fotoscout

Woooooo!!! A pocketknife and improperly worn patches? This rivals costume boy!! Foto

We ran our Derby this past Saturday at the local Fire House. It was great! In past years my pack used our beat-up old 4 lane wooden track and ran the derby as a Pack night activity, in the single elimination format. Most of the kids only got to race in one race. It stunk! Most of the leaders were more interested in getting it over with, than with the kids having fun. Half of the kids (and parents) never saw their car run. So last year, with the support of our Cubmaster and bunch or parents, we devised a plan to upgrade the Derby. We did a number Show & Sell popcorn fundraisers, and with the help of one of our parents, we purchased a Best-Track 6 lane aluminum track, MicroWizard timer and Derby Master software. The hall was decorated with all sorts of racing stuff. Pennants, flags, posters, you name it we collected it. The only thing we were missing was NASCAR race car outside the building. The races started at 10:00 with the dens having a staggered arrival time on the hour. Each boy got to race in at least 4 races. The top three finishers in each den moved on the the pack finals. Larger dens were split in two so that more kids could advance. The Pack finals were held at around 2:00 and also ran with multiple rounds. We awarded ribbons to everyone; participation ribbons went to all the boys, win - place - show ribbons to the top three finishers in each den, and small medals to the top finishers in the pack. We sold food, and had games and crafts to keep the kids busy when they werent racing. Unfortunately, many of the folks came and went during the day with only the core group of Pinewood Derby fanatics staying for the whole day! It really did turn out be the marquee Cub Scout event that Pinewood Derby ought to be. Even more so than Blue and Gold, this is the one event that draws friends and neighbors, grandparents and great-grandparents. Everyone has a story, and everyone remembers the Derby from their own days as a Cub Scout or Cub Scout sibling. Everyone had a great time. No arguments, no disputes, no questions about the race results. For the guys running the race it was stressless! If any of you are thinking about buying a timer and software package, I would strongly advise you to go ahead and buy it. You cant imagine how much more fun it was for us, because of the timer and softeware.

I bought the ones at COSTCO a few months ago.....they're comfy.

I dont think it about a legit way to put an adult into the same tent. Its about finding a way to make it work, that BSA will support, while recognizing that not all scouts have the opportunity to have a parent come along on camping trips. Its about finding a way for a boy who lost his father on 9/11 to go camping with us. Its about the boy who isnt quite ready to sleep in a tent without an adult and he comes from a single parent home where mom cant leave the other kids behind to go camping. AND its about a very lousy goosey bit of rule writing, 'guardian - legal guardian'.

Hi Guys, Twocub, I havent been to Camp School yet. My schedule for this year doesnt allow it, maybe next year. I would really like to go, Ive heard a lot of very good things about it! We do the placemats for B&G, and we publish a big four page glossy flyer (separate flyers for CS & BS) that gets mailed to all registered leaders and scouts. Continuous Roundtable promos start in February and continue until June. All of our camp and camping programs seem to be rolled into the promos. Parent-Cub, Family Camp, CS/Webelos Resident Camp, our traveling CS Day Camp, and our eight week scout camp based CS day camp are all showcased in the promos. Unfortunately we dont have a video. I have plenty of photos and I suppose I could make some of them into overheads or posters. Adrianvs, a short activity of some sort is the kind of thing that I was looking for. But I would think that it really needs to be camp like and different than the things that are done in a den or pack. Anyone have some suggestions?

Interesting thought. Big tent, more than two adults, a child with every adult. If my kid has to go the bathroom, then only I need to get up and go with him. The only problem I see is in the morning, who gets up when???

fboisseau, Sorry..Agreed !, my fingers were going faster than my eyes. Im still interested in the groups interpretation of grandparents, uncles, and older siblings?

