DancesWithSpreadsheets

If they were wearing togas, I should hope so. Regards, DWS

I'm with Twocubdad on this. Especially since there is virtually no evidence that specific clan tartans existed before the mid 19th century and the scam perpetrated by the "Sobieski-Stuart" brothers. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestiarium_Scoticum) BSA could quite easily register its own tartan, many states have a registered tartan, ditto universities and businesses. I did a search and was suprised to find that BSA apparently does not have one. Regards, DWS Edited to correct time frame, it was later than I thought. (This message has been edited by DancesWithSpreadsheets)

Thomas54 wrote: "Ever seen a rec league marching band? NO " Ever heard of Drum Corps? www.dci.org Regards, DWS

Welcome to the forums! Speaking only for myself, I feel that there is plenty of room on this forum for your point of view, especially as regards disabled or differently abled scouts. I'm sorry you were did not get the full benefit of the scouting program as a youth, but I'm glad to see that you seem to have come to terms with it without bearing any grudges. Regards, DWS

Welcome to the forums. This question has been discussed extensively before, most recently at: http://www.scouter.com/Forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=269484 Happy reading! Regards, DWS

Actually there are two forms: Eagle Scout Leadership Service Project Workbook (512-927) and Eagle Scout Rank Application (512-728) Both are available at www.nesa.org. Both are in Adobe PDF format and ARE fillable. Regards, DWS

Stone Cold, if a scout entered your campsite with his arm hanging down at a funny angle and a bone protruding through the skin, screaming in pain, would you "get rid of him" for distracting from the game of scouting? How about the boy lying in his tent with a high fever and complaining loudly of abdominal pain? Just another trouble make to be excluded? We should not practice medicine beyond our training or in violation of licensing requirements, but that does not mean we should just ignore obvious signs of physical or mental illness or injury. Advising the boy and his parents to seek q

One small correction to the generally good advice you received above; all tax exempt organizations are now required to file an IRS Form 990, if you are a small tax exempt (gross receipts less than $25,000) you can file electronically using Form 990-N, which is a very short "postcard" type return. See http://epostcard.form990.org and http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=169250,00.html Regards, DWS

Thanks for double checking that for us Stosh, at least we're all pretty well agreed on what the flag code says on the subject. One minor quibble, the flag code is law, but there are no penalties for failure to follow it. I can see why a church might want to give precedence to a symbol of faith over a symbol of nationalism in its worship space, and it is certainly their right to do so. But what about when the worship space is being used for other than a worship service? I've been to about half a dozen ECOH's in the past 5 years, and all of them were held in churches. Not in the fellows

ALPS Mountaineering offers their 45% scouting discount on their self inflating pads (www.scoutdirect.com). I have an old Thermarest (not sure of the model) but I ordered an ALPS one for my son. My son decided he liked the color of my Thermarest better so we traded. The ALPS is every bit as comfortable as the Thermarest, comes with a nice carry bag and repair kit too. Regards, DWS

Boy Scout Handbook, Twelfth Edition, page 75: "Displayed from a staff in an auditorium or place of worship, the flag of the United States of America holds the position of honor to the right of a speaker as he or she faces the audience. Any other flags should be placed on the speaker's left." Growing up, I spent most of my Sundays serving as an acolyte (altar boy) in an Episcopal church. We actually had 4 flags on display in the sanctuary, U.S., Canadian, Episcpal Church USA flag, and a diocesan flag. The national flags went on the right, U.S. in rightmost position) and church flag

Stosh, this statement has me a bit confused: "If the flag is within the the railing of the altar area, if it is present, the religious flag is on the right of the officiant/clergy, not the US flag, it is on the left." So if the flag is within the railing, and at floor level (i.e. not on a raised platform) then it should be to the officiant's left, the congregation's right? My reading of the U.S. Flag code says it is always on the speaker or Clergy's right when the flag is in front of the audience or congregation. Can you direct me to a source for your statement? This came up i

