FireStone

12 minutes ago, David CO said:

I took numbersnerd's suggestion and looked back to see what was actually said.

The use of the word (you) in this context is somewhat ambiguous. Did he mean to specifically identify firestone, or did he mean it generally, as in "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink"? 

 

I was under the impression that if you quote someone in a response, you are directing that response to the person quoted. Is that not how this forum works? 

29 minutes ago, numbersnerd said:

I would go back and re-read what he wrote then. Nowhere did he say "Firestone hates god" or anything like that. Fighting irrational with irrational doesn't really work.

He quoted me. His reply was directed to me, in response to what I had said. 

30 minutes ago, numbersnerd said:

My suggestion would be to grow a thicker skin if you're going to converse on the interwebs.

Thick skin had nothing to do with it. You said this person didn't direct their comments at anyone in particular, I pointed out that was false. I wasn't "whining" about anything. Just stating facts. 

1 minute ago, numbersnerd said:

Agreed. I NEVER assumed that any of his posts were directed at any specific person. Despite that, he was basically tarred and feathered for having an opinion...

 

He told me I hate God. That's pretty direct and personal, and I don't think there are many people of faith who would take that lightly. 

40 minutes ago, David CO said:

If you feel this way, then you should be arguing the case that BSA should have no moral code. You should not be imposing your moral code on us by insisting that we respect something that we feel is the very definition of immoral. You shouldn't be asking that we keep quiet about it either.

 

You might be right. Morality isn't a one-directional straight line. Morality is different for everyone, and different issues fall in drastically different places in each of our own views on what is immoral and what isn't. So how does a national organization have any code of morality when we will all define that differently? 

58 minutes ago, Oldscout448 said:

...How can one say " I love God but I refuse to do what He says" ?     I can only assume that Firestone believes that  Paul of Tarsus, who penned half of the new testament, is  not to be taken seriously here and has somehow come to terms with that...

 

I've stated my beliefs as they relate to the discussion at hand. I don't feel the need to explain them any further. 

You're in an advantageous position because you are making efforts to get kids to rank. It's hard for any parent or leader to oppose that, especially this late in the year. I'd be really surprised to hear anyone say, "No, you can't help those kids finish their ranks." 

So I would say to just go ahead and do what you need to do. I've found that it's much easier to get support for what you do when you don't ask permission to do it. I know that sounds kind of bad, but really I'm talking about just getting stuff done within the program. I just do what I need to do to get things done, by the book. When time is of the essence, often this is the only way to operate. 

Put stuff on the calendar, let people know about it, and get stuff done. 

1 hour ago, LegacyLost said:

You can go ahead and hate this God, but you cannot pretend that He approves of what the BSA has done over the last few years. And now we see consequences.

 

You're the 2nd person this week to tell me that I hate something that I love. First I was told I hate the BSA. Now I'm told that I hate God. It's interesting that people on an Internet forum who know so little about me seem to think they know me so well. 

Last night I was working with my Scouts on a service project at a local park, I guess hating the BSA the whole time. Friday night I'll be at our Pack meeting, apparently hating the BSA then, too. Sunday morning I'll be at church, I suppose hating God and my faith. Geez, I sure do a lot of hating. 😄

So then should I say that I'm at work right now, "loving" my job? 😉

6 hours ago, LegacyLost said:

But back to the point about the kids. To tell kids to swear an oath to honor God and be morally straight and yet have a homosexual scoutmaster give the oath unapologetically to even one or more unapologetic homosexual boys is an act of the most supreme hypocrisy and arrogance before God. Do you really think that it's loving to teach children that?

 

Yes. Yes I do. Because I believe that we are as God made us, sexual orientation and all. I don't believe that being gay is a choice.

10 minutes ago, LegacyLost said:

It is better for the BSA to collapse than to persist as a vehicle of societal corruption. Particularly due to the BSA's historically wholesome and patriotic image from its past. This image makes the BSA especially dangerous, unfortunately, due to the arsenic it now carries. And that is why my family can no longer support any aspect of the BSA. I even made sure not to buy the 1911 handbook replica from the BSA, which I shall teach my son from. I found a 3rd party publisher.

Thankfully, there is now Trail Life USA. I'll use the 1911 handbook to supplement Trail Life.

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!"

There was a time when I was anti-BSA for my family, but I never wished for the collapse of the BSA. I was looking at another Scouting organization that fit what I wanted for my family. But I can't imagine ever having wished for the BSA to completely go away just because it didn't fit my morals and beliefs at the time. That logic just doesn't register with me, wanting something to go away just because you don't like it anymore. 

