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Ankylus

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About Ankylus

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  1. So, you want to decrease the quality of my sons' experience in scouting because GSA failed your daughter? Really, I am so tired of "girls in boy scouting" I could puke. And if you think "those people" are going to stop with just having girls join you're crazy. I'm out. It's been good knowing y'all.
  2. I find it amusing because I disagree with everything in it! (Except the epaulets...somebody must have had a last minute delusion.) And that amuses me because I think it highlights difficulty with the uniform. I can't imagine how hard it would be to get any kind of real consensus on uniforming issues. Please note that I don['t oppose any of that. I just disagree. As I always tell my children, there's no accounting for taste. Different people just like different things. Just don't go back to the berets and the garters with red tabs. Please, please, please, don't to that.
  3. There are two kinds of countries in the world...those that use the metric system and those who put a man on the moon.
  4. Some more on the sale: https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2017/08/18/boy-scouts-selling-longtime-campgrounds-for-nearly.html
  5. (1) Scouts know when they have earned something and when they haven't. This includes scouts on the autism spectrum. This scout's mother is not doing him any favors by hollowing out his achievements and depriving him of the opportunity to genuinely earn something. (2) If the scout has a disability that needs to be accommodated, that is one thing. You do not indicate that this one does. So what the scout's mother is doing is wrong. (3) You should be proud of your sons, for they are showing true compassion. No scout is more proud of an achievement than a scout that has overcome more than
  6. If you are “luckyâ€, I suspect it is the kind of luck one makes through hard work and preparation. But I offer the following observations. “Two mixed gender teams of 5, aged 16-21.†It is not unusual for my troop to have anywhere between 40 and 60 boys on any given campout. We average 50-60 scouts at summer camp every summer. My experience is that the difficulties in supervision at any level vary exponentially with the number youth involved. 10 youth vs. 50 youth are worlds apart. Also, a high proportion of those 50 or so scouts are aged 11-14. There is also a world of differe
  7. I was wrong...it took 2.5 hours. Fortunately, I am the last signature so that will be rather quick.
  8. "Bailing out"...you use a pejorative to describe your opposition and then try to bind them to the Oath and Law. Well played, well played. My advice is to be careful where you set the bar. As to "bailing out": A coed boy scout program is not what I signed up for...if I were to use a pejorative, I would call it a "bait and switch". If they choose to change the program under me and it is no longer what I signed up for, why should I hang around? There is simply no reason if the program no longer does those things that are the reason for my being there. (2) It's hard enough to take a bunch of
  9. I agree with @@Chisos...it was my favorite camp growing up. Still is. One reason usage is down is that they never rebuilt River Camp after the 2015 floods. Not many people really ever went to Horseshoe Bend or Hammond. River Camp was the big draw. If they did't rebuild the most popular camp, what did they expect would happen? Also, some of this was just penny pinching and making decisions centered on the council rather than the boys. When I went as a youth in the late 70s, early 80s, the tents in every campsite were up on the hillsides in the shade. They were 8-man tents so you could
  10. 1, The two primary reasons I hear is so that "someone can pick up and complete the project" and to "get a taste of the real world". First, is it really that hard to "pick up and complete the project" is somebody puts their mind to it? There may be a project here or there, but I have yet to see one. Second, "the real world"? Perhaps some parts of it, but not all of it. In my profession you would bankrupt yourself proceeding along these lines. 2. A "good learning experience for doing projects as adults". Again, I haven't seen anything in the real world approaching the kind of crap going on
  11. To the extent this thread is dead, I am resurrecting. Just to take ownership of that fact. I am watching my second son go through the Eagle application process, ad got to thinking about the phenomenon of "eagling out". So I searched out the forum and found this thread. Like the OP, the term "Eagle out" bothers me. But what prompted my wandering was watching the futility and frustration of the Eagle project and Eagle application process. Between those two events, my son has probably had to schedule 15 to 20 meetings with adults for various planning, approval, and signature requirements
  12. We are fortunate that our CO has provided us with a "scout house". And it eases some of your concerns like storage space and such. But we still have many of the problems you do for our CO does not reserve it solely for our use. Sometimes they even kick us out of it for some special function the church is having. Even now we are having to fend off a dance program in there that will severely restrict its availability to us. My oldest son's troop's CO did the same exact thing to them. Don't get me wrong, it's an improvement over what you describe. But it's not a cure all. I hope the commiseratio
  13. I think the single greatest factor is experiencing good program with a group of friends. I think it is more likely that they will stay in scouts if their friends are also there and I think they are more likely to stay if they find the program fun and interesting. Put the two together and I think you have a real winning hand. One huge problem is, of course, that individual scouts will find different things fun and interesting. I also think it helps a great deal if the scout's personality and the troop's personality are a good match. For example, there is a very large, very successful
  14. Nice story, and a nice testament to the scouting program. Also a good experience that will serve the boys well as they grow and move on in their lives. Nothing prepares one for a tight situation as well as past success in tight situations.
  15. This much I understood already. But thank you for the effort.
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