CA_Scouter

"If Beavah or those who support his position want to dive into water that has not been cleared of obstacles ..." Where does Beavah say that? He doesn't. I think this lends credence to Beavah's statement about fear mongering. But that's just my opinion.

I work for a company that has 26 offices in the US, Canada and Europe, email communication is vital. However, I've found that emails are rarely read thoroughly so the KISS rule applies. One thing that helps is that you need to keep the message short enough so that the reader doesn't have to use the scrollbar to read the entire message. I know this sounds silly, but it works. Email communication in the troop is SUPPLEMENTAL. We communicate to the scouts at the troop meeting and they are supposed to ( oops, I'm making you scroll ) communicate to their parents. If no one reads the e

"As for David Co's situation. If indeed the School has instituted a poicy of no chocolate chip cookies, and David was a ware of the rule and still sent them then yes, That is an issue of personal values." Let's spin this just for kicks and giggles: Its the 50's in Alabama and David is black. He drinks out of a water fountain that is clearly labled 'whites only'. Is this also an issue of personal values?

OGE, as the thought police seem to be in full force in this thread, I'd like to point out that your 'E-Coli/chicken' scenario is likely a violation of some BSA rule somewhere, and your mere mention of it quite plainly points out your endorsement of the activity. Shame on thee! You've ignored your training and should resign from the BSA immediately. ;-)

It sounds as if there are 5+ troops here who don't listen to their SPL. The bad thing here is that these SPL's have been taught that they have no real authority and they are in effect, figureheads for the adult leadership. Its always a challenge for the adult leadership to step back into the shadows - its a constant challenge for me as well. However, if there is no safety issue involved, then ya gotta let 'em lead!

Ditto the last two posters. With all due respect, having an adult make the checklist and assemble the box does not teach the scouts anything, IMHO. If they forget stuff, SO WHAT? Let me tell you a story... my son forgot his sleeping bag on a campout. I knew it and threw it in the trunk of the car, and gave it to him later that evening. WRONG! He did the same thing next campout. That time, I did not pack another bag and he had to sleep under a tarp that night. He has not forgotten his sleeping bag since. Lesson learned! Teaching them to be self-sufficient means letting them

Generic patrol - 'Yell' Neutral Patrol - 'We don't feel strongly one way or the other' also.. - 'My gut feeling says maybe!'

Gold Winger... don't you mean the 'modem' world? :-) Ya. You shoulda seen the look on the face of one of my mom's when I told here there was no cell phone reception where we were packin' in Yellowstone. I would have paid good money to see the look on her face when we practiced how to play dead in case of a bear attack.

Interesting. I was watching 'Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern' on the travel channel last night and they were showing how haggis is made. I'm not sure its a good idea to see that ( some relation to how you shouldn't see how sausage and laws are made ). Lotta jokes about haggis... how bout this one... ( done in your best scottish accent ) 'give me an order of haggis and a scotch, and hold the haggis' :-)

Acco is spot on! As has been mentioned in these forums before in one form or another... .. we don't allow 'parents' to attend, but if you'd like to join us as a member of the adult 'patrol' you are more than welcome.... :-)

We get duplicates of the scout's merit badges, rank advancments and other insignia and mount them in a frame for a wall display. That's a tradition from my troop when I was a scout and I instituted in my son's troop a couple of years ago. Also, we Scoutmasters all chip in for an NESA membership.

Follow up: What I found out with my council is they want the portion of the blue card that is submitted to the Advancement Chair, not the 'applicant receipt' ( so to speak ). Maybe I missed that point somewhere in this thread. Our Advancement Chair keeps these in a safe place and gives them to the scout when he prepares his Eagle application, so it doesn't look like a big problem in our case after all. Still seems like an unnecessary detail, what with electronic records now. Of course, our council advancement guy also made it a BIG point that when you fill out your Eagle app t

Over the weekend I heard talk that our Council was asking for blue cards for Eagle BoR as well. Just for kicks, I looked for my son's info and he is missing most of his blue cards. However, I checked one of his older blue cards and it says on the bottom: "Keep this record until you receive your merit badge certificate." It says '1985 printing' on the card. ( I guess the troop bought a bunch of cards back then and some were still floating around. ) The 2003 printing says 'Retain this copy for your permanent records.'

There are many resources: Amazon.com ( or similar ) books: Lip Smackin' Backpackin' Foods for the trail Backpacker magazine and their web site is an excellent resource. You can google 'backpacking recipes' and get 10billion hits ;-) You can walk thru the grocery store and pick out a variety of foods that are light and easy to cook for the trail. Just pick items that don't require a lot of cooking time ( otherwise you have to carry more fuel ). Try to find 'one pot' meal recipes. One pot to carry, less to cleanup. IT takes some planning, but that's t

There is no such thing as 'bad publicity' eh? Just another loud mouth wanting to make noise. I would refer to him as a horse's rear end, but that would be an insult to horses. You see this stuff all the time, right? Some low-level entertainment industry lizard does something purposely outrageous and contrived in order to get his/her name in the news... Imus, Limbaugh, that tall creepy guy on satellite radio whose name escapes me at the moment..

Sent mine in on a Tuesday, had it the following Monday. Go figure... maybe not too many 500+ mile trips out of my council... who knows...

I wouldn't charge less than $1/can. People don't mind paying a buck for anything, you don't have to mess around with coins, and its just not worth your time otherwise. People like giving their money to Scouts. We sell tickets instead of having the servers handling cash though we do hot dogs and the food handling rules are different. If you want to give 'em a break on the price, do 6 tickets for $5 or something like that... If other groups are doing soft drinks you may have to either adjust your price to match theirs ( read: dry erase board AND tickets ) or perhaps you

We run concessions for our local Independence Day parade. Our food lady gets a lot of items donated or at substantially reduced cost, so our expenses are kept pretty low. Last year we ended up with about 100 extra dogs, but since they were donated there was no expense to us... we cooked 'em up for a Court of Honor later in the year. For example, Wal Mart gives out $25 gift cards to various organiztions once a month. That will buy you a bunch of soda or bottled waters. Some supermarkets do this as well, you may even be able to talk a case of water out of your local drug stores and s

I'd be more concerned about the chicken in white tights. That's a visual that's both disturbing and intriguing at the same time. Yuck/oooh!

when.... you new piece of equipment in your backpack are your READING GLASSES!

I like Bob's suggestion about making a presentation with an emergency room doctor and police officer. I agree with Beavah though, it should not be at a COH. I think it needs to be addressed as soon as possible: next troop meeting if possible. I also think this should be brought to the attention of the parents. ASAP. Regarding "And actually they were on their way home from the troop PLC at the SM's house." I would consider that to be a scouting activity. I would blow a gasket too!

We keep most of trips fairly close ( because we already are in the Sierra Nevada foothills ) so we charge each scout only about $5 for gas. They give that to the driver of the car they are riding in before we leave the parking lot.

I should clarify. I've been SM for over 4 years now and have done many SM conferences. I've done the training, read the books, hit the websites, etc. My goal here is to solicit real-life examples from THIS user community. I've come to appreciate the input from many of the contributors to the forums and would like to hear from your first hand experience(s)! Thanks

I'm getting ready to do a Scoutmaster conference for an Eagle Scout candidate. I'd like to get a sampling of questions that you would consider or have actually used in an Eagle SM Conference. Thanks in advance.

The correct answer is: Your ASM has way too much time on his hands.