danbrew

What did I get out of Wood Badge? I made some good friends that I probably wouldn't have otherwise met. There was no earth-shattering skill that I learned that would help me in business, no particular people skills, no amazing insights into Scouting - at least not things that I didn't already know. My ticket had items that I probably would not have done - service outside of my home unit and helping to make things better with a Scoutreach unit. I became involved with a Scoutreach unit based in a low-income housing community and has the pleasure, no, the joy, of helping those boys learn about

LOL, great question. My son just had his BoR for 1st Class last night and his non-spiral bound book is falling apart. We had already reinforced the advancement pages with clear packing tape and have decided to move to the spiral bound book. I just scanned the pages for his rank to date and saved it as a PDF. We'll put the original book away and use the spiral book moving forward. He does use the canvas-like cover that they sell in the Scout Shop, btw. Bottom line, those will be important as he advances in rank and especially important for an Eagle BoR if he goes that far.

Whatever you've done, whoever you are, the forums are working MUCH better today than I've ever seen. I know there's been a lot of folks posting about how slow and painful things have been lately (myself included). Thought I'd offer a work of thanks as it's a completely different experience today.

My $0.02 is that you'll likely get a much better response rate if you told us about yourself - are you a youth or adult member? Folks are more likely to dig deep if there's a story that goes along with the request. Things like what have you done to raise money so far? What's your Scouting experience been like to date? Either as an adult or a boy working towards Eagle? We're just around the corner from the Jamboree and the Scouters in this area, youth and adult alike, have been raising money left and right for the last year. Our Council has 200+ youth attending at probably at least that many

Here's how my son did his new shirt for Jambo. We just moved from his Webolos shirt to a Youth Large shirt and there's not a whole lot of room on the shirt, that's for sure...! We recently bought him three new shirts - two for Jambo that look like this one and one for his home troop. We put the veteran unit (40 years) directly under the Council patch and then the troop numbers directly underneath that. Then the POR patch was centered on the sleeve with the trained emblem on the hemmed sleeve.

The West award is for supporting the Council endowment fund - an often overlooked fund. Generally speaking, the endowment funds are setup to never consume the principal but instead to serve as a basis for future income via interest, dividends, etc. - thus providing Scouting to future generations. Scouting costs money. It's not uncommon for people to overlook the Councils when deciding where to make financial contributions - it's pretty natural to say "I'll give this money to my pack/troop/crew". Who wouldn't say that? The expenses that a Council incurs, though, are vastly different (an

Bravo, excellent comments.

I ended up deciding to fly to Charlotte instead of into Charleston, WV. TMS offers shuttles from both airports. The ticket was about $250 less expensive to fly into Charlotte instead of Charleston. Yep, I paid more for the TMS shuttle, but still came out ahead dollars-wise. Also, I would have had to have gotten up earlier to fly from Chicago to Charleston vs. Chicago to Charlotte. So... longer day, more money to fly into WV. I'm not exactly looking forward to the 3-4 hour drive from Charlotte, but figured I'd just bring a book and let somebody else worry about about the driving. I did g

Shooting Sports

lol. no kidding. i lost a lot of "face" with this one but used it as an example of how quickly things can go wrong... it definitely took my "i know everything" down a notch and reminded me that accidents do happen.

From the Guide to Safe Scouting: The online version of the Guide to Safe Scouting is updated quarterly. Go to http://www.scouting.org/HealthandSafety/GSS.aspx. VI. Chemical Fuels and Equipment Purpose This policy directs Boy Scouts of America members how to safely store, handle, and use chemical fuels and equipment. Safety and environmental awareness concerns have persuaded many campers to move away from traditional outdoor campfires in favor of chemical-fueled equipment used for cooking, heating, and lighting. Be aware that chemical fuels and equipme

I can't be the only one... Something is seriously wrong in Scouter.com land. The forums aren't showing consecutive threads. New posts aren't showing up. It's extremely difficult to follow the conversation threads because of the way the posts are (or are not) being displayed. Forum software is slow, slow, slow. Yeah, I know, most everybody already knows this. Whatever we're trying to do with the forum software, well, it ain't working. In the spirit of offering a suggestion instead of just griping about it, is there a default setup that we could use? It would be nice if the forum here wor

