oldbuzzard

Troop flags don't say "Boy Scouts", just Troop 123 and a BSA emblem. Folks don't mind carrying those and with this name change those won't have to be replaced. I know several troops with 75-100+years at the same CO and plenty of Eagles who will happily switch to calling themselves Scout Troop XXX probably starting next week, certainly by summer camp.

To quote the "Guide to Safe Scouting" It seems clear to me that as potential recruits both generally and for the special Summer leadership clinic these girls would be covered under national and council insurance just like any other kid who filled out a waiver and attended with a troop.

We have 3 crews going on a unit BWCA trip this summer. I'm going with a 12yo crew. Next Spring the older kids are talking about going back to Seabase and doing SCUBA. This is off the table for the younger crew due to HA age limits.... and yet I see Camp Emerald Bay on Catalina Island runs a "Rugged" SCUBA adventure that gets you PADI open water certified for 12+yo. The other "Rugged" adventures look similarly HAish to me. My personal inclination is to run multiple unit HA trips for what Seabase would cost for the younger Scouts, but I was wondering what other "Rugged" council programs are out

The long cords are a real drag when driving, that's why I use rfc1149 encoding to use VoIP over carrier pigeon. Having twice as many cages is a hassle but its worth it for YPT.

Fair enough. The 10 hrs in Skip's post just jumped out at me since that is the limit for a single days drive in the G2SS... so the limit of a more affordable drivable trip for many troops.

We circle up for the Scoutmaster Benediction but leave the circle broken to remember those not there.

To be fair, Brian is within 10 hrs of Baxter State Park/Katahdin in Maine and much closer to the Whites in NH and the Adirondaks in NY. All three would be great places to run a "convenient" Winter mountaineering course for east coast scouts. Northern Tier is 20+hrs away and is extreme Winter camping with no mountains. The only non-unit mountaineering options I know of in North America are a Summer program in Eastern British Columbia through Scouts Canada and an opportunity at one of the Alaska High Adventure Bases. A less extreme option like your Scottish camp would be a great additi

I know many have wondered about names and such with BS4G. In our council's new branding they are dropping "boy", "boy scouts", "BSA", and council. So going from Northern Star Council of BSA to Northern Star Scouting. See, http://www.northernstarbsa.org/refreshing-our-brand-for-scouting-today I would assume this is at least in the spirit of what we'll eventually see from National. Though I'm not sure exactly how, Scouting America sounds like an outdoor store and Scouts America sounds like gas station.

I feel like we should be the target audience... I have a 9yo CS and a 11yo BS. The value proposition of the 3 of us going down for a week at $650 is pretty compelling... but looking at the descriptions the activities are weak. So we have horse rides on docile horses and climbing on very easy routes and short hikes. This looks like Cub Camp or First Year Scout Camp. That's not what I want to see at Philmont. B-P and others talk about the mythopoetic value of Scouting activities. Beyond the physical majesty, Philmont also serves as some sort of pinnacle of high adventure. Yeah, that's debatable

I think these requirements are about finding a system that works for a given kid. I think online or in the crappy workbook is likely to have the out of sight/out of mind problem. So for a given kid something on their phone or something on a calendar/planner may work better but that'll vary from kid to kid. For us my son started Personal Fitness at 10.5yo and I had him come up with his own system. He just used a sheet of copy paper with divided in 2 columns with boxes for each day. It had the dates at the top, then the chart, and a small area to record results for that 2 weeks at the botto

Here is a GBB Boys Life article about it: https://books.google.com/books?id=oB4YsDfcXA4C&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=green+bar+bill+outdoor+code+bottle+beach Sounds like BSA meant it to be not just for scouts but something that was evangelized to schools and civic groups hence the generic patriotic "American" reference. Sort of like an early Keep America Beautiful campaign.

The actual requirement is "Be active in your Webelos den for at least six months since completing the fourth grade or at least six months since becoming ten years old." It is a bit of an edge case but both of my boys have early September birthdays in a school district with a hard requirement of 5yo by Sept. 1st for Kindergarten. As such older son crossed over having done all the Webelos and AoL requirements in 9 months as a 10.5yo 4th grader... if he hadn't he would have joined boy scouts as an 11yo in the Fall not as a AoL crossover the following spring. Younger son will do the same next year

And yet the in many ways the peak of American Scouting was in the pre-1954 days when BSA was in New York City. Hillcourt wrote many of his classic books in NY and later in NJ. BSA didn't move to TX until '78. I think your geographical determinism is too simplistic.

Our CO has made it clear they want us to be as close to coed as possible. So, we are planning to run parallel troops with new female leaders and all girls patrols but shared meetings and outings. Our IH has volunteered to run interference with the council if needed but it looks like this model is emerging as an official model. http://www.northernstarbsa.org/programs-for-girls

I see 2 problems with this idea. The minor problem is these races aren't free so for a crew to use this approach there will be a non-negligible cost... maybe that is worthwhile if it is enough of a motivator <shrug> The major problem is these tend to be road events.Running or backpacking on pavement is way more taxing joints and muscles. If my wife trains for road marathons she is injury prone and yet she can train for 50 mile trail ultras and be fine. Her races are places like the Superior Hiking Trail, so rocky, rooty, hilly like the AT or Philmont. I think training solely o

Wow is that 36% drop in Venturing mainly LDS related?

Some of this is already in Leatherwork

If only the BSA had some way to confirm what their lobbyists were doing.... Right... given that... I'm fine assuming BSA is lobbying against this bill for the financial liability reasons outlined in the article until they say otherwise.

<snort>

Yeah... that framing was extremely off-putting. Especially since they could tweak it slightly and have a great national Powderhorn course. Combine the skill development/fun with more location neutral workshops, etc. Unfortunately that would have Scouters building their own adventure instead of buying Summit's. Or even better make a weekend of day long short courses. A half day workshop on building climbing anchors and a half day trad climbing at the New or sport climbing at Sommerville Lake. A day of whitewater kayak skills . A day of mountain bike skill work... etc etc. Three day-long t

Do we know this was on the camp hill? When we were at Andersen last winter the cubs did some sledding on the path outside our cabin with only pack oversight. This year at Stearns the south facing camp hill was unsleddable but the boys used the camps sleds sitting around our cabin to sled on the hill the cabin was built into and another hill nearby. On the helmet front... they are recommended not required. My kids sled in gym class at school and noone has helmets. The parks and rec people don't have helmets. On the local hills and at troop outings my kids wear their skating helmets b

For pack campouts, they prefer you to be with your parent(s) but the firm requirement is that all cubs must be under the direct charge of an adult and a non-leader adult can be in charge of one kid who isn't their own. We had a couple of dads at our winter campout with son and best friend.

From our church's troop centennial history: I wouldn't mind reading more about this episode in early scouting.

The video is private/password protected for me.... Did it explicitly say 2 adults for boy dens vs 2 adults(at least one female) for girls dens on outings. Or, are we just assuming the old rules "still" apply to boy dens. The simplest and in my opinion most likely explanation is that both genders of dens and the rest of scouting is moving to venturing rules with at least one leader of the same gender must be present for all attendees and National just hasn't gotten around to telling us yet or updating g2ss.

Our council has been $144/yr for youth for National and Council dues for a couple of years now. It hasn't effected our existing scout numbers, just made fundraising for other stuff harder. That extra $111 to council that we get almost nothing for makes it harder to have higher troop dues for program.