Hello Everybody, Ive been asked to join the CS Camp Committee; possibly as the chair (a surprise is on the way Im told). One of the functions of the committee members is to go out and do Camp Promotions. I am wondering how other people do their Cub Scout Camp Promotions? The Camp Promotions that I have seen have been informational but not very inspiring. Id like to make the promotion more CS friendly. Any and all thoughts would be welcome. Thanks, foto

Thanks guys. Its easy to see why there is a question here. The G2SS says guardian, yet to err on the safe side people have changed guardian to Legal Guardian, two very different phrases, especially to the lawyers among us. How would you guys interpret this if the other adult was a grandparent, uncle or older sibling?

Fboisseau, My understanding is that if the parent delegates responsibility for a child (in writing), to another adult, than, that other adult can sleep in the tent with the child. Your interpretation would create a situation where the child sleeps alone, and with CS & Webelos that is not supposed to happen. Does anyone have a clarification on this?

BSA has people called Voyagers. They work out of the High Adventure Bases as guides or outfitters. These individuals are very highly trained and experienced in running high adventure trips in the BSA model. You may want to contact your nearest high adventure base and get more information about planning a trip with these guys.

Hi, Technically the position of Den Chief is a Boy Scout position. The boys work as a Den Chief and gain credit toward their advancements. This is an integral part of the advancement program within Boy Scouts. To my knowledge Venturing does not have an advancement program, although Venturing does have different award levels. So, if a girl from a crew was to do the same job as a Den Chief, I dont think that she could accurately be called a Den Chief, in part because the Venturing Program does not recognize the position of Den Chief. But, if this girl wanted to do the job, I see no reason why she couldnt do it. If she is using the service toward one of the Venturing awards, thats terrific. In our district she would even be welcome at Den Chief training. From a Cub Scout perspective, a good Den Chief is a very valuable asset to the Den Leader and there are not enough BS willing to do the job. It makes no difference to me whether the person acting in the Den Chief capacity is a BS, GS, ADL, or Venture Crew member. Id certainly prefer to have a youth doing this job than an adult. I want the person to be committed to doing the job. I think that the issue here is the Title and Den Chief Cord. Only a BS can technically be called the Den Chief & wear the Cord. Id think that you would also want to be careful about not taking an advance opportunity away from a BS. The big positive here is that you are part of the BSA organization. Sorry but I'm not familar with a positon called the Den Aide.

Eamon, Sorry I cant help with your question, but I have one of my own. Ive followed your posting about the Venturing Crew and I still dont get it (Bobs words). How does someone go into a school and say, Im going to sign everyone up with the BSA.. Did the kids go home with a note on school letterhead that said, Dear Parent, Tomorrow your child will be enrolled in The Boys Scouts of America? I cant possibly fathom a situation that would result in 300+ kids voluntarily coming to a meeting to sign up for Venturing from a single High School in this area

Oops!!(This message has been edited by fotoscout)

As someone mentioned, State Farm has a very nice package for this type of event. I believe that Allstate also has a program to do this. Some police departments will also put on this event. If you plan far enough in advance and have a large enough audience, the insurance companies will come in with a trailer and everything you need. Some of them even provide people to run the event. Your costs should be very low. All of the handout literature is available free of charge. You may want to make up completion certificates for the kids. When weve done this it has been at a District or Council event. Adults did the safety inspection, BS ran the course and CS (friends and Sibs) were the target audience. Its a great thing to do, the kids really enjoy it. Good Luck.

Well, always the contrarian, I think theres a problem of epic proportions. Public perception, lack of funding, and the CS program. In the cyclical nature of problems they may have each happened before. Today they are happening together, and that's not good!

