grocery stores that closed years ago.

We've been finding out--and noting it on the flyers we distribute--that the food banks would much better prefer to receive cash donations in lieu of actual food donations. That has worked out well, and we continue to get more and more every year in monetary donations. The food banks will tell you that they then don't have to worry about expiration dates, the quality of the items donated (they can only use so many boxes of mac-and-cheese), and with their buying power they can stretch those dollars very well and get a lot of what is really needed for the needy.

Our troop is chartered to a Catholic church. Diocesan policy requires that any youth volunteer in a parish that has direct contact with children more than 3 times a month (teachers, CYO coaches, Scout leaders, etc.) has to take VIRTUS training (the Catholic church's version of YPT) and has to undergo a fingerprint and background check. And even if you had that exact same fingerprint and background check done for another organization (I have to do it as a volunteer at my kids' school), you have to do it again for the church.

We do not automatically award Scout at crossover, because the Scouts don't know the material.  I have no idea how they got the stuff signed off as Webelos Scouts, but when they join our Troop, it's amazing how many of them do not know the Scout Oath and Law (despite the fact that it's been part of the Cub Scout program since 2015), and they don't know the knots.  That's just the beginning.  If they simply demonstrated their knowledge after joining as the requirements state, that's one thing.  But these Scouts are joining and we have to spend the first few weeks going over all the stuff they should have known for the Scouting Adventure achievement.  When we cover this material with them, they look at us like we're speaking a foreign language.

Clearly the Webelos Den Leaders are simply pencil whipping these requirements (we know this because when we sign their handbooks as Webelos stating that they have met with us as part of the AoL requirements, their handbooks are as blank as the day they bought them--our signatures are the first ones in their handbooks), and we've had discussions with the Cubmasters about it, but in the end, there's not a whole lot we can do about it until they join our troop and spend time working on things that they should have already done.

Take it to the dry cleaners.  I have done that with uniform shirts that had Badge Magic applied to them.  Bring a mesh laundry bag and tell them to dry clean the shirt in the laundry bag.  The bag will catch the patches as they fall off. This is actually in the instructions for Badge Magic on how to remove patches and adhesive if you want to start over on a shirt.

I've done this with a number of uniform shirts and they've all come out fine.  The perchlorate used in standard dry cleaning dissolves the adhesive used in Badge Magic.  It works better than Goo Gone.

Not every dry cleaner is willing to do this, though.  Some have refused saying that they don't want the liability if it doesn't come out good. I usually tell them that (a) the shirt is already unwearable as is, so they couldn't possibly do anything worse, and (b) the Badge Magic manufacturer recommends this procedure.

5 hours ago, qwazse said:

?? Since "inception" ?? The Gold Award (by that name) was rolled out in the '80s. Or, are they lumping together Eaglet, 1st Class (both versions thereof), and Curved Bar?

Looking at this history of "rebranding", we see GS falling into a perpetual cycle of re-branding beginning a decade after Low's death. Whatever compelled GS/USA to abandon the Eagle as their mascot?

Yes, the Girl Scouts views it as a recognition of their "highest award".  They had a big celebration in 2016 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Gold Award and all its predecessors (although they just called it the "Gold Award 100th Anniversary").  All the logos had the current Gold Award with the number 100 next to it.

They view the Gold Award as a progression of the highest Girl Scout award over the years:

1916-1919 Golden Eagle of Merit

1919-1939 Golden Eaglet

1940-1963 Curved Bar

1938-1940 & 1963-1980 First Class

1980-present Gold Award

In 1990 a proposal was approved that would keep the name as the Gold Award in perpetuity. So maybe someone realized they should stop changing the name every 20 years or so...

10 hours ago, Treflienne said:

And that council may not exist any more, having been merged with other councils.   Who knows what happened to the records?

The point they were making was that there is no "submit your paperwork to National" for the Gold Award like we do for Eagle Scout. It's all handled at the council level. Some councils keep the paperwork on file of those that earn the Gold Award, others do not.  But that's why you can't contact GSUSA headquarters to ask for verification of earning the Gold Award--they don't even know you earned it.

On 5/15/2018 at 8:33 AM, desertrat77 said:

Very true.

I also like their approach of the women being identified as "Girl Scouts" and not utilizing the false exclusivity of Gold Award only, like the BSA does with Eagle ("Four Eagle Scouts playing in the ___________ Bowl.")

That's because GSUSA doesn't know how many Gold Award recipients there are.

Seriously.

I recently toured the GSUSA headquarters in New York City with my daughter and they had a display section on the Gold Award. My daughter asked if she could look up her mom's listing of when she received the Gold Award. They told her they couldn't do that because they don't keep track of that information.  When I asked them how that could be, they said that they have no national database of Gold Award recipients. They don't even know exactly how many of them there are. The closest they can get is based on sales of the pin at their shops, but even that is not 100% accurate, since that count would include duplicates purchased if someone lost their original award. They estimate that it's earned by about 6% of Girl Scouts and that over 1 million have earned it since its inception in 1916, but they admitted it's just an estimate they put on fact sheets to compare it to the Eagle Scout award.

