mrkstvns
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Posts posted by mrkstvns
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4 minutes ago, Eagledad said:
Why not?
Many reasons. Banning hammocks is a good idea (and practiced in some of those National Parks you might like visiting).
The problem is that hammocks damage trees and if you've got some place that's an established trail site, then you're not just exposing a tree to dynamic stress and friction damage to the bark on a 1-time basis, but rather repeatedly as many crews come along the trail and use the same perfect tree over and over.
Some of the damage to bark can be mitigated by using pads (aka, "tree huggers") on the ropes to reduce friction, but the basic laws of physics will still apply and the trees can still suffer stress damage (not dissimilar to repeated exposure to high wind speeds).
Outdoor ethics is kind of a fluid concept. The idea isn't always to completely eliminate damage (or "traces"), but to at least be aware of our recreational impacts on the environment so that we can make better decisions. With hammocks, I might use one if I were well off trail in a dense forest with millions of trees, each of which can easily bear the relatively small impact of a hammock, but I would avoid it (and support hammock bans) where there are fewer trees and higher recreational impact.
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20 hours ago, Double Eagle said:
No maps or compass. Rely on intuition and GPS, you will never be wrong. We are never late, only delayed. All this talk of accurate maps and stuff is hogwash, stick your feelings and use the force. Be sure to take food and water, no sense in filing a travel plan as you will not have a plan after a few hundred yards. Oh, and use the moss on the trees to navigate.
Real men don't need moss on trees. They can smell which way the wind blows...(acceptable answers for 2nd Class requirement 3d).
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1 hour ago, qwazse said:
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- Or, expanding on @walk in the woods' idea: I could dead-drop a half-keg of root beer in one location, the tap in another location, ice cream in another location, and have mugs hanging from a tree in yet another location. PLs must have their navigators lead them to the drop zone ... then to rendezvous at some idyllic camp. The locations may or may not be accessible by car depending on the whim of the SPL/ASPL.
I really like this idea. I might use it for doing requirement 4a (the orienteering course). Making a map to the mugs, root beer, ice cream etc. might work even better than the GPS coordinate thing...making it fun might go a long way towards getting scouts interested in learning what orienteering is really all about.
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In the past, BSA had an excellent program that encouraged councils to establish historic trails in their own councils. Sadly, that's gone by the wayside and most of the historic trails that I've heard about were established long ago and many are no longer promoted or no longer have patches and medals available from their local councils. It's only been within the past year or so that BSA put the list of trails back on their website (it had disappeared for much too long).
The list is here:
https://tap.scouting.org/historic-trails/Note that some of the trails that have no link in the list *do* in fact have websites and are in fact still supported by their councils. Here in Texas, I know this to be the case with the Fort McKavett, Fort Concho and Fort Stockton trails. (If you hike these and are after the patches, call the local scout center before you do the hike because I got the impression supplies were limited for some historic trails). Info is here:
https://www.westtexasscoutinghistory.net/historicaltrails.htmlAlso, some of the most interesting trails don't seem to be on the list, for whatever reason. Last year, my son and I visited Vicksburg National Battlefield in Mississippi and we found 2 excellent trails that took most of a day (each) to explore --- one was 12 miles, the other 14 miles (there's another 7-mile hike we didn't do). Info is on the National Park Service website:
https://www.nps.gov/vick/planyourvisit/hiking-walking.htm -
In another thread, a discussion of GPS and dementia got me thinking about that GPS "Navigation" requirement for First Class....how the heck are we supposed to test the boys on 4b?
It looks to me like the requirement was probably written back when handheld GPS units were still the rage and people had a clue how latitude and longitude coordinates looked. Now that GPS seems to have become an infrastructure item that enables nav apps, the scouts have no idea what GPS is or what coordinates are. Had a scout come to me recently with Waze on his smartphone. I asked him if he could have the app show the coordinates for our current location. Nope. The best he could muster was a street address. He could then enter another address and have the speaker tell me, "turn left in 500 feet..." etc. Is that really "using GPS"? Given the changes in technology, I'm inclined to say "yeah, it is" since the point is really to understand how to navigate, not necessarily to use coordinate systems.
Any thoughts?
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Fortunately though, most state highway departments still distribute free maps. (I get 'em at the Info Center / Rest Stops that are located near state lines). For a map of the whole U.S., I use the Rand McNally book-style Road Atlas. I still buy topo maps from USGS (nothing really matches them for doing any kind of map reading exercise).
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In its quest to emasculate scouting completely, Philmont now offers a glamping option that completely removes the possibility that participants might actually experience outdoor life.
The new tents have permanent, full floors, electricity, queen size tempurpedic mattresses with Egyptian 800-thread count sheets, in-tent maid service, in-tent massage, and big screen canvas wall mount televisions with your choice of Netflix or Hulu. Covered parking is provided with valet service available on demand.
