eisely

National does not require a qualified lifeguard in the group for a routine boating activity, including a multi day float trip UNLESS there is a non swimmer in the group. Perhaps the person disapproving the tour permit had or obtained knowledge that one or more non swimmers were going on the event.

One of the prior posts pointed out that a council may have the right to impose more rigorous requirements than does national.

Here is another link to information about the Allegheny and other rivers.

http://www.canoe-camping.org/

I was blessed with good teachers in both high school and as an undergraduate. By the time that I graduated from college I could write pretty well although I did not enjoy it.

Odd as it may sound, the place where I really learned to write was in the army. There was a point where I was assigned the task of writing an operating procedure for our headquarters for duty officers to follow when the word came down that world war III was under way. We were nuclear capable, and we had to have instructions that any officer could pick up and follow step by step error free. This simple writing assignment took several weeks. The payoff was that none of our duty officers ever screwed up a test message. This was also true for the units under us. People had their careers set back by screwing this up so it was pretty important.

Subsequently in Viet Nam in a different staff capacity I had access to a typewriter and carried on voluminous correspondence with various people, which further improved my skills.

I agree that the quality of the writing in some eagle project proposals I have seen is disappointing. Keep in mind that these young men are generally pretty bright and dedicated to what they are trying to do.

Whatever.

Like everything else this is clearly George Bush's fault.

I went to a Jewish wedding a few years ago. Both bride and groom were Jewish. Lobster was served at the rehearsal dinner. Hmmmm.

For what it is worth OGE, I agree with you. This has never come up in any Eagle project that I have seen, and many eagle projects in our district are supported either with cash or in kind donations by the beneficiary organization. I think your registrar is way out of line, and probably has too much time on his or her hands.

I have consistently advocated that SM, CC, Treasurer and Advancement Coordinator should all come from different households. Your situation may work fine, but in the long term it is not healthy for the unit and likely not healthy for the marriage as well. If the subject is to be raised it should be done in the spirit of spreading the work load.

The worst downside is the potential for misappropriation of funds, and possible cheating on advancement. Separating these responsibilities among households does not guarantee an effective program or against problems, but it makes it much more difficult for anyone with too much power to go astray.

Speaking of forecasts made by scientists; whatever happened to the millions of refugees that the UN predicted would result from global warming in 2010? Maybe they were the ones taken in the rapture do you suppose?

In the two districts in two different councils in which we have lived over the last 25+ years that I have been involved in scouting as an adult volunteer, all eagle BORs were conducted at the district level. I know that in some parts of the country eagle BORs are conducted at the unit level. Be that as it may, ours are at the district.

Either the references are a meaningful part of the process or they are not. I think any council that shifts the burden from the eagle candidate to the district is making a big mistake. The issue here is the time of the volunteers. While many adult volunteers cheerfully participate in the eagle process, contacting and interviewing references would be very burdensome. The letters are a substitute for this type of contact and are much more efficient for everybody, including the references themselves.

In our district we average about ten eagle BORs per month. Ten times five is fifty references to contact and interview each month. Who is going to coordinate that effort? One would need to train the interviewers and provide them with scripts. We are talking about likely an hour per reference, even if the conversation is less than half an hour. There are going to be missed contact and repeated calls. I for one would not go there.

One really smart thing that our council did a few years back was to review and sign off on the eagle application without the letters, leaving that completely to the units and districts. Our council does not even see the letters.

As the former eagle coordinator for our troop I would tell the scouts to have the letters mailed directly to me in my capacity as "assistant scoutmaster." That way it was easy to identify the letters among the junk mail. Never lost one. After the scout had obtained the signature at the council office, he would bring his binder with his application, personal statements, project workbook, etc to me and I would insert the letters and deliver the binders to the district advancement volunteer responsible for scheduling the eagle BORs. Simple and efficient for everyone. If someone had told me that I had to contact and interview every reference I would have told them to find someone else. I give a lot of time to scouting and that would be too much.

I got a warning from my computer and ran a scan with McAfee and it found nothing.

Our troop is fairly large (60+ scouts most years)and in a typical year about half a dozen scouts make eagle. We are not an eagle mill.

Nevertheless, I don't think we have ever had a scout who had attained eagle run for or be elected to SPL. Appointing them as JASM honors them and allows the troop to make use of their talents and experience, while leaving the PORs open for those who need them.(This message has been edited by eisely)

Coming late to this party.

We had a somewhat similar situation in our troop a few years ago. There was not a question of the scout's behavior or moral character, but he had been inactive for two years. The he showed up by surprise with a project workbook signed off by the beneficiary of the project as complete, and the project had never been approved ahead of time. This was not the only issue, but was the most significant issue. Both the SM and the CC refused to sign the eagle application. The council gave the scout his eagle anyway.

This scout will get his eagle unless the EBOR turns him down. So whether or not you sign will have no impact on his receiving the award. As you have acknowledged there are problems with the way the program is being run and this is just a symptom. No scout with the track record you described should have made it as far as he did without substantial corrective action, and that is primarily up to the SM.

I like Lisabob's suggestions of having a sit down with the youth without the dad and asking him why he thinks he should get the award. Make sure that he knows you are signing with reservations, but go ahead and sign.

Then get with your adult leadership and make the necessary revisions to your program, and possibly adult leadership if that becomes necessary as well.

I became a First Class Scout when Morse Code was still a requirement. Based on my own limited experience I would have to confirm that this requirement was the most difficult requirement for scouts, self included, at that time. Perhaps because this was a skill that one never exercised and required a great deal of pure memorization. I never heard an explanation as to why it was dropped, but perhaps it was dropped simply because it was difficult.

