walk in the woods

Ask Brendan Eich?

LeCastor: I'm interpreting "Whither the Order of the Arrow" as meaning where is the Order headed, what's the Order's future. JasonG: I don't disagree the Native American heritage is a big part of scouting. But the question is whether or not it _should_ be a large part of scouting. We have had recent and recurring discussions about "sash and dash," patrols that don't want to go camping, STEM, membership decline, getting back to our roots, etc. Inherent in each discussion are a couple of simple questions, namely, is our program relevant to the youth of today? And, how much of the curre

Sounds to me if you force them into camping you'll just push them out of the program. How old are these scouts? Maybe you encourage their interests now, reinforce the patrol method in whatever activities they choose and turn them into a specialty Venturing Crew when they get to 14?

I don't share Seattle's opinion of the Native American lore and traditions and I don't think it's reason enough not to be active. However, it does raise an interesting question of whether or not the Native American traditions are relevant to today's youth. Those traditions are 100 years old and come from a time when everything "indian" was painfully and chronologically relevant. Should the OA go a different direction and leave the Native American lore and traditions to say Venturing Crews?

"Eagle on Ice - Eagle Scout Paul Siple's Antarctic Adventures with Commander Byrd" by Patricia Potter Wilson and Roger Leslie

We did DO pizza casserole at our last cub outing. We had the boys get involved by greasing the DOs, rolling out the pizza crusts, jumping when they popped open, adding the toppings, etc. Mountain Man is always good. Also love doing the foil packets.

Tell your son he is only responsible for the content of his own character. Eagle is worth what the individual scout puts into it. I suspect you could find lots of people who cheated their way to a college degree. Does that diminish the accomplishment of completing a course of study yourself? You have a wonderful opportunity to reinforce strong character and values with your son at this moment. What a blessing in disguise.

We used to charge $40 dues. The dues covered $24 charter renewal, $12 Boys Life subscription, $1 insurance fee to council and $3 for the unit for miscellaneous stuff. Everything else we covered with fundraising (popcorn). The rest of your budget if fully dependent on your program, what "stuff" you want to provide to your scouts, and what you'll expect parents to pay for directly. Our pack always provided the book, necker, slide and all the awards. Depending on your activity level that could chew up $30 - $50/boy/year easily. If you provide PWD cars or bird house kits or anything lik

I personally have never cared for the ceremony where the flag is cut into pieces. To me the action of cutting the flag feels like desecration. That said, we've done it a couple of times because the pieces were easier for folks to handle. I do agree with Stosh that once it is cut up it's no longer a flag. Since burning is only the recommended way of retiring the flag, if one is concerned about all the petroleum in the nylon burning, cutting the flag into pieces might be a fitting end to a ceremony.

Well, to be clear, religion isn't doing anything to scouting. People professing belief systems (religious or not) and taking inflexible positions based on those belief systems, might be tearing scouting apart in the US.

I don't believe the flag code requires anything to be done with the ashes. If your experience is like ours, you're going to get more of a molten pool of plastic than ashes. I have discretely buried them near a local veteran's memorial on most occassions. We have traditionally done the grommet thing. Again, nothing in the code to my knowledge. We allow the boys to determine who gets them back unless we have a pre-request from someone having a flag retired. We've given them to the local Legion members, city council members, fire department trustees, fire department members, etc. We al

Along with KDD's comment about bringing the structure in line with the LDS configuration, the head-counters have already moved Varsity into the Venturing column at least for head-counting purposes.

I think you answered your own question about why 16-17 year old boys may not want to associate with younger scouts. It's not new. When I was a 16 year old scout I didn't want to hang with the 12 year old scouts either. I staffed camp and was deeply involved in the OA. They were my options for escaping from the younger crowd. I don't worry too much about the leadership issue. Leaders move up with kids. My CO had a Pack, Troop and Crew. We had three committees on paper but only one in reality. It was fine, other than the pain of recharter.

JP, my understanding is the centennial patch can be earned by anyone in the order and worn on the white sash w/ red arrow. The red sash with white arrow is for NOAC attendees. The last I knew it was only supposed to be worn at NOAC.