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Folks who find scout uniforms expensive should be aware that Scout Shops are offering a 25% off sale. (https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2019/08/19/unprecedented-scout-shop-sale-on-uniform-shirts-is-too-cool-to-miss/)
I went to the 25% off sale and it was great. I got a pair of khaki pants with one long leg and one short leg.
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The way we do it is that the boys brainstorm and select their top "themes" --- backpacking, climbing, shooting, etc., and they can suggest locations if they have had good experiences someplace.
We have a "camping coordinator", who is a committee member with lists of state parks, BSA camps, ACE properties, national forests etc. and he/she will then start calling around for reservations. If a location that the scouts suggested is available for the kind of activity they suggested, it's booked. If it's unavailable, another site is found that enables the type of activity.
Only after the camping coordinator is able to lock down all (or most) dates and locations is the plan reviewed by scoutmaster and committee chair and then published. Families can then plan their calendars and the District gets a fair opportunity to cause us headaches by moving their Camporee dates.
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A scout troop camping in the Willamette National Forest found a campfire that had been left burning by inconsiderate campers. The fire had already spread beyond the fire ring. It took the scouts about 2 hours to put out all the smoldering embers. Scouts are credited with preventing a forest fire.
Story:
https://www.koin.com/news/human-interest/boy-scouts-put-out-campfire-that-was-spreading/-
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Y'all are making some good points about why the staff might deserve tips for a job well done....but is that a judgment call that the adults are making themselves? Is it something that the boys should be aware of? Do you ask the boys to chip in?
Seems like the practice might vary by camp (based on Tatung42's comment that he was told "no tips" by Northern Tier staff).
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38 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:
Or why they didn't stagger departures more because of the infrastructure concerns?
Irrelevant.
Infrastructure was evidently fine for getting scouts out of the Summit and down the road to Charlotte --- one of America's biggest, busiest hub airports. An airport that routinely handles hundreds of flights per day and more than 20 million passengers annually.
For CLT and American Airlines to have problems getting a few thousand scouts checked in is simply inexcusible.
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1 hour ago, walk in the woods said:
In fairness to the airline and airport, I wouldn't have put in any additional permanent infrastructure to accommodate a once-in-a-lifetime event. I wouldn't put any money into it even for a once-every-four-years event. When 8000 people show up at the queue at the same time, there will be waiting, regardless of how many stations they might have had in place. Nobody is going to engineer systems around that. And TSA, don't even get my libertarian juices flowing on that disaster......
In all fairness to the airline and airport, they are incompetent twits.
In today's modern airline industry, they have these things called "computers". Amazing devices! They are capable of millions of calculations per second, can maintain databases, analyze data, and produce these things called "reports."
Given that the airline and airport were caught off-guard, I can only assume that none of the scouts had made reservations for their flights and they all just showed up out of the blue, ready to pay cash for their walk-up tickets. If that weren't the case, the scouts would have planned ahead and booked their flights months in advance. Which means the airline employees would have KNOWN that the scouts had booked up every seat on every flight the day after their jambo ended. Managers would have KNOWN well in advance to expect a crush --- they would have KNOWN that extra staff would be needed at check-in, at baggage handling, and at security (not to mention at any snack bars in the place).
A well-run, modern airport would have had loads of contingency plans in place because they would have known that other airports all around the country deal with similar things when it comes to events like the Superbowl, or the Indy 500, or for that matter, Thanksgiving, when everyone needs to arrive at the airport so they can go over the river and through the sky to Grandmother's house.
As an interesting aside, there's an article about how Minneapolis St Paul Airport (MSP) dealt with the Superbowl crunch (I love that bit about football fans coming to the airport the night before their flight home so they don't have to pay for an extra night at the hotel....and here I thought it was scouts who were thrifty...). The airport even planned for that by laying in a bigger stash of sleep pads...
Superbowl airport story: http://www.startribune.com/msp-airport-s-own-super-bowl-comes-day-after-nfl-s-with-busiest-travel-day-ever-expected/436045143/ -
2 hours ago, mrkstvns said:
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Scouts and scouters who had problems getting home should know that air travel complaints can be filed with the DoT here: https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/file-consumer-complaint
In addition to complaining, be sure you ask for compensation if your flight was excessively delayed or cancelled. There is a website that can help you understand how that works and that says they can help you with claims: https://www.airhelp.com/en/
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Interesting question.
The Participant Guide is completely silent on the question of tips and I've always assumed that the fees paid by a scout were "all inclusive". The only mentions of cash I find in the book are a section about how to make payments, and a bullet point that boys should bring $125-175 (presumably for souvenirs and snacks....but not for tips).
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On 8/6/2019 at 5:26 PM, The Latin Scot said:
Once again, I'm SOOOOOO grateful my unit crossed our boys over by birthday, not all at once as a group. It made it so much easier to give each boy individual attention as he prepared to move on, and to tailor the last few weeks of his Cub Scout experience to his strengths and needs. And that way, it didn't matter whether his birthday was in January, June, September, whatever - he got a custom-made plan to prepare him to join the troop, and we had 100% retention after they crossed over. I don't think I could ever manage to do it by school year.
