MikeS72

I had to google 'yurt'. In 55 years of scouting I have never been anywhere that had them. My first thought when I saw the pictures was 'Oh, Genghis Khan!' As a few others have said, I would look at those the same as I would a cabin, or the Adirondacks that our council camp offers in a number of campsites.

I guess we are not a 'select market'. I had to live with my usual 2 boxes each of Peanut Butter Sandwiches, Peanut Butter Patties, Caramel Delights, and S'Mores. 😁

True. I have not seen an update to our district list since 11/18.

If the person who signed the card is not registered with BSA in any way, and is thus not a registered MBC, you are not retesting, you are saving this scout a lot of potential heartache down the road if anyone questions the validity of these merit badges. They are not legitimately earned if the signature is not that of a registered counselor.

In some cases, it would not only be dishonest, it would be illegal as well. The school district I am employed by makes use of a number of state and federal grants. Most of those grants have very specific conditions as to what funds can be used for, and we have to submit follow up reports documenting that we used those funds properly. Some grants have unannounced monitoring, to ensure that everything is being done above board. I any case, a grant is usually given for a specific purpose, and cannot be used by anyone else, for any other purpose.

First question would be, is the person who signed all 9 cards a registered MBC for each of the MBs? It is amazing at times how many registered adults do not understand that just because they are an ASM or a SM, they are not automatically authorized to sign off on what ever MB they choose.

In one of my several uniforms, I am a Cub Scout Day Camp Director. Our camp, like many others, is held at a county park. While we pay a very high fee to use the park for the week, there are portions of the park that are still open to the public. We do not tell the general public what they may do in the open areas of the park, but we do not allow them to mingle with the cubs. What I think the gist of this thread is about, is not a scout event in an area open to the public, but parents/family friends who are attending an event that is only scouts, such as cub family camp, day camp, or so

Should not make any difference, although it does come with poles. The 2lb weight is if you use the included poles. Using trek poles instead knocks the weight down to 1lb 15 oz.

I have never seen anything prohibiting a scoutmaster from also being a merit badge counselor. Pretty much every SM I know has at least a couple that they are counselors for.

More common in Britain than US military. Basically a return to quarters, get quiet, 15 minutes until lights out call. I am more partial to Taps, myself.

Interesting information. My pack and troop are sponsored by a UMC church. I knew about the pastor assignments, as the pastor has a son in the troop, but did not know much of the rest. I have no worries about our relationship with the CO.

I guess we are lucky here. We have at least 9 locations for Cub Scout Day Camp in our council. Our district if fairly large, so some of our families may have a 20 - 30 minute drive to the camp location, but that is considerably better than if they had to go to the council camp, which is 85 miles for me, and better than 100 for those in the south end of the district. We have multiple Cub weekends at the council camp through out the year, and also have several resident camps available.

Very true. When I teach Red Cross First Aid/CPR/AED training, the initial class runs 5 - 6 hours, depending on the group I am working with. Like YPT, that certification is good for 2 years. At the end of that period, we do expect people to sit through the whole course again. They take a re-certification test and demo the skills required, done in less than an hour.

This may be a local council thing. Some councils have everyone retake YPT annually. National only cares that your YPT is current when your charter is processed, which is why we recommend that anyone who is expiring close to the start of the calendar year (Jan - March) renew now, to avoid any issues should their charter not make it through processing before their YPT expires.

I have stayed on the sidelines for this one, as this is a topic that is going to stir more passion than many we see here. I has been debated on multiple scouting forums, and there is very little middle ground. People either think he should be burned at the stake, or that this one (hopefully) lapse in judgement should not have lasting consequences. I agree that every situation deserves an objective look, but this quote jumped out at me. In the case of scouts clowning around and smacking each other on the rear, yes, we discuss what is appropriate and hopefully it can be a teaching moment

Used those may a time when I first started teaching middle school. It was a big deal to the kids to be trusted with advancing that puppy frame by frame.

I know of new girl units that were allowed to start up with less than 5, so it can be done. Just a matter of pushing the issue with the local council.

A nice set of lightweight (carbon fiber) trekking poles would go great with those boots. Unlike the boots, you can adjust the trekking poles, so they will not outgrow them in 6 months.😃

I use cast iron on mine regularly, and have had no issues with scratching.

Typically, our treasurer gives a list to each den leader prior to re-charter, and the den leaders contact the family. This year, I sent out multiple messages to each family who had not paid dues notifying them that we could not process them for re-charter without some payment and/or arrangements being made. We only had one family that made no effort to either set up a payment plan or request a pack scholarship.

Just be sure not to wear a red shirt! 😂

I should probably give a few of those recipes a try, since one of the folks on my mother's side of the family was a moderately known member of the Plimouth Colony. ⛵

time to move further south😁

Our council camp allows bikes, helmets are required. We do have several program areas that would take quite a while to get to from the waterfront or pool areas, so it can be a big help. I saw a troop this past summer that brought in a whole trailer of bike, and their scouts rode pretty much every where during program hours.