OGE

Two what? Are we to suspect the worst?

Echoing what others have written, it appears that these two men did not violate BSA policy. Absent a unit policy it is difficult to show people the door for violating a policy that did not exist at the time. Right now it appears "no harm - no foul."

Nevertheless I prefer that all adults refrain from drinking anything before or during a scouting event, which includes the drive home. I want to be sure that adults are fully capable of responding to any emergency. However, this needs to be laid down before the next outing. A friendly conversation with the COR and people involved is in order, but I would not expel these guys for this at this time.

Our council changed its policy a few years ago and started signing the certification part before the EBOR. This has greatly facilitated the entire process. The council concerns itself with the requirements only. Reference letters are for the EBOR. Personal statements and scouting auto biographies are for the EBOR. By certifying the requirements before the EBOR, everybody avoids do overs at the EBOR level.

I have always counseled youth, and their parents, that the most important signature is the council certification that all requirements have been met. Although this signature is not required before the 18th birthday, I have always urged boys to get this signature before their 18th birthday, because then there is no further question about when requirements were met.

It is also cleaner if the EBOR can take place before the 18th birthday as well, but one has the 90 day window after the 18th birthday to do this without a lot of explanation.

As a society we DO believe that the ends justify the means. That bridge was crossed when the Minutemen first opposed the progress of the British at Lexington in April of 1775. It is now a question of sorting out all the grey areas.

nldscout,

Why don't you let us know how you really feel?

This last weekend I was on staff for an Outdoor Leader Skills training event. One of things that we do on Sunday mornings is a "Scout's Own." The trainee who had volunteered to be master of ceremonies for the Scout's Own stepped forward and began with a personal statement, which I quote from memory as best I can:

"I have been in law enforcement for twenty one years. During that time I have had numerous contacts with youth, frequently taking them into custody. When I would contact the parents to come get their kid, often the parents would say, 'I don't care what you do with him. I am not coming to get him. Take him to Juvenile Hall.' I was losing faith. How could a parent take such an attitude toward their own child? Only recently since I have become involved in scouting as a volunteer leader have I re-discovered that there parents who do care and who do love their children. For this I am grateful."

(This message has been edited by eisely)

I had forgotten that our Department of Justice had initiated investigations of CIA operatives involved in interrogations of terrorist detainees. Since everybody from Obama on down is now crowing about the success of the Bin Laden mission, that relied on information obtained in some of these interrogations, isn't it time for Attorney General Holder to call a halt to these investigations?

Just a wild guess: St. Augustine?

Presidents do get too much blame and too much credit regarding the economy. There is little that the federal government can do to affect the economy in the near term, but policy actions can have major long term consequences.

I would prefer that elected leaders set good examples across the board, but people are fallible. Often the most effective leaders have some of the most glaring character flaws.

During the Civil War, Grant's enemies in the Federal military hierarchy (not the confederacy) started whispering campaigns about alleged drinking. Lincoln's response was, "Find out what he's drinking and give it to the rest of my generals."

Information from the highly reliable Wikipedia:

British Major James Abbott founded Abbottabad in January 1853 after the British annexed the Punjab to their India holdings.

Every presidents has both successes and failures. Carter's two successes were facilitating the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt and the Panama Canal Treaty. I would point out that the initiative for the deal between Israel and Egypt came from Anwar Sadat. Nevertheless the US had a role to play and Carter did what was appropriate and necessary.

My beef is with his behavior since leaving office, including criticizing the US and its leaders in front of foreign audiences.

I have been out scouting over the weekend and away from my computer for some time. In no way did I expect the kind of response or interest in this topic.

Former presidents should stay out of the lime light. George W. Bush is the better exemplar of post presidential behavior, even as his successor continued to blame him for everything. Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, GHW Bush, Nixon, LBJ and Ford all offer far better examples of post WWII non interference in the affairs of the nation after they left office.

In a post several years ago in this forum I commented that Carter should have stuck to his Habitat for Humanity work and I still feel that way. I don't know how much official blessing ahead of time Carter may have had for his various attempts at private diplomacy, but I am inclined to believe that he has largely gone off on his own. The entire notion of "private diplomacy" is a bit of an oxymoron when one thinks about it.

It is one thing when the sitting president calls you, the former president, up and asks you to do something like lead a relief effort. It is entirely different when a sitting president supposedly contracts out an important piece of foreign policy to an ex president. It doesn't make sense to me that any president, including Obama, would welcome the kind of free lance activities of Carter.

Carter never seems to have gotten over the fact that he failed at re election in a landslide. Reasons for voter dissatisfaction at the time: the state of the economy, the continuing humiliation of the Iran hostage crisis, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which took Carter completely by surprise.

My view of Carter is based on much more than just his conduct towards North Korea. I admit that my language is snarky, but I do not accept the characterization of it as a "hate thread."

The sufferings of the people of North Korea are solely the fault of the government of North Korea and no else is responsible. If it were truly feasible to work around the North Korean government and get aid directly to the people then that would be a different matter. Unfortunately the North Korean government makes that impossible.

Keep in mind Carter said the United States was guilty of a "human rights violation," as quoted in the linked story. Perhaps he did not really say that, but given his track record, I accord the benefit of the doubt to the news source.

Who benefits from such an accusation? The starving people of North Korea? The South Koreans? The United States? The beneficiary of the accusation is the dictatorial regime of North Korea. Carter's language is not only detrimental to the US and offensive to ordinary Americans, it actually impedes peaceful resolution of outstanding issues because it encourages the North Korean regime.

Have a nice day.