EagleScout441

Bummer, I was hoping for a neat background check report.  This turned out rather anti-climatic.  

Oh, that went just fine.  

A fine for walking backwards and eating peanuts at the movies, another for carrying an ice cream cone in my pocket, jaywalking, of course, and for dancing more than 12 hours in a 24-hour period.

Overall......not bad, not bad at all.

Please try the email request again... we've updated to repair (hopefully).

Worked perfectly, much appreciated.

I do believe there is a problem with the email broadcast system.  

I updated my email address and it says I will have to re-validate my account with the new one. 

Well, it won't send me the validation email. 

First I double checked the address, then I waited overnight for the email (it was last night I did this). 

Since my account is un-validated, I am only able to post in the Forum Support & Announcements area.

Was it like this one I found on Ebay?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NYLT-Nationa...item33957889f9

It's not official, but it is cool.

 

So saying a prayer to a Christian god is OK but anything not christian is a little too much?

And you are the one that should decide what religious faith are appropriate?

When you put it that way. I guess I'd have to say that I have a problem with "inter-faith" services.

Doing a non-sectarian joint service is hard. As someone once put it: "how do you do a real non-sectarian worship service? You can't."

TAHAWK,

Do you have a source for the Council statement you posted above?

Not that I don't believe you, just curious.

~~

the example you cite is not an example of political correctness' date=' but rather contextualization [/quote']

 

 

I thought of that a little while after posting it.

 

 

I don't know if you were going for tolerance of Bible translations here or it you had bigger fish in mind. (I'd put a smiley face here to show you I'm a nice guy and just looking for further explanation but my iPad won't let me.)

 

Now that I'm thinking a little more sensibly, I'll add some context to this.

 

For the most part, my opinion of the translations varies from chapter to chapter. Sometimes the intended meaning is changed, sometimes not. No single translation is perfect on all accounts.

 

The origin of this rant actually came from my planning and writing a service. I looked through many scripted services before giving up on them and writing one from scratch with the help of my youth pastor.

 

The above Psalm 23 example was a poor choice.

 

There was kind of a second point to the rant.

The second point was regarding the frequent use of Indian texts, quotes, prayers, etc.. Now, I understand that Indian heritage and culture plays a fairly large role in the BSA. The OA is probably the biggest example. But I think some of them take it a little too far. Many of these services use Indian prayers and other things that reference their pagan tendencies, like, appealing to the "great spirit of the wind."

I'm not saying nothing should be tolerated.

But it gets taken to an extreme.

A quote from the "Why not girls or atheists?" thread.

One of the things I have found is that education teaches tolerance.

Tolerance. Political correctness.

So many people are spending so much time trying to "tolerate" and to not "offend" anyone on the face of the planet, or be "politically correct," that they are insulting both themselves, and the people around them.

Take this for example:

http://www.ctyankee.org/fs/page/0016...tscoutsown.pdf

The above "Scout's Own" takes Psalm 23 and "revises" it. If you want to use the 23rd Psalm, be my guest, but don't change it, revise it, modernize it, corrupt it. I take offense to that.

If we said "don't lie" or "don't murder," liars and murderers in the room would be insulted.

No matter what we say or do, somebody is going to disagree and somebody is going to be offended. People beat themselves up over little things, and it runs over everything they do. It makes them compromise on their strongest beliefs and issues.

We're told to "be yourself," but, at the same time, we're told to tolerate anything different.

We can't have both.

It doesn't have to be the mayor. Try thinking smaller. He could interview the county sheriff, somebody in the department of Parks and Recreation, or Transportation, or Human Resources, or even Housing.

My older son's Eagle app was kicked back because he didn't include the statement. Apparently it had been recently added to the application (it isn't list as an actual "requirement", although I understand that will change in the next edition of the BSHB.)

.

I don't know when it was added, but it is currently mentioned only, and briefly, inside the BoR requirement:

"7. Successfully complete an Eagle Scout board of review. In preparation for your board of review, prepare and attach to your Eagle Scout Rank Application a statement of your ambitions and life purpose and a listing of positions held in your religious institution, school, camp, community, or other organizations, during which you demonstrated leadership skills. Include honors and awards received during this service." (emphasis added)

What do you look for in a life statement?

I asked the same question. The advice that I was given was that the "life purpose" was a statement of how I see my life and actions impacting others around me.

I vote so I can whine and complain all I want.

 

Stosh

One more non-voting year here

If it were me, I'd follow Sentinel's advice and attempt to find another project $750,000 is a little much. It would probably take much longer to raise the funds than complete the actual project. I'm only 17 years old, my project wasn't that long ago. It costed about $400 and it took 77 hours not counting fund raising. Most of my funds were donations.

VOTE; IF YOU DO NOT' date=' PLEASE RESTRAIN YOURSELF FROM COMPLAINING [/quote']

 

Ahhhh, I can't complain

Sounds like they are folks you trust, and you have a little time to prepare. If any of them are young women, they should meet your female adult who will be going on the trip.

They are, I've known a couple of them for a few years. I don't think any "young women" from my youth group will attend.

That's not uncommon, and thus we have "venturers" instead of "venture scouts". We shouldn't really expect a crew to be all that obsessive about uniforming or patrolling. We want them to come to agreement on the next adventure of their choice and do what it takes to arrive at it. (Sometimes "traditional" scouting is what it takes. Other times, not.)

