Fat Old Guy

"By the way, does Scouter.com cover the whole of the US or just a region?" It covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia and all territories and protectorates of the USA including Puerto Rico, Guam and a little place called Australia. Oh . . . Canada is included as well.

"To put it another way, lets say you do send the guy off to Access training. When he gets back you soon send to to Photo shop training. Now he knows two of the programs that make up the complete Office suit. Maybe a little later he can learn Power Point." However, the poor sod is not being allowed to utilize the skills that he has learned. I get the feeling that you believe that boys should be rotated through positions as quickly as possible so others can step in and get their tickets punched. Maybe the guy likes being QM but you'd force him out after he straightend out the mess so someone else can have their chance to mess things up again. Might make sense to you but doesn't make sense to me.

What is the solution? Districts need to identify people who are still willing to help that have stepped away from activity with a Unit. The guy who put in six years as SM and now is stepping aside because his son is off to college, probably has the time to give the district ten hours a month. Our District Commissioner, District Chair and two of the three ADCs have no real unit level jobs. Some are registered as Committe Members or ASMs but they don't do much with their units any more. The UCs need to pay attention to what's going on with registered adults in their units and when someone is leaving, tap them for a Distric job. Unit leaders need to listen to the parents who say, "Gee, I'd love to do something but I don't camp," maybe they could help at the District level.

One of the biggest mistakes that any organization makes is to try to recruit people for new jobs from the group that is already giving up their time to the organization. People only have so much time to give and they have to prioritize the requests. Let's take a somewhat average white collar worker. There are 168 hours in a week. The normal sleep deprived person spends about 42 of them sleeping. Let's allow 7 hours for the three S's every morning. About 50 are spent at work. Add in another ten for commuting. That's 109 hours, leaving 59 hours. Sunday mornings for most are taken up with church, so that takes another four hours. Meals with the family take another 10 hours. Mowing the lawn takes two hours. Helping Junior with his homework takes five hours. What about paying bills, taxes and such things? Let's say two hours a week. Now we're down to 36 hours. All work and no relaxation makes Jack aggrevated so let's let him read the paper, watch Star Gate, read a book, and check his email. All that takes about 10 hours a week. 26 hours left. What about getting ready for bed? No one just jumps into bed. Well, maybe an 11 year old does but it takes at least a half an hour to change into your PJs, brush your teeth and make sure all the lights are off. There go another three hours. 23 hours remaining. If he's involved with the Troop, he puts in an hour a week that really takes six hours. 17 hours remaining. 17 hours left. Tha't just over two hours a day. Two hours a day to go shopping, catch a movie, squeeze in doctor's appointments. Two hours a day to go camping, play catch, take the dog for a walk, go to the gym? Even though it often happens, we can't expect people to make Scouting their life to the exclusion of all else.

How does one master leadership? A leadership situation is always presenting new challenges. Let's look at other positions. Let's take a hypothetical Quartermaster (this is a real hypothetical situation, unlike those presented by others) who has spent a year first tracking down troop equipment that has gone astray, creating an inventory control system for equipemnt and then implementing that system. Should our QM then abandon the position to someone who will reap the benefits of his hard work or should he remain in the position and enjoy things for a while? If you are constantly throwing steep learning curves at people, they'll get frustrated and quit. Imagine if an employer sent an employee to Microsoft Access training, allowed the person to become proficient with Access and then told him, "Okay, now that you know Access you won't touch it anymore. We're sending you to Photoshop training." I know that I'd ask, "Why am I being asked to learn skills that I cannot use?"

" And the ALICE pack? No way. There are many packs that are a LOT more comfortable than that old thing." Maybe I'm strange (Okay I know that I'm strange) but I've never found having 50 lbs on my back to be comfortable, no matter how it is carried. I got you beat on that "U-Dig-It" thing. I have a plastic garden trowel that I bought at Wally World for a buck. Feather weight, digs a hole and if I lose it, it cost less than a bottle of pop.

"Going from olive/olive to olive/tan makes sense in the context of having a BSA uniform that is different from the Armed Forces uniforms." Tan shirt, green pants. Have you seen a Marine recently?

" It was met with tasteless ridicule not because of the validity of the statement, but because of the poster's personal vindictiveness toward me." Nah, I would have Ralphed no matter who had said it. "In doing so he allowed his hate . . . " Hate? You're still giving yourself too much credit. "to blind him to the the model on which this leadership concept is based." I wouldn't hold Jesus up as a great example of leadership. One of his followers denied knowing him. One of his followers sold him down the river. One of his followers refuses to accept his existence until he stuck his hand into the wounds. One of his guys almost drowned because he didn't believe. That's trouble with 33% of his followers. Sounds like he wasn't doing a good job. "As far as that posters comment regarding Jesus as a "long dead person" It is my understanding that he is still alive." Along with Elvis and JFK.