I asked them if they had heard of these things called computers and databases, and they said they would like to become more computerized, but until then, they had to rely on their existing information, which mostly was kept in card files, like you used to use in libraries to look up books. The rest of us on the tour all looked at each other like we had jumped into some sort of time warp.

And if you do have to replace your award because it got lost, etc., you have to show the evidence you earned it. There is no lookup that can be done like we have with the Eagle award. Some councils may keep track of that information, but they said it's spotty at best.

Did he simply send a letter to the White House, or did he go through the White House Office of Greetings, the information for which is usually found through your Senator or Representative? The Office of Greetings is the department that actually processes requests for congratulatory letters.

I don't think it really mattered in that it's probably good to be flexible if you can. Weather and other circumstances can affect when you think you will be going.

For example, President Trump's visit last year meant that everyone planning to visit on that Monday weren't able to visit on that day since they closed the Jamboree to visitors. I think the chances of the President visiting next year are slim to none (the WSJ is put on by WOSM, not the BSA, and they have stated that they won't be extending an invitation to visit), so there shouldn't be any issues like that.

The other issue is weather. If there's severe weather, areas will be closed down. We were fortunate last year that there wasn't any real severe weather that impacted us for long periods. An hour here or there, and that was the extent of it.  Having NWS people on-site meant areas were able to re-open quicker than they did in 2013 once it stopped raining. There is the possibility that things could be cancelled or postponed if severe weather persists. If that happens, that'll impact the visiting, potentially.

The lines at the NSJ in 2017 weren't that bad, outside of the aerials.  The introduction of the Jamboree app, with wait times posted like you'd have at an amusement park, helped greatly. Participants were limited to one aerial activity for the Jamboree, and a limited number of Scouts per troop got the chance to ride the Big Zip.  This was all based on capacity constraints and how many people could realistically go through the aerial activities. If an area reached capacity and wouldn't be able to process any more than what was already in line, they would close the lines down for the remainder of the day.

By using the app, participants could now budget their time better.  If they saw the wait was 1+ hours at, say, shotgun shooting, they could opt for something else that didn't have a big line, instead of trudging all the way over there to only find out that there was a huge wait, which was a problem at the '13 NSJ.

Some activities had little to no lines.  Some of our Scouts told us they could do the cycling or skate park activities and practically get right back in line to go again, because they could process so many people at a time.

Many areas had large capacities so they could get lots of people through at once. Aquatics could get dozens through at a time, for example.

The lower half of this map shows what is in the Summit Center. The Charlie and Delta base camps at the top of the map, and the Alpha and Bravo base camps at the right (on the other side of the Consol Energy Bridge), are off limits to visitors.

http://44qx633l2wnm2ire6p28zc8u.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Justice-Scout-Camp-Map-1.pdf

A day pass gets you into the Summit Center, which is the central hub of activity at The Summit. You cannot leave the Summit Center area and go to the base camp sites, even if you have a guide.  But the Summit Center itself is big, over 350 acres.

You will have access to:

• Summit Center Stadium (at the NSJ, the Saturday pass entitled you to stay around for the stadium show; otherwise you have to leave by 5:00 most days)
• Brownsea Island
• Sustainability Treehouse
• Scott Visitors Center
• Legacy Village
• Trading Posts
• Military exhibits
• Conservation Trail
• Food vendors (dining hall, snacks, etc.)
• Action Point
• Freedom Field
• Boulder Cove
• Exhibits and vendor tents

You do not have access to the activity areas outside the Summit Center area. You will only be able to visit those activity areas that are part of the Summit Center. At the NSJ, you could have purchased a participant visitor pass (extra $) which would have enabled you to participate in the activity areas that are in the Summit Center (BMX biking, mountain biking, fishing, skateboarding, Summit Center ziplines, Action Point Canopy Tours), but be aware that there are long lines for those activities, especially the aerial activities. It may not be worth the extra money, considering you only have a finite amount of time available to you.  It has not been announced yet whether there will be a participant visitor pass or not.

In order for U.S. girls to attend the WSJ they will need to be registered as Venturers at the time the WSJ starts.

Units for the World Jamboree are set up at the regional, not council, level. Applicants must first get approval from their council, and then it goes on to the regional level for approval.  This process is the same for youth and adult applicants.

At this point, since there are so many slots remaining to be filled, unless your application throws up a giant red flag, you're going to get approved, whether that's as a youth or adult (unit leader or IST).

The BSA has set a deadline of July 31, 2018 for accepting applications for the US contingent. The US has been allocated 180 units, the most ever for a host country.

You're probably going to need to be registered because in most councils, when you go to sign up the online registration form is likely going to ask you for your BSA ID number.  They'll also want to associate the completion of the course to your record so that would be the other need to be registered in advance.

You'll need to have taken YPT before turning in your application, anyway, so you can at least get a myScouting account set up and take YPT while you work on the application.