WaldenPond

Well if I get it right, scouts are not supposed to march in step. They are hardly ever in full uniform, even though the regs say that you either wear your uniform or you don't, and why on earth would you want to purposely do something half-assed? If you walk in a parade you look like a dope. If you walk out of cadence you look unorganized. If you are an unfocused group looking this way and that you look lost and confused. If you are like a lot of packs and troops I have seen, walking with scout shirts un-tucked with blue jeans on picking up candy and stuffing it in your pockets......Pretty uni

In the film, the boys in town were seen to be kind of in the way and in need of some place of their own. They were shown accidentally breaking windows with baseballs and getting in the way of traffic. The problem of what to do for the boys of town was brought up in a town council meeting and the lady who Lem was pursuing scribbled on a notepad the word "boy scouts", and showed it to her boss( and potential beau).. He was a putz, but Lem stould up and suggested to the crowded room that the town ought to have a boy scout troop. This did indeed impress the lady. (She thought that her and Lem wer

Most of the world still relies on the machete. A good sharp machete beats a hand saw for the stuff an inch thick and thinner. And you can wear a machete on your belt pretty safely. And the problem with the technology is that it sometimes does too much work to be educational- such as the calculator and the word-processor. I have met parents who have argued to me very passionately that hand-writing (print or cursive) is dead and that they are not concerned wit their children learning it. I have met parents who think that calculators are a skill to be learned- along with computers. If the

Saws are quicker for sure. But there is something about letting a boy use an axe that says "I trust you", and "Take a whack out of that" and "You are ready to use a tool that men have been using since the stone age". It's symbolic utility may still be there- even if the saw beats it in other ways. Besides, the scout axe is an original scout tool. We still encourage the kids to light fires with flint and steel. There are a lot of high tech items that make other scout skills seem obsolete- unti the batteries run out and the gadget breaks. Saws also break- it is a lot harder to bust yo

Maine greetings! I think Lem had a naysayer way about him I personally find repugnant. But I think he did raise concerns and arguments that some of us have probably have heard before in friendlier quarters. As wrong-headed as many of his outlooks might be, I think he brought up the "perception" issue about scouting that we all can probably agree is in need of improvement. As someone who used to work in advertising, I have learned that anybody can legitimately say that everything is in need of better publicity and market placement. I am heartened to learn that BSA is thinking about l