Interesting perspective. For many boys, that last few months of Webelos is tough to get through. The boys are getting tired of the pack program and are itching for new challenges and a ramped up outdoor program. They WANT to be done with Webelos and starting a new chapter in a troop...
The issue was discussed in a "Bryan on Scouting" article here...
https://scoutingmagazine.org/2018/10/how-to-avoid-a-final-year-webelos-burnout/I suppose this will vary from boy to boy and unit to unit, and if you are getting a 100% retention, then I wouldn't mess with your recipe....but for a lot of kids, moving into a troop quickly works better for them, and for the troops, it's often easier to have the boys come in as a group at a predictable point in time (like January) so that they are able to work through initial rank requirements together and so they are able (and prepared) to be with the troop at summer camp (we're usually signing up scouts for camp in February).
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Thousands of scouts attending the World Jamboree found it to be a very tough place to leave behind.
I'm not talking about all the great memories they had of spending time with fellow scouts at the Summit --- I'm talking about American Airlines not staffing their checkin counters adequately and TSA and Charlotte Douglas Airport not having plans in place to adequately handle the number of passengers that they KNEW well in advance were coming to the airport when Jambo was over.
Few scouts got checked in on a timely basis and 3/4 of the flights ended up with delayed departure as scouts were herded outdoors in the summer heat to wait.
Did any of you folks attending Jambo fly out of CLT? Did you encounter problems like those described in the article?
Scouts and scouters who had problems getting home should know that air travel complaints can be filed with the DoT here: https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/file-consumer-complaint
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Let's see now, they raised $100,000 selling 600 bottles....that works out to about $167 per bottle.
Yikes! I could almost afford to buy a bag of Trails End popcorn for that much money!
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20 minutes ago, RememberSchiff said:
At the recent Jambo, this would have been an interesting discussion, the expense of uniforming. I wonder where the BSA ranks in uniform expenses among other scouting organizations with #1 being the most thrifty and #170* being least.
* My understanding WOSM has 170 members.
I would be particularly interested in knowing the costs for scouts in Indonesia.
According to the Wikipedia page listing all those 170 members, it appears Indonesia is the country with the most active scouts at over 21 million (about 10 times more than BSA). I don't believe Indonesia is a particularly rich country, so how the heck do that many young people afford uniforms?
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Another stolen troop trailer....this time in Kansas City:
https://fox4kc.com/2019/08/16/thieves-steal-boy-scout-trailer-and-gear-worth-thousands-of-dollars-from-south-kc-church/ -
I read an article today about a Boy Scout whose Eagle project proposal was turned down, because it didn't seem to involve leadership of others. The project was to advocate for a local ordinance involving plastic handling. (Despite not getting it approved as an Eagle project, he believed in the concept and did it anyway.)
His proposed project was certainly a lot different in focus than the vast majority of Eagle projects I've seen. I wonder what I would advise a scout who wanted to do something like that....What would you tell the scout? If you were that scout's Scoutmaster or Committee Chair, would you approve his project proposal, or would you advise him to find something more traditional?
Here's the story...
https://buffalonews.com/2019/08/18/east-aurora-teen-on-his-proposed-plastic-ban-facing-public-hearing-monday-how-could-i-stop-people-from-polluting-the-earth/ -
Okay, I'll compare scouting vs. sports...
Sports teams take their names very seriously: the Tigers, the Marauders, the Yankees...
Boy Scouts take their patrol names with good humor: the Muffin Men, the Green Janitors...Baseball fans sing during the seventh inning stretch.
Boy Scouts sing when they're happy and they know it.When Houston Texans fans go to a game, they can pay over $20 for a stale hot dog and a sugary drink.
Thrifty Boy Scout grubmasters can feed a fellow scout 5 meals for $10 (no extra charge for the dirt and bugs).Football fans love their tailgate parties!
Boy Scouts know there are better places than a parking lot to have a picnic.I went to a hockey game and a fight broke out.
I went on a Boy Scout campout and a gaga ball game broke out.-
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18 hours ago, Treflienne said:
... ( It seems to me that the incoming girls have a great opportunity to raise the standard on patrol names and patches. )
Waddaya got against Bacon Ninjas?
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I like the idea of scouts doing something to preserve their local historic heritage. Like this scout, erecting a good-looking sign to mark a historic cemetery...
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/15/boy-scout-installs-sign-at-douglass-memorial-cemet/
What patches may be worn on red wool Jac-shirt?
in Uniforms
Posted
I'm not inclined to sew a bunch of patches on the red wool jackets because the jackets cost so freakin' much.
For me, the more appropriate place to sew all those extra patches is on a red patch vest (or maybe on a "brag" blanket).
Besides, since I do most of my camping in Texas, I don't really WANT a heavy wool jacket on campouts just to show off a few temporary patches. For me, the flimsy felt vest isn't nearly so stifling hot on those toasty warm January nights around the campfire...
https://www.scoutshop.org/cub-scout-adult-patch-adult-vest-red-600538.html