meyerc13

I was in the Northern Star Council last weekend, and they are doing something similar to what NJCubScouter's Council is doing. The difference is that they are splitting into two person teams, each covering two Districts. I believe one was going to focus on membership, the other on program. They had new position names, but off the top of my head I don't recall what they were. Personally, I'm curious how moves such as this will help with the amount of time they spend working. In our Council, if we had two DEs teamed up to serve two districts, the amount of geographical space covered by t

Found the answer elsewhere on this site: http://scouter.com/index.php/topic/12400-arrow-of-light-knot-meaning/

I hate Badge Magic or any other type of glue. Let's face it, how many of us keep our Cub Scout uniforms for the rest of our lives? I'll bet not many. Rather than throw the old uniform out, I'd rather see it passed on to another Scout. Having bought dozens and dozens of 'experienced' uniforms at garage sales and second hand shops, I can tell you that if you glue on the patches you might as well throw it out. Once in a great while I am successful at removing all of the glue residue without damaging the shirt, but in those cases it takes many, many hours of work. It isn't worth the time.

Great question. The two main schools our Pack pulled from were very different situations. At one, we were allowed to send home flyers with the kids, put an announcement in the school newsletter, etc. At the other, they would let us put up posters/signs, but we couldn't send anything home and couldn't put anything in the newsletter. So we had to get creative: Setup a staffed table at any registration days, back to school nights, or school-wide events. I say a 'staffed' table because the first year we did this the Girl Scouts threw some fliers on a table and left. Nobody stopped at their

A few years ago what we did was look at our annual calendar, and figured out fun activities that related to those events, essentially making it into a carnival. The idea was for the boys to have fun, while at the same time giving a preview of some of the cool things we had planned for the year. For example: One month we were going to an aviation museum, so we had one 'booth' where boys could make a paper airplane and fly it For Scouting for Food, I think we allowed them to knock over a pyramid of empty food cans by throwing bean bags For our annual Cakewalk, we had cupcakes they could deco

We have units in our District chartered by a Harley Davidson dealership. I wonder how those units can do service projects benefiting their chartered organization without hurting the image of the BSA. All of those bikers in their leathers... can't have Boy Scouts associating with them. It's a sad day in this country when I say that I might have reservations about a bar or strip club, and the OP lumps a fast food restaurant serving chicken products into the same category. Since when did having morals become a bad thing?

I hate this rule too, but I understand it. I've seen Cub Scout leaders from other Packs do some stupid things at the BB gun range at our Cub Scout resident camp. Sometimes it is just easier for the BSA to ban something than to ensure that it is done safely.

So we can setup tables in a business to sell popcorn, but we shouldn't do a flag ceremony honoring veterans because it's in front of a business? That doesn't make sense to me. I say do the flag ceremony unless there is some morals issue you haven't disclosed (I wouldn't do it if it was a strip club or a bar, or something like that, but a restaurant or store that incidentally sells alcohol shouldn't be a problem).

This is interesting, but I'm not sure what to make of it. Mental health is such a complicated, and not yet completely understood topic, that the correlation is interesting but figuring out what it means is difficult. I've had the unfortunate opportunity to learn and experience more about fighting mental health problems than I ever expected to. There is a lot of ongoing research, and scientists are understanding more about mental health each year. There is a definite physical component to mental health, and research is beginning to point toward a genetic predisposition as well. Yet, jus

I'm just going to throw this out there, are you sure your charter lapsed at some point? I say this because my old Pack's charter indicated that the Charter had lapsed about 5 years after the Pack was founded (in the 1940's). However, I was able to find charters from just after that period that showed that registration had been continuous. Due to Council mergers and switching from paper to digital record keeping, somewhere the record was messed up so the number of continuous months of charter didn't align with the actual age of the Pack - but the problem was sloppy record keeping, not a laps

Read here for answers: http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2016/07/22/can-packs-troops-teams-or-crews-participate-in-political-rallies/ Images of uniforms for advertising are definitely out. Mentioning Scouting experience... I would probably avoid it. You can say something like "I volunteer as a youth leader with a national civic-minded youth organization", which gets the point across without bringing in the BSA brand.

My old Pack celebrated 75 years in 2015. We had a special Pack Meeting and invited our Chartered Organization, past Cubmasters, and District and Council professionals. The Scout Executive for our Council presented a certificate of recognition to the Pack. As Cubmaster, I did a quick presentation on what living in 1940 was like,and on what was the same or different in Cub Scouting. At 40 years, your Pack could have fun. It must have been formed in the 1970's. Check news archives for articles on the Pack, back then it wasn't uncommon for Packs to publish news releases for every Pack and

Apparently David CO is in the camp who believes that Unit Commissioners are the Council's spies. That shouldn't be the case. The Commissioner service exists to help units. If a unit needs help, I encourage Scouters at any level, from parent to Institutional Head, to reach out to a Commissioner and ask for help. The purpose of reaching out to a Commissioner isn't to get anyone in trouble, but to get people who need help the help they need (even if they don't know they need help). A good commissioner can come in, observe what is going on for a meeting or two, and probably come up with an ac

Not true. All Tiger Parents are registered for one year as Adult Partners and assigned a number. So this wouldn't necessarily prove anything. However, in my.scouting.org I think you should see that you are missing training if you are properly registered as a Den Leader and haven't taken Position Specific Training yet.