Its been mentioned the location has something to do with this particular issue. In this area most of the activities you listed extend thru multiple seasons: Wrestling two seasons plus extensive summer camp Football one season plus captains practice all summer and summer camp (big bucks) Basketball two seasons Soccer year rounds and then some Track three seasons Band year round, extensive in the fall and spring, fall commitment for no other activities Speech/Drama speech?? Drama, year round with many local theater groups Unfortunately, the kids that do not make the complete committed to these activities are not accepted as part of the group. Not by the coaches or by the participants. It has become all or nothing. The kids that choose to only participate during part of the year do not get the attention of the coaches/instructors. Lets not forget that the adults running these programs demand a 100% commitment. Now lets go back to the I AM a _______ statement. Can the kid who attends on average one meeting a month, doesnt attend summer camp, and makes maybe 2 outings though the year make the statement I AM a BS . More so, and I have a couple of CS that show up about once a month, are these kids a hindrance to your program? Ill answer my own question. One kid no, two kids perhaps, three kids definitely. Sure we keep the door open, in some cases from year to year. But they are without question affecting the program.

My adult life has been spent on Oil Tankers, in Refineries, at Power Plants and in Steam Plants. I venture to say that almost none of you have lived with the daily hazards that I do. Few of you have ever had to endure the endless safety training that Ive had. Fewer of you have been the person of responsibility for tasks that could have life and death consequences. I can tell you from experience that all the regulations, and all the training, and all the oversight, cannot protect the worker, man or boy from choosing his own path to destruction. Supervisory safety oversight cannot be 100%. I dont know the details of this particular case, but I can tell you that you can train a person to do something safely, and, you can give him all the materials and tools to do it safely, but unfortunalty, the one thing you cannot do is expect the worker to do as hes been told. The flip side of this is the action taken by knowledgeable adults in the face of an unsafe situation. Bob, did you shut down the unsafe operations you witnessed at the OA work weekend? Retorical question, no answer is expected. By the way, a hard hat for flag raisers is excessive, but we have similarly excessive safety rules where I work. The end result of this type of excessive regulation is a discounting of all the safety rules. Ultimately with counter productive results.

I do think that kids were more enamored by sports in the past. They had a single team and a hero that they knew everything about. They had time after school or on Sunday to watch the ball gamethe whole game start to finish. Today, they only know about which athlete is beating his wife, which athlete is on drugs, and which athlete is the highest paid. We as parents know a little more. We know about which high school sports teams are allowing their boys to use broom sticks and pine cones as training accessories. Ok, Im done ranting! Bob, your choice of words brings home the point. Years ago, a kid could be play soccer and be in scouting, and be enamored with both. The boy could say, I AM a soccer player, and say, I AM a Boy Scout. Today, with few exceptions, that cant happen. The boy can be one or the other. The exception being the very talented and gifted kid who can do virtually anything without ever breaking a sweat. Although I believe that sports has had a huge impact on Scouting, I dont believe that it is the place where we went wrong. Scouting went wrong when it allowed the public perception of scouting to shift from the center. Shy of charging each family $1000.00 per year for scouting, we cannot make up for the revenue losses that this perception has created. Large national foundations, small national foundations, corporate charity programs, private foundations, small and local business ALL think twice about supporting and giving to BSA. Without the revenues we simply cannot support an outstanding program. Sure we could scrape by for a few years until all of the dedicated volunteers are thoroughly brunt out. On top of it, we startup new units that cannot be supported, those units fail and all of the people involved in those units develop a bad taste for BSA. Look at the Venturing Crew that Eamonn is talking about, another recipe for failure with extreme potential for more bad taste.

