Eagledad

For me a troop is real life scaled down to a boys size. THat being said, can an adult handle two jobs in real life? Depends! Does he have the skills, time, abilities, ambition and desire? Does the situation require a few people to take on multiple responsibilities? We had an SPL who also held a office position at school, very active in band and very active in OA all at the same time. He was such a good SPL, he was elected for a second term. He certainly could handle multiple jobs at the same time. I wanted scouts to be challenged in their responsibilities so they would learn. It just make take to jobs for a scout to feel challenged. Barry

>>Bob- so the committee makes the vision or the SM and teh committe provides the vehicle for getting there

>>So often we are so anti-megatroops that we forget that maybe if the boys are having fun the BSA/BP recommened sizes aren't the issue.

>>Or are we really talking about making the call to insure that as many $10 registration fees are collected as possible?

>>How can a DE "fix" the fact that a bunch of parents are more worried about easing their burden or a pack or troop are looking to make their task easier by depriving these boys or the program designed to "transition" them from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts?

Happy Scouting All >>This may sound a bit dumb, but I think of a round plastic sheet full of water which is held up by 12 lines. If you slack off on one, you will lose a little water. Jim

>>Just curious to know if we are beating ourselves up over dates and ages when it does not really matter.

You know I was thinking about the good ol days and when I was a Cub. And I understand about following rules, setting an example and doing the right thing. Still, not to long ago we had a discussion of why scouting is loosing kids and, at least to me, we came to a general consensus that parents are too afraid to let their kids venture out anymore. It is safer in our minds to keep them close playing video games all day and know where they are then let them roam off somewhere to organize a neighborhood football game. Here is an example of adults getting creative and doing a fun activity, safely I might add, and yet it is against the rules. They could have done it exactly the same way and called it a bunch of friends lock-on or overnighter or even a sleep over. Im sure they had a great time as it is, and changing the name wouldnt have changed a thing. But, because it was a fun cub scout Bear event, we have to rethink the whole thing. At least it was a great time for the boys to be a Cub Scout. So, to answer chuckst8ers question; no, there isnt really a way of accomplishing the same activity and appease all the legals. I know that there will be many more discussions of why the BSA numbers are dropping. Sadly it seems, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Barry

>>Although I agree with him, I think many of us consider these concepts to be unequal and it was my intent to demonstrate that inequality.

>>I fear that once this kid comes out from under all this oppression he won't be the same kid. I'll write about this when it happens.

>>The boys are quite aware of the 'hot buttons' we recognize as adults and a question about 'thrifty' is not the same as one about 'reverent'.

Great Monday All >>I would have expected any adult leader not only be permitted to attend but also contribute to the meeting.

>>There are a very few scouts in my area that aren't Christian, and I worry that they won't get a fair shake at their EBOR, if only because a well-intentioned board might not have a broad enough perspective or be open-minded enough to accept that some faiths are very different from Christianity, and that the job of the EBOR is not to determine a faith's "acceptability" through the lens of of the DRP.

>>There are plenty of places that don't require the use of fossil fuel to cook on. A #10 can makes a great stove that will still work on natural fuels rather than carrying flamable liquids into the forests. A #10 stove can burn wood, charcoal and wax. I'm not talking campfires here, I'm talking cooking fires/stoves, limited, and confined.

>> Doesn't that really indicate a training problem rather than a patrol make-up problem? Shouldn't the leaders in the troop be using the Leading/Teaching Edge principles from NYLT (Explaining, Demonstrating, Guiding, and Enabling)

I am with Stosh about using a fire. We cooked all our meals from fires when I was a scout and it is a huge confidence builder. Scouts today just can see how to do it. When my son was a Troop Guide, he taught all his new scouts to cook on the fire on their first campout. He said that for him, it was one of the fastest ways to bond them as a patrol. However, you would be surprised how many areas are regulated for stoves only. And fire bands have been very common in Oklahoma for several years. I think the problem is we develop habits and dont think out of the box when we can. I like the idea of an all fire cooking campouts to teach not only how to cook with the fire, but how to do KP as well. Anyone remember soaping the pans. Learning those simple skills will give them more choices on their future campouts. Barry

>>Alas, I'm still in the minority but there truly are two sides to every story.