With these non-scouts it is more not having the time to commit to another activity (joining BSA) on top of what they are already into. But I've been pushing for a wilderness survival trip for a while and I've convinced a few of them to join in on this one that is already happening with Scouts.

It would be a good idea for your crew to set up a couple "cold weather training" evenings. Basically, your nonmembers need to be up to speed. One evening would be going over the gear you need. The next would be a "shake down" to make sure everyone has the gear they'll need.

My Crew (538) has never had a wilderness survival outing, but they've done everything except the shelters.

The other Crew is 87, they have survival outings constantly.

We've got a "shake down" planned.

As far as cold weather training goes, us Scouts are okay, it won't be our first cold weather outing.

In my Troop, we did food by patrols. In each patrol, one person was given/volunteered to buy food for the outing.

Whoever ever bought food, took home any leftover food, that's all there was to it.

To clarify a little further, we have my Crew of 5-7 people, and another Crew with expected attendance of around 10. The outing will be on my family's land. It was originally scheduled for Nov. 14-16, but the Council recently announced "Venturing Day" on Nov. 15, which my Crew will be attending. So we changed the date of the survival outing to Dec. 5-7.

The non-scouts are part of my church youth group.

Perhaps they'll be inclined to join one of the Crews. Why don't you think they'd join?

They seem more intrigued by the idea of a "survival" outing than Scouting itself.

Wilderness survival 12/5 - 12/7 in the northern states? That'll weed out the faint of heart.

Stosh

I'm in Middle Tennessee, temperature will probably be in the range of 20 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

My Crew and another Crew are currently planning a wilderness survival outing for Dec. 5-7. Several Non-Scout youth are interested in attending the event, although, I don't see the most of them joining. Thoughts?

Are there hiking staffs made specifically for use with medallions? I have one staff already, but I don't want to risk damage on it because it is an Eagle Scout staff hand carved by an adult in my former Troop (with an eagle's head carved into the top).

"World's Ugliest Man" and "Invisible Bench" are two classic skits I have seen several times.

The different versions of the "If I were not a Boy Scout" skit are some of my favorites.

One trick we use is to "Propose a Toast!". Whenever someone grabs their water bottle they hold it up and yell " I propose a toast to the great weather on this hike!" Better than nagging. May not work as well when cycling however.

We used toasts at NYLT this past summer, it works really well. And before long, the NYLT patrols were proposing their own toasts fairly frequently.

Being on Greenbar staff at summer camp 2014, dehydration was a constant concern. In Greenbar, our classes were longer than any of the other classes (with the exception of COPE). Over the course of 6 weeks, we had one case of heat exhaustion and a few cases of dehydration for which the scouts went to the health lodge.

I am having constant message reminders when there are no messages. In other words, there's a big red 4 in the upper right corner but nothing is there. No biggy, just kind of annoying.

Eagle94-A1, what about the 135 and counting merit badges?

Let Venturing have Ranger, Quest, and TRUST, Boy Scouts can have their 135 awards that Venturers can't earn.

And NOA can go along with the NOVA and Hornaday awards that are open to both.

Well, I've been gone for a while, I'm back.

Going back to the original post, the original purpose of Venturing was to offer more independence, freedom, and opportunity to older scouts.

Senior Scouting, formed in 1935, included Exploring, Sea Scouts, and Air Scouts, (and the little known Rover Scouting program).

Air Scouts died off in 1965.

Exploring is now completely career oriented and part of Learning for Life (LFL).

And Sea Scouts in now under the hood of Venturing.

Venturing, officially formed in 1998, was created for the non-"Career oriented Explorer" units. What the new program has done is give Venturing more organization. The awards now line up with each other better, the awards branch into 4 categories which align with Venturing programs (Adventure, Leadership, Service, and Personal Growth), and many trainings have been rebooted.

The idea that "freedom is the point of Venturing" is fairly correct. The older youth don't want adults huddling over every second of every activity, which many Troops (including now, my former unit) suffer from.

I personally, wanted a wider variety of options. Many Troops can be "restrictive," sticking to the same outing types and places. In my Crew, we constantly change things up.

I've heard many of the female members speak of moving to Venturing to move away from the "housewife training" many Girl Scout units have become.

"So, should crews not attend:

- District events?

- Council/Area camporees?

- Jamborees?"

Here in the Middle Tennessee Council, Venturing has many exclusive Council events. Venturing Leadership Summit, Venturing Rendezvous, an Powder Horn, just to name a few. We have these events rather than attending Camporees.

We will be attending our Council Jamboree next month along with many other Crews, as well as Ships and Troops.

"They tend to be nothing more than Venture Patrols with girls."

Again, it ALL depends on the unit. My Crew does have a Troop associated with it. But other than the number, we are completely independent. We go on our own outings, have our own gear, our own meeting night, etc.

"From my point of view I see the key Venturing issue as something that hasn't been mentioned here, structure........"

Excellent post Old_OX_Eagle83.

Hmmm, I had not realized that discarded lures were such big a environmental problem rather lead sinkers (illegal) and fishing line. Back in the day, we used biodegradable lures - a worm on a steel hook

At Boxwell, we use mayflies on a steel hook.