I have two of the red BSA berets. If worn witht the tie in the back, the emblem is over the left eye.

"Perhaps a nice campout where you can commune with nature for a while is in order." I chose the Navy so that I could sleep on a matress and wouldn't have to "commune" with nature. I leave the communing part to the guys who want to play Army.

I find it amusing that one person (Wheeler) was blasted for quoting long dead people to support his position and but one who blasted him quotes not just a long dead person but someone who claims to have written down what the long dead person said. Interessant, nicht war? " Even worse that someone would use the forum for their own person vendetta rather than for the purpose the forum was designed for" You really have an inflated sense of worth, don't you?

I'll go with "Friggin' in the Riggin'" . . . wait . . . no, that's not a Scout song. Froggie isn't bad. I like Herman the Worm. Walloping Window Blind.

" I don't buy the adult arguments about quality, functionality, and cost. Even grown up kids like to play "Army". They just won't admit it." Sorry to disappoint you but I have no desire to play Army or even "Marines at Paris Island." I use GI gear because it good, durable and inexpensive. I have a GI tri-fold shovel that cost less than $10 and is built like a tank. A similar shovel that's made in China cost $10 at the local camping store but is so cheap that the blade can be bent with a little effort. I have a large Alice pack that cost about $40 with frame and is more rugged than any commercial product. It weighs a couple pounds more than a high tech pack but I'm big enough to handle the weight.

" What an unfortunate reaction to the teachings of Jesus Christ...(Luke 22:24-26)" Christ was also nailed to a tree. Do you want that to happen to this Scout? If you want to follow the teachings of Christ, do you advocate selling your coat and buying a sword or, in today's world, a gun?

I'm a big fan of washing hands before cooking because I'm more concerned about what came from the Scouts butt than I am about the chicken's butt. The likelyhood of getting a salmonella infected egg is 1 in 20,000. http://cityguide.news-press.com/fe/Dining/Stories/031015_eggs.asp

Be that as it may, why not just call them awards? Eagle is ofter referred to as the Eagle Scout award.

"I'm still wondering where the heck they got the idea of epulates and shoulder loops from." Epaulets are a classic military uniform feature. They are handy for holding gloves, caps and gas mask bag straps. I think that the loops were borrowed from the Army which uses (Or used) green loop to designate combat leaders.

Our resident pooh-pooher of all things not current, I won't name him but his initials are Bob White, often says that the old handbooks are especially bad because of the out of date first aid information (somehow to him it makes sense to eliminate star charts because CPR has changed). Quite often he blathers about how the old way of using a tourniquet was dangerous, deadly, and EVIL. I've been checking old handbooks first aid sections to see how they described the used of a tourniquet. I had gone back to the 50s without finding any thing significantly different than what is taught today. I found the same thing in the 40s. Now I'm looking at the third edition of the handbook, printed in 1936. First it explains how to stop arterial bleeding using direct pressure (sound familiar?). The section on tourniquets is titled " 'Ware the Tourniquet" and starts off "A tourniquet is like a stick of dynamite . . .necessary at time but as deadly as that . . . high explosive unless used with skill and rare good judgement. It is seldom necessary to use a tourniquet." (emphasis original) Much of the rest of the section is dedicated to the dangers of the tourniquet, why they shouldn't be used and when they are contraindicated. Also included is the true story of how a poorly applied tourniquet cost someone his life. Maybe we need to go back to the 1700s to find a handbook that gives bad gouge about tourniquets.

"How did the change from Venture Scouts to Explorers go?" I find it somewhat ironic that you went from Venture to Explorer and we went from Exploring to Venturing.

"I want a son like that!" I'd be happy if my son would brush his teeth.

KS said, "What it's really about is wanting to wear/carry military stuff outdoors." I dunno 'bout that. If you go to nearly any construction site around here, you'd think that the place was populated by veterans. Nearly every bricklayer, carpenter or hod carrier wears BDU pants. Compared to Carhart work pants, BDU pants are cheap. " None of it free, and all requiring some distinctive clothing/equipment in order to "play", and mom more than willing to fork over the $$. Sigh." Come on. . . get with it. Haven't you learned that "sports are important" and "Scouts is just . . . Scouts."

Laurie, Think of how much more that SPL learned by serving for two years and figuring out a way to train his replacement than if he had followed the normal model of serving for six months and then stepping aside.

It really sucks that they had to kill the bear because of a Scout's stupidity.

Am I to infer the the Scouting in the UK was unbalanced before now? Or was it that the Scouters were unbalanced? (Mad dogs and Englishmen?)

"Oh, ED understands the law, but the judge doesn't?! Oh, ye with eyes closed. You are blind and cannot see. Judges run with public opinion. Judges do what's good for their career. Judges have their own agendas. "However, the judge didn't even need to address that part, since he found method used to lease the land to be unconstitutional." I just re-read the entire Constitution and I found not a word regarding the lease of public lands. Strange, isn't it?