>>I thought I had the Ship's officers 100% trained, I still do, but the records aren't agreeing with me.

>>If you have a few hundred dollars to spend on kitchen gear for each 6-8 scouts go for it! But keep in mind you will need several fuel bottles ($10.00 each) and two Dragonflys ($100+ each) and two smaller cook sets at$50 each (Even the "fly" has issues with an six to eight quart "pasta pot")...to do the same job as a coleman stove ($39.00) and a ($70) patrol cook kit.

We are a light weight patrol Troop. We spent lots of money several years back to build great and wonderful patrol boxes that could cripple a scout for life if he tripped. For a lot of reasons, we decided to experiment with light weight patrol gear that could be carried in with backpacks if so desired. We were at a point of needing large trucks to haul gear. So we made a decision to make the patrol portable by cars only if the need every came. There is some really good lightweight gear out there. The only disadvantage is lightweight gear is typically better quality which means higher priced. But it is typically more durable. Except for our four man dome tents, all the patrol gear fits in a milk carton including a rain fly. We typically use personal tents on backpacking trips. Stoves seem to be the main worry here, but we found the Coleman Exponent Xpedition Two Burner Stove works very well for both the troop campouts and highadventure. They are pricy at about $85 dollars, but they are very robust with only one minor failure of our six stoves in eight years of use. We use them every month on all our campouts and including all our high adventure treks like Philmont and Northern tier. Since they are two burner stoves, they are very stable on the ground. When we made the change to light weight camping, we thought the scouts would hate the shift from patrol boxes and the old Coleman stoves, but they never looked back. They hated those boxes and now all they do is take up space in storage. We have given a couple boxes to new troops looking for starter gear. Going light has worked very well for us. The boys love it. Barry

>>I went, had a blast. It rained some, it was dry some, people complained, some Scouts helped fellow Scouts as necessary. The TEAM worked.

>>Honestly I don't know how you handle this if you are actually going to let the boys really choose for themselves and you also don't want to lose those tough cases from your program.

>>It boggles the mind . . .

It is interesting that from my experiences, boys will not seriously train to get more physically in shape for a trek. The shakedowns typically are enough to let them know if they can hack it. I used to worry about the scouts not being physically in shape, but they typically do very well. At least as well as the worst performing adult. The only time we had a problem with a scout who couldnt handle it was the one who missed most of the shakedowns do to a competitive soccer schedule. And it was mental fitness that was his problem, not physical. Looking back on it now, I think he might have had mountain sickness. That was when our troop was young and learning. So as a result, we enforce the requirement of attending a minimum number of shakedowns, especially if the scout had never been on a trek before. The adults on the other hand take getting in shape pretty seriously, and they need to. We had one adult whose business prevented him from attending shakedowns for our Northern Tier Trek. He was miserable the whole trip. He took charge of the Philmont trip next year and was in training for six months. As for the bad attitude that Neil was talking about: Most of the time you can identify those guys as ones who didnt want to be their in the first place. We tried to weed them out at the shakedowns as well, but it isnt always possible. I did have a couple of the sense of entitlement adults Neal talks about. The problem there is that they tend to lie back during the shakedowns, but the stress of the long physical week erodes their patience. Since we usually took several crews, I spent a lot of time sitting with the crew adults trying get them to understand our roles in these crews. I've said before, if the adults are more excited for the trip then the scouts, you might have a problem. All in all, most of these things can be prevented before the trek starts. Barry

>>Making long lists of rules and harping on about the way it once was is not the answer. In fact at the end of the day I feel it will really scare the youth away.