CalicoPenn

Can anyone imagine selling road flares door-to-door these days? How many people really know what a road flare is anymore? How many stories about Scouts being detained on suspicion of carrying a terrorism device do you think would be generated?

I would just as soon get rid of the up and down arrows altogether - I've never paid attention to them and it doesn't add to the discussion. Agree with me? Tell me why. Disagree with me? Tell me why. Don't like the direction a thread is going? Tell us why. Using the arrows is just a form of passive-aggressiveness that allows people to think they're participating when they really aren't.

Adult thinking.....think like a 12 year old - more likely they got it from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

We had a Scout burn water. He was actually boiling a pan of water on a stove (a real electric burner stove - winter camping in a cabin) and didn't pay attention enough to realize that he had removed some saran wrap from something, laid it out over the burner, and didn't take it off the burner when he put the pot of water on. He was possibly the most scatterbrained cook our Troop ever had (and his father, a professional firefighter, was a very good firehouse cook). He once made blueberry pancakes that came out all green. He didn't drain the blueberries - just dumped them, juice and all,

I remember selling Olin road flares door-to-door too. Never sold fireworks but all the Cub Scout Packs and Brownie Dens (?) would coordinate with the local Jaycees to canvas the entire city of 20K people to collect for that years fireworks display. The Jaycees did that for 5 years until some grand poobah or other decided that it would be less risky to send the older Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts out to collect instead. Never underestimate the power of cute kids versus gangly pre-teens and teenagers - collections dropped by almost half that year - the next year it was back to Cub Scouts and

To Science and Beyond!!!!!

The panhead patrol is set up 100 meters that way

I don't know if going co-ed will be an improvement to the program. I also do not know if going co-ed will not be an improvement to the program. I don't know if a single-sex environment is better. I also do not know if a single-sex environment is worse. I do recognize that a single-sex environment may have value. I also recognize that a co-ed environment may have value. I do now know if one environment is better than the other, and if so by how much, or if they are both the same. For some folks, it may be a cultural thing (whatever that's supposed to mean). I am not advocating for

Interesting question - and in fact many Americans do give their guns names - there is even an article in the American Rifleman from June 14, 2011 titled "Why Do We name Our Guns". What may be unique is insisting that they all need to be named after a female. While it seems to be traditional to name machinery (almost any machinery will do - from guns to boats to cars to planes) with a female name, the naming of guns may be the most varied - some are named after females, some may be named for beloved pets or hunting dogs, many are named for sentimental purposes, and some may be named for th

In Illinois, we have always called this giant hogsweed. There are two smaller plants (small being relative - they still can grow to at least half the height of an adult human) that have the same kind of photo-sensitive effect and are much more common. Cow parsnip - Heracleum maximum has, like the giant hogsweed, white umbels. The plant we call wild parsnip has yellow umbels and not only looks like the parsnip plant of garden and farm, it shares the same latin name: Pastinaca sativa - which suggests to me the wild parsnip is just parsnips that have "escaped" the farm and is now growing wild.

I think I missed that entire interpretation.

The BSA does not hold the copyright to the picture in Stosh's avatar - it's held by the estate of Norman Rockwell.

Ever ripped a CD? Only those that I have purchased - copyright law allows a person who purchases a CD to create a copy for personal use, including making a digital copy. Ripping a CD is not, in and of itself, a violation of copyright law - if I were then give the copy away, or share the digital files, or worse - sell them - then it would be a violation. Ever saved a DVD to your hard drive? Nope - why would I want to take up that much space on my hard drive - to watch a movie on a tiny screen? If I want to watch a movie, I'm going to do so stretched out on the couch watching it on the big

I don't think this is about the applicant worrying about losing his clearance - it's about people that no longer need it keeping his personal information. I concur on letting it go legal. If he's that concerned, throwing his attorney a hundred bucks to put together a letter demanding the return of the application by a certain date should be worth it.