I think quite a few of the 90% are hesitant to step forward for fear of becoming one of the 10%. Regards, DWS

AlFansome, that's the tip I needed, thanks for your help. Regards, DWS

Has anyone had any success editing the contact information for beascout.org? I can get to the admin page on myScouting, but the only thing I'm able to edit is the other information field. The contact information is stuck with the Council's phone number etc. I looked around and I can't find any other pack in our area that has updated their contact info, so just for fun I ran a query using my old address in another council (small gripe, you have to put in a full address, rather than just zip code to do a search) and all the listings there had council info for contacts. Maybe I'm doin

Yep, I was at the '79 one as well, working the first aid station with my explorer post. Regards, DWS

Most of the "mess kits" I have encountered were not particularly well designed for cooking in the outdoors, at least in my mind. They are usually too thin and flimsy, with a very bad tendency to produce hot spots, too small to cook for more than one person, and generally a pain to work with. I recall that the first campout I took one one resulted in my losing the wingnut that held the handle on the fry-pan, making it mostly useless in that configuration, and somehow melting a hole in the plastic cup. In my troop we cooked in pairs mostly on a propane or butane "grasshopper" style st

Back in the day, we used to have Council Encampments about every 4 years, a camporee style event for the whole Gulf Coast Council. I don't know if they still do that. Buffalo Skipper, did you attend the Bicentennial Encampment in '76? All I remember is that is was a miserably hot weekend on a big open field, possibly a disused NAS flightline, with no shade anywhere. Oh, and Chappy James spoke to the assembly. Regards, DWS

I think the BSA needs to get rid of those intolerent scouters who wnat to expel other scouters due to their personal flaws. Uh, wait a minute...nevermind. Regards, DWS

I couldn't get it to work with IE 8, but it ran just fine with Firefox 3.6.8 Regards, DWS

mpaull, LS is short for Long Sleeve, ODL=Oscar De Larenta who designed the shirts for the circa 1980 Boy Scout Uniform. And Eagle92 is correct that there were s/s shirts with collars available in the mid 70's, but not as early as '72 as I recall. They became an option in about 1975, but until the ODL shirst came out the collarless style remained available. Regards, DWS

I can't add much to Beavah's excellent post on why torture should not be condoned, but I am remainded of a favorite bit of dialog from Robert Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons" that I can't resist sharing: Wife: Arrest him! More: For what? Wife: He's dangerous! Roper: For all we know he's a spy! Daughter: Father, that man's bad! More: There's no law against that! Roper: There is, God's law! More: Then let God arrest him! Wife: While you talk he's gone! More: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law! Roper: So, now you give the De

Coming at this from the other direction, as I am currently invovlved with my son's cub pack, I thought that being an MBC might be a good way for me to find out a little about the BS troops in the area and make some contacts. So about 5 months ago I approached the DAC at roundtable and let him know I'd be interested in volunteering to counsel Personal Management and American Business. He essentially told me that most troops stuck with their own MBC's and if I wasn't affiliated with a troop I probably wouldn't get any referrals. He took my business card and told me he'd get back to me, bu

Skipper, I think you've got a great idea, and a wonderful vision. My only suggestion (and it's only a suggestion) is rather than split off the older boys to go on a backpacking trek, keep the patrols together with an eye towards getting everyone to the point where they would be confident enough to tackle a multi-day outing on the AT (and you would have enough confidence to take them!). I understand you have some great adult resources who can serve as instructors, but IMO that opportunity should first be offered to your older boys. Give them all a taste of "high adventure", gi

OGE, I'm not sure that duplication of leadership would necessarily be that much of a problem. If BSA were to require two completely seperate units, i.e. seperate charters for male and female units then yes, but what if they did something along the lines of the British model, have a Scout Group umbrella organization with single sex sub-units, all under one charter. One committee, one GSM, and leaders of the sub-units that can back each other up as needed.