I wish you the best in TL and hope it fulfills what you are looking for. My family will continue with the BSA, and I will continue to support the BSA as an organization that still represents the moral, social, and spiritual values that align with my beliefs. I also still believe that kids are better off in Scouting than out of it, be that through the BSA, TL, GSUSA, BPSA, or any other alternative out there. If the BSA is no longer right for any families in my Den or Pack, I'd encourage them to continue Scouting in an organization that better fits their beliefs, and I would hope that they would do so without wishing for the demise of the organization that they are leaving behind and that I and many others still believe in. 

http://scouts.org.uk/home/

I think it looks pretty cool. Definitely brings the logo into modern times. The old "swoosh" logo was looking a bit dated. 

5 hours ago, gblotter said:

...Progressives may cheer these "inclusive" changes and celebrate their social victories, but they won't step forward to fill the void created by the departure of Scouting traditionalists...

On the contrary, I'm what you might call a progressive who has cheered these inclusive changes, and I just volunteered as recruitment chair to do my part and help grow our Pack. 

"Deleted" doesn't really mean deleted, not in this digital world. 

If a leader is appropriately texting a scout and copying another leader and a parent on communications, even if the messages are deleted on both phones, they still exist and could be used in any litigation. 

2 hours ago, gblotter said:

25 years from now, kids will not even recognize the remnants of BSA from what we have known in the past. The real surprise will come in wondering why BSA chose to self-destruct by departing from its core mission and values that helped develop boys into men for more than a century.

I don't agree that they've departed from their core mission, but if we are talking about accepting girls into the Boy Scout program, I think we all know precisely why they've decided to do that.

The BSA is a business, and an expensive one to run. Lots of big paychecks need to be cut to top-level execs. The BSA could function perfectly well with 1/10th of current membership, if it wasn't for the costly overhead of the organization. Scouts UK has far fewer members. Other scouting organizations have even smaller numbers. There are scout organizations that have no paid leadership, 100% volunteer-run, and they can sustain their programs with miniscule numbers compared to the BSA. 

I firmly believe this change is based in a strategy designed to stop the bleeding and save the BSA as a "company". There is some minimum number of members that we need to stay above to continue to operate our big costly National office. That number was probably getting dangerously close based on year-over-year membership declines and projections. Hence the big change. 

Its a bet on a future of Scouting in the US that adding girls to the program will affect membership numbers in a way that slows or stops us from hitting that critical low-membership number. 

Or some variation of this idea, but still based on membership numbers and money. Surbaugh basically said as much in the initial presentation of the idea girls in the BSA, showing those charts with lines heading downward for BSA, GSUSA, etc. 

The pants look cool. I hope they are as dark in color as what the photo shows. I've never been a big fan of the standard olive green pant color, I think a darker version would look really nice. 

23 minutes ago, JoeBob said:

I'm glad that you like the BSA the way it is today.  You'd have loved it back in the day.

Not sure this qualifies as "back in the day", but I loved Scouting back in my day, 1986-1998.

1 hour ago, MikeS72 said:

You state that you were part of a consolidation of Packs.  Are you are no longer with the original CO?

If so, that may be why you had to take on a new number.  It is not unusual for a CO to ask to keep the Pack or Troop number, so that it is available should they decide to jump back into the fire and sponsor again.

No, same CO for over 50 years. Councils and districts in the area changed a lot. None of them go by the same name anymore, and some were merged into others. I believe the new number came from that somehow. I do need to ask around more and find out exactly how this all came to be. 

22 hours ago, JoeBob said:

Hey @FireStone , is there a reason that you disagree with my last 2 posts on the LDS withdrawal?  It's entirely within your rights to downvote from the shadows, but would you mind sharing your rationale? 

Thank you.

Progressives don't "hate what the BSA stood for." I'm what you might call a "progressive", and I love the BSA, always have, always will. 

I also don't agree that "we've sacrificed the quality of Eagle, which used to be the standard for Excellence." I think it still is a standard of excellence.

And last I checked, duty to god was still part of the program at all levels, so your idea that "we've given up on God", I'm in strong disagreement with that as well. 

Not much else to say, I just find those comments of yours extremely disagreeable. 

If my Scout Shop has red, I'm going with that. I heard yellow would be used up until stock was gone. Which in the BSA means we'll be using yellow for about 18 more years. 😁

1 hour ago, Tampa Turtle said:

I like that, thanks. I had been kicking around an idea to call out the "5", but I was trying to do it with color. The size difference looks cool, it still reads as "365" but it also emphasizes "5" nicely. 

1 hour ago, Tampa Turtle said:

I was once in a Troop 4, man they were proud of low number.

That is definitely a part of the negativity towards the new number that I've seen. Going to a 3-digit number seems like a major downgrade for some folks. 

I like our 3-digit number. I think regardless of the number, it's all about what you do with it and how you show pride in it that determines how people will feel about it. Unfortunately a lot of folks in my unit won't even try to embrace the official number so it will never be accepted by some. 

Several years ago my Pack went through a consolidation of local units and as a result was forced to take on a new pack number. Not sure of the details exactly, just that we were one number and became a new one, apparently not by choice. 