No, not really. Every time I introduce my wife, I'm introducing my wife. I'm not telling anyone anything about my sexuality. Sometimes a wife is just a wife. You say "...gay leaders want the same freedom to get dropped off at an event by their partner..." how would "don't ask, don't tell" impact that? It wouldn't. Let's be honest with one another here for a moment - we've had gay leaders in Scouting for as long as we've had Scouting. And I'm sure that "gay leaders have been dropped off at events by their partners" from time to time. And maybe even those inclined to wonder why Mr. Jones

Beavah, excellent post. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. I won't be nearly as eloquent as you, yet I'll give it a shot. First and foremost, I believe this is an adult leader issue and rarely a youth issue. Granted, there may be older Scouts that are discovering "who" they are from a sexuality perspective. Respectfully, there are other venues within which youth should explore this part of their lives. As a parent I would prefer to discuss these issues with my son or daughter and would be very much opposed to this becoming a dialog for Scouting. I'd never support remo

Ultimately, I don't want anyone deciding what part of the 2nd Amendment should apply to me. The 2nd Amendment is not about sensible restrictions. The original intent of the 2nd Amendment was to arm the civilian population against a tyrannical government. When you ask "how do we know what the intent was?", consider that the founders of our country had just fought a war against a government. It's not about the right to hunt or the right to target shoot. It's about having the ability to defend yourself. Of course times change. You'd lose if you went up against a government. Look at th

I like what Twocubdad has to say about recognizing the adults and thanking them for their contribution to Scouting. On the other hand, I agree that Scouting is for the boys and all "thank you events" should be designed to focus on their achievements and to recognize their successes - many of which are significant for a youth. There's a world of difference in recognizing achievements in an adult and a youth. Having said that, though, I was one of those guys that had my beading ceremony at a Pack Blue & Gold. Myself and another leader planned it at the Blue & Gold for a reason -

I am our district membership chair and spend a lot of time with my DE working with the BSA systems. On the one hand, they've gotten a LOT better. On the other hand, when you extract the data from scout.net (or whatever they're calling it these days), it provides very limited options - csv is one. The vast majority of the reports are exported in a very ancient looking type of cobol layout - based upon the premise that the vast majority of the users are not technically savvy enough to manipulate the data (or they won't have the tools). It took awhile but we (me & the DE) finally figured

Like Twocubdad I wear the beads most of the time when wearing the Class A shirt. I am an ASM in the troop and we have a troop neckerchief - I don't typically wear the neckerchief though. If a formal troop event (Court of Honor, etc.), I'll wear the troop neckerchief and the beads. I'm also a UC and am the membership chair for the district, so if attending a district or council formal event I'll wear the tartan neckerchief with beads.

Looks like the links don't work (aren't clickable)... here's an example: http://www.scouter.com/forum/scouting-history/368462-my-trip-to-gilwell?s=a6db7a1334a7fbca3fba48f537a34755

I was in the UK last year and had a free day so set off to find Gilwell Park. Here's a quick slideshow...

I've seen a lot of ticket templates online - some courses may have specific templates that they want you to use. I'm a geek... and designed my own. The link below is to a Microsoft Word 2013 template - you should be able to open it in Word 2010 as well. If it asks you to login to my website, just hit cancel. It should open the document anyway as the file is on the public side of the website. If you run into problems opening it from the link below send me an email and I'll send you the doc - danbrew@hotmail.com. Enjoy! danbrew http://www.n2dan.com/_layouts/WordViewer.aspx?id=/Docum

Nice - we have our Adult Training academy in a few weeks at Elmhurst College. The boys are down the road at one of the local high schools at Merit Badge University and the adults are at Elmhurst. I've typically taught a class or two at the TA but am actually gonna take some classes this time.

It's never too early for the younger boys to begin to learn the EDGE method and to assume responsibility for their own patrols. The PL and APL for our new Scout patrol assumes the responsibility for tracking progress towards rank advancement for the entire patrol. I had a talk with the boys about how to address the issue of reporting on the patrol's performance and let the boys come up with the idea of building a spreadsheet that tracks the advancements. The PL is responsible for querying the others boys for their updates and then he turns them over to one of the leaders for entry in Troopm

Hey OGE - we're in St Charles. We're in Troop 60.

The Philmont Training Center is a great experience. I went out two years ago for the Webelos to 1st Class course and enjoyed the experience. I didn't necessarily learn anything there that I couldn't have learned in my Council, yet it was very nice to network with other committed Scouters and to take ideas back to my area from other parts of the country. I drove out there from the Chicago area with a good friend (we both attended the class). It was a great roadtrip and a time away from work and the wife...! We thought we would go out and see it before bringing our boys out as they weren't o