I think you need to talk to your Unit Commissioner (if you have one) or the District Executive (a paid, professional Scouter) for your District. In most cases, training should have nothing to do with signing applications. The BSA is starting to push in that direction - that only trained front line leaders can be registered (Cubmasters, Den Leaders, Scoutmasters), but in our Council that won't start until we recharter for 2018 (about a year from now). It was supposed to start for 2017 but was pushed out a year. We'll see whether it really happens next year. What will prevent someone fro

I'm a Commissioner, so it is my duty to encourage wearing the full uniform. However, I also work with 'economically diverse' (picked up that buzz phrase from the latest Scouting magazine) Packs. My old Pack served the school that the local homeless shelter feeds into, for example. For many of the families, the uniform shirt is out of reach, at $25 for the shirt plus an additional $12-13 in patches (Council strip, unit numbers, World Scout crest). Add on a handbook, neckerchief, slide, and hat that change every year... plus belt, pants, and socks... and there is no way these families can af

Welcome! Since this is a Tiger Den, does the Den Leader have previous Scouting experience or is he just another parent new to Scouting? With my old Pack, we met every Monday that school was in session. One meeting was our Pack Meeting, the rest were Den Meetings and Outings. If an Outing had to be scheduled on a weekend or alternate night, we might skip a week, but in general we had three den meetings per month. If this Den Leader is new to Scouting, he may be in over his head. If he hasn't completed training or looked through the requirements, he may not realize that one meeting a mo

I can recommend a lantern that hits on all of your points but one, it isn't rechargable - the Rayovac SE3DLNACOM. You can pick it up for less than $20 on Amazon. 240 Lumens, small and compact. It runs off of 3 D Cell Batteries. As I stated, it isn't rechargable, but you could use rechargable batteries in it. My family has used three of these for camping for close to three or four years now. We carry extra batteries, but rarely have to change the batteries even using at least one of the lanterns for several hours each night. Since you can get so many hours out of a set of batteries, the

Since uniforms/insurance and sheath knives were already brought up, I'll add the one I brought up last week - white gas (Coleman fuel) stoves are banned. Apparently a myth that was sold as truth within our Council some years ago, but which seems to be finally coming around now.

Our Pack recently celebrated our 75th Anniversary, so I went through a similar exercise. There are basically two methods to track down previous Cubmasters/Scoutmasters: Each leader undoubtedly remembers their predecessor, so you can start with the current leader and work your way back. It's time consuming but easy enough to do. Your Council should have a file on your unit, and this information should be there. The challenge is that today we have fewer Councils than we had many years ago, and during mergers sometimes historical records have been lost (or more likely filed in a box in a bas

That's what the G2SS states now, but what was it 10 or 15 years ago? I know that my Troop growing up switched from white gas to propane, and I swear it was required, not optional, because it was a significant investment to replace equipment - money our Troop didn't really have at the time, so I doubt this was done on a whim. Anyone have a hard copy G2SS from ten or fifteen years ago to see whether this was fact or myth?

That sounds like a lot of propane cylinders. I wonder how many Troops are properly transporting their propane. My understanding is that propane cylinders should never be transported in an unventilated, enclosed vehicle. Propane tanks are now required to have an Overfill Protection Device valve, and if the tank is too full that valve will release propane from the tank into the surrounding air. In an enclosed vehicle like a Troop trailer, that could result in an explosion if enough propane is released. That's why campers have the propane tanks mounted outside on the trailer tongue. The ove

When our family got back into camping a few years ago, I had to make the decision on white gas or propane. After doing the research, white gas was the clear winner. One plus you didn't mention is that the white gas stoves can be adapated to use propane (and actually do a better job than the propane stoves because of their larger burners). I don't know if this is still true, but when we bought our stove the white gas models from Coleman were still being made in the US, but the propane were all made in China, so that was another plus at that time. As much as I like the white gas, learning

Great questions. Yes, the following is a requirement that must not be completed each year for each rank: The only exception is if they completed Bobcat, they don't need to do it twice the same year to also complete their rank, completing it for Bobcat their first year also counts toward their first rank, whatever that might be. As for the Cyberchip, currently the 'recharge' activity is the same for Grades 1-3, which means that a boy would need to do it twice (Wolf, Bear) if they earned their Cyberchip as a Tiger. For Grades 4-5 (Webelos), there is a different level of Cyberchip

This is an interesting question. I know my son's Karate school offers a similar discount. I think the difference is that in Scouts we aren't collecting that fee to pay a leader/teacher to run the Den/Pack, instead the cost is directly and totally tied to program expenses. While one more kid in a Karate class or school classroom probably isn't costing the school much, with Scouts almost all of our program expenses are tied directly to the number of Scouts. I tried to think of a case where the cost doesn't change if it is one kid from a family or multilpe, and the only thing I could come up