There are some in the Pack that embrace the new number, and some that refuse to even acknowledge it, and varying opinions in between. I prefer to keep some anonymity online but for the sake of simplifying this discussion, let's pretend the old pack number was Pack 5, and the new one is Pack 365. Our Pack 5 charter goes back over 50 years, so it's a number deep in local tradition, and thus the main reason the number is held on to. 

Officially we're Pack 365. On beascout.org we're listed as 365. Our Pack flag says 365. 

Here's where it gets confusing...

Our website says "Pack 365" at the top of the homepage, but the URL says "ourtownpack5.org". Our various banners and decorations we hang up for PWD say "Pack 5". Most scouts and scouters wear just the "5" numeral badge on the uniform. We have t-shirts that say "Pack 5". When we put out flyers for recruiting, they say "Pack 365". When we register for camping, depending on which leader registers us it can be under either "Pack 5" or "Pack 365", which has caused some confusion for more than a few camp directors/rangers when people check in at camp under 2 different unit numbers. 

My dilema now is that I'm getting involved in recruiting efforts for the fall, and we're producing new Pack materials. New flyers, car magnet decals, banners, etc. And there is debate on the committee and among leaders about which Pack number we should go with. 

Part of me says to just go with the official number. But I'm also a Tiger DL, new to the pack, and the tradition of "Pack 5" hasn't really sunk in with me. I respect that the number means a lot to people. Our town Troop has the same issue, they were "Troop 5", now "Troop 365". And I get that at that level, there is probably even more consideration for tradition, with scouts and scouters who have a longer vested interest in the old number. 

But as it relates to recruiting and promoting the Pack, I'm struggling with where to draw the line on tradition vs. practicality. To me, it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend money getting new stuff made with the old pack number. If people want to wear the old number on the uniform, as far as I'm concerned, go for it. But I'm struggling with the idea that I should put in an order for car decals/magnets with "Pack 5" on them where the idea is to promote the Pack and show pride in our local unit, and then confuse the heck out of anyone who goes home and tries to find any info online about a "Pack 5" only to find that it doesn't exist on the beascout.org website. 

Anyone ever dealt with a unit number change before? How did you handle it? Is it common for units to hang on to the old number like this? 

1 hour ago, ParkMan said:

2) The Boy Scout program is tailored to 11-13 year olds, not so much the 14-17 year olds.  Yes, there are leadership opportunities are one gets older which retain some.  But, for others - after you've camped at the same spot 3 times, it just tiring.  A trip every two years to Philmont, the Summit, wherever isn't enough.  I fault national here for not focusing the discussion on how to retain these scouts.

It's interesting, I just saw in another thread that the average age of Eagle Scouts in the 1940s was 14. Has the program always been tailored to "peak" at 14 and it just never really adapted to the longer timeline we put scouts on these days by encouraging them to stretch out their Scouting careers an extra 3 years? 

Has there ever been a concerted effort to address this 14-17 year old program gap? Is that what Venturing was supposed to do? 

1 hour ago, ParkMan said:

...But, now there is so much more competition that this no longer is a given...

I have zero statistical evidence to back up what I'm about to say, it's based purely on my own observations and conversation. 

I kind of think things are changing on the competition issue. Sports will always be a bit of a competitor to scouting. I just put out an email about a late-addition to my Den calendar for an event this Saturday and of course the replies are already coming in about sports conflicts. But I also talk to a lot of local parents, both in and out of Scouting, and there seems to be much more willingness to encourage kids to participate in things other than sports, and even give them equal (or greater) preference over sports participation.

In my day as a kid (in high school 94-98) you went for sports first, and if you weren't athletically inclined you did other things almost as a "plan B". Now those other things are sometimes "plan A" for many kids. 

To be frank, nowadays it's quite a bit "cooler" to do some things that would have made your social life a bit more challenging 20 or 30 years ago. We had a popular tv show just a few years back about a Glee club that made the kids look like rockstars in their high school. That kind of social status for anything other than a sport would have been unthinkable just a couple of decades earlier. 

Maybe we're coming back around to increased social acceptance (and hopefully increased popularity) of these non-sports activities. I don't expect that being a Scout will ever supplant the social status that being a starter on the football team would afford a kid, but I kind of think the balance of that social power might be shifting slightly. Even among parents, there seems to be more of a desire for kids to do things other than sports, or in place of sports entirely. Or to hear a parent say, "I'd really rather Johnny not play football," because of all the discussion about injuries. 

It's probably too soon to say for sure, but maybe the competition with Scouting is going to become less of a problem in the years to come. 

8 hours ago, Will1234 said:

OH come on this needs to stop ... #keepBoysscoutsBoyscouts 

I'm all for some healthy debate on things we can actually debate. This, however, is not one of those things. There's no going back now. Stopping this, or keeping the Boy Scouts Boy Scouts as you suggest, would in all likelihood, kill the organization. Imagine the BSA actually kicking girls back out. Heck, even I'd be tempted to quit if they did that. The PR fallout would be horrific.