I was a smoking scoutmaster. I tried to keep it away from the boys on campouts by waiting until they were off and running or going to the designated area when it fit into the schedule. Most of the boys knew I smoked and I was sure to tell them it sucked at every opportunity. Is your current scoutmaster a great example in this particular case, no, but perfection isn't a job description. As for the shirts, the breast cancer crowd uses a lot of racy stuff to draw attention to their cause. It's a curious thing. Like others have said if they were on their own time and not representing the

The post I quoted from initially had two paragraphs. To summarize my take on it, the first paragraph said it wasn't going to be an issue in your unit. The second paragraph said you feared it being an issue in other units. I addressed the second point. I don't know if you are a bigot or intolerant or not. Frankly that information is immaterial to the discussion. I do believe that fear is the emotion that leads to bigotry and intolerance. I'm not a logician but let me try to explain how I'm reading/hearing your comments with an exercise. First, I'm going to assert and ask you to st

​Fear is the key word and tricky phrase here. You are projecting behaviors and assuming outcomes based on sterotypes of evangelicals that you choose to belive. I think my friends on the left call this intolerance or bigotry or some such thing like that. I agree with my friends on the left who tell me that fear of the unknown is what generates hate. It applies to the extremist on both ends of the political spectrum

Perdidochas has it right. This really isn't all that complicated: 1. If you're not comfortable talking about duty to God with your scouts, don't talk about it. Mention the requirement in passing and tell the scout I'm leaving this one to you and your parents. Enjoy the rest of the conversation with the scout. 2. If you're part of a single-faith troop, have deep and long and detailed conversations about faith and theology all you want. Enjoy the conversation with the scout. 3. If you're part of a unit with multiple faiths and you're comfortable, ask the scout how he does his duty to Go

I had a similar sized Pack. We almost never did Pack meetings in a room (ours were on Sunday afternoons). Go for a hike, go fishing, find a local stable to let you do horseback riding, visit a fire department or police station, go to a climbing gym, go to the YMCA, go for a bike ride, go to a park with a playground and have a picnic, find a PowWow to attend. Go play. Your small size is your advantage! As for awards, 5 minutes max at the beginning of the meeting, "The bear/wolves completed the following achievements, please come forward to receive your bling." About the only indoor pack m

If you've advised the Pack that you're done in March, be done in March. Put together a good year for the boys and move onto Scouting with your son. No regrets.

GM, I have a son with Asperger's Syndrome also. I have to call you out though on language. Asperger's Syndrome is neither a learning disability nor a mental disability. It is a developmental or neurological disorder that affects social skills and interactions, including repetitive behaviors. The social aspect may be profound or minimal depending on the person. Asperger's Syndrome may be accompanied by mental or learning disabilities but those are independent of Asperger's Syndrome. We can't expect people to understand our kids if we aren't clear about what it is and isn't. Sorry, it's

@fred johnson: My old scoutmaster handbook includes the following as the first sentence under the advancement section: "The Boy Scout Advancement Program encourages boys to meet significant challenges that lead to personal growth."

The project should challenge the scout's ability to lead without putting an overly high probability of failure on the young man. When we start comparing projects between scouts is when we go off the rails into the realm of adult drama. A young man that is a natural, charismatic leader with loads of self-confidence should be held to a higher bar than a young man that struggles with social skills. The thing we should be judging is not the objective challenge of the project itself but the subjective challenge it presents the individual scout. If the scout is challenged to stretch and lead to

The challenge in these conversations is we're talking something that are inherently subjective (leadership and service) and attempting to apply objective criteria (hours worked, dirt moved, pictures taken) to judge boys. We have a 40-odd page workbook and a whole publication dedicated to defining, describing and setting criteria for advancement today because we're trying to mollify the people complaining that little Johnny didn't work as hard as their boy to get Eagle, or a merit badge, or a shiny stick. Let's be honest, the project didn't even exist as a requirement until the 60s. I've

I'll be the contrarian. The Eagle project is a Leadership SERVICE project. Who is served more, the person who needs but can't afford a coat and gets one through the SERVICE project, or the occassional passer-by that happens to sit on a bench, or appreciates the new bushes around a church front door?