Ok - I see the point - but I don't quite buy it. I don't see anyone saying the program has to change except the folks that are adamantly opposed to coed scouting. Those of us who are accepting of the possibility of co-ed scouting have never said the program itself would have to change. If one of the reasons girls want to join the Boy Scouts is for the camping and hiking and outdoor adventures, why would anyone want to then change the program which would make it unattractive to both boys and girls. In what way would the program itself have to change? Would units have to do more overnights

Isn't that what the Troop Library and Troop Librarian is for? To be a source for those $4.99 merit badge books? A Troop doesn't have to have a complete set of them - but it would be helpful to have at least 5 of each of the required merit badge books. If a Scout wants to try out a badge that doesn't have a book in the library, we will purchase a copy the next time someone goes out to the Scout Service Center for the library. Not all of the books in the library were purchased by the Troop - we've had a lot of Scouts buy a merit badge book at Summer Camp because they've decided to take a ba

I understand this argument - but I have a couple of questions. Are we to assume that single mothers of girls aren't also looking for places where their daughters can have positive male role models in their lives? Isn't there value in men mentoring boys in a co-ed environment where the boys learn how to respect and listen to members of the opposite sex? Isn't there value in Scouts learning that the Scout Oath and Law applies just as much to their interactions with the opposite sex as it does to their interactions with their fellow Scouts? I'm not suggesting that there is no value

I think I'm a fairly well-informed individual but I have to admit that I don't know who they are - care to enlighten us? Venturing is a program for teens 14-21. If you're going to open up Venturing to 11 year old girls, you will have to open it up to 11 year old boys. Isn't that just Co-ed Boy Scouts? I suppose its a solution to the issue of maintaining a single-sex program for some people but what about the other issues that folks have a concern about - seems to me an awful lot of folks were saying that summer camp facilities aren't set-up for co-ed Scouting and it would be very

Since the BSA hasn't added an "are you gay" check box to their membership applications or any other official record, I would sure like to know how they could track it to either show that demand has not materialized or that it has. That leaves the question - what would you accept as proof that the demand has materialized? Increased numbers of Scouts? Boy Scout numbers have been declining for years - for many different reasons - I don't think any rational person thought that opening Scouting to gay members would reverse that trend. As NJScouter has reminded us, National views things from com

Troop tents - always. 3-man if you can get them (room for 2 Scouts and their gear and some patrol gear). I just can't see telling the parents of 6 new Webelos crossovers that they no need to go out and buy a tent so that their son can go camping with the Troop. Care and feeding? Tents are numbered - the Troop Quartermaster keeps a list of the tents assigned to a Patrol by their number for the current camping trip. If a Patrol needs 3 tents, they get three tents. If they need 5, they get 5. The QM notes that they gave the Flaming Arrow Patrol tents 3, 5 and 6 for that weekend. So

The four bases in the BSA HA group are all owned and run by National. Is the Indian Nations Council suggesting that it would sell their new HA base to National? There are councils that run their own high adventure bases that attract folks from beyond their own councils - Maine High Adventure run by the Katahdin Council comes to mind (mostly because I worked there back when it was a National High Adventure Base). I'm wondering what the cost would be to Scouts for some of these planned activities. Just the insurance costs alone for the longest zip line in Oklahoma, an ATV course, je

I would say that "officially licensing" something is an endorsement (the UK Royal Family has been doing this for decades) but we need to be careful - the BSA isn't endorsing ALL Buck Knives - just those they have "officially licensed". There is a rule that Councils, Units and individual Scouters and Scouts can't endorse anything as Scouts, but that rule doesn't apply to National. I think if we had the time, we could probably find a lot of other examples of these kinds of sponsorships/endorsements from Jamborees past (and yes, I consider a sponsorship to be another kind of endorsement - do

Hmmmm - reminds me of a certain weather forecasting rodent that makes a forecast about when Spring will arrive about 6 weeks before the end of Spring

Then as a DC, shouldn't you be encouraging the Troop leadership to get back on the path to True North?

The way I read the article, the 150K are not necessarily members of LFL. The schools may just be using the LFL curriculums/programs without requiring the students to be members.