Bob, I also could have written your posting, it is of course accurate, but it doesnt reflect the realities that we see today. We chartered 3 new units in my district last year. All three have folded. In part all three folded because there was an inadequate amount of help provided to these units throughout the year. Its easy to say that the volunteers have a responsibility to support new units, but someone has to have a plan and a commitment before charging off and chartering a new unit. In one case the SM of the new unit had absolutely no idea of the work involved in getting a unit off the ground. This unit was chartered to a relatively small church and they wanted to use it as their youth program. He thought that the church community would come forward and volunteer. You know the rest of the story. Then he tried to recruit outside his church community and ran into, shall I say stiff opposition, from the other nearby Troops. Everyone had good intentions, but destiny was controlled by the reality of the situation. Sports a cop-out Ummmm, food for thought. Given the level of involvement that our youth had in sports back in the 1960s I would agree with you. But not today. Many threads in this forum talk about kids who miss the baseball season or the football season, but attend their scout functions during the rest of the year. Thats dealing with it! However how do deal with a kid who is playing soccer, or baseball or any sport, year round? How do you retain a kid who simply doesnt understand that there are other things in life beyond sports? Bob, sports have had a huge impact on us. FOG you beat me to it. Pathetic yes!! But I must admit that I am one of those 3rd grade soccer coaches, but my story is a little different. I have parents begging to be on my team. We dont win very much, but the kids learn the game, and they have fun with a purpose. Unlike the win at all cost teams I dont usually get a great turnout for practice, but every boy shows up for every game and every kid plays equally in each game. This is just the opposite of the win at all cost teams.

I had no intent to anger the professionals, my apologies if any of you felt slighted. Dave I think you know that! For the record McDonalds closed restaurants this year, I think for the first time. Why, because the area was saturated. Dave, what you described seems to border on a pyramid scheme. There simply is not an endless supply of interested kids and adults to sustain new unit growth AND existing unit health. More importantly, in my opinion, there are not enough adults willing to make the commitment necessary to build a quality program in these new units.

Bad news regardless of what the focus is. Scouting in the United States will not survive in its current form if it is not a centrist organization.

Eamonn, I live in a small town with four packs in it. Most of the Cub Scouts attend the same elementary school. I have to wonder why a small town, where most of the kids go to the same school, would have four packs? To me this seems like a recipe for disaster. It seems clear that the limited resource of quality volunteers has been diluted and now the program is suffering. Having asked the question maybe I can answer it. Professionals need to startup new units as a feather in their caps. Very simple formula, start new units, do good work, get promotion and more pay. Very honorable on the part of the professional, hes just doing his job. Unfortunately the down side is this dilution of the volunteer resources and the weakening of existing units.

Where did we go wrong? I think we are going wrong in many different areas. - Too much freedom to develop a program of your own, instead of a simple set of rules that state specifically what you should be doing with your den, pack, or troop. - Not enough thrust to train new leaders before they get into bad habits. - Too much of the wrong PR which has allowed the public to think that BSA is attached to the religious right. - A failure to recognize the overwhelming popularity of youth sports today. - The lack of a national program aimed at building the relationship between Council and Unit. Council provided us with a fact sheet outlining the reasons why boys leave scouting. To everyones surprise, sports was low on the list. Personally I dont believe it. I think that sports are (is) the #2 reason why boys leave the program. I believe that the #1cause is the lack of an exciting program, and surprise surprise that was also the #1 reason on the outline we were given by Council. FOG is correct when he says that the sports just keep rolling on. I have boys playing soccer thru 4 seasons, lacrosse thru 2 seasons, and, baseball thru 2 seasons. The coaches demand that boys be at practice and at games. By the way these kids are 8-9 years old. Some of these boys simply dont see scouts as doing anything because they are not engaged in something that involves running, kicking, and throwing for 1 hours. On the other hand when we have outings these kids are the ones that are most captivated by the outing. Unfortunately they are also the same ones that miss most of the outings because they are playing some sport. The whole youth sports thing is a pet peeve of mine, I think that we are damaging a whole generation or two of American youth with this sports craze. Dont get me wrong, Im not anti sports, I just believe that it is very out of control. So thats my two cents (This message has been edited by fotoscout)

I still like the Eureka Timberlines. They come in all sizes, for the price they are not heavy, repair parts are readily available when needed and you can get vestibules that are removable or permanently attached. The design has be updated with new materials, but really hasnt changed in many years, so virtually all of your older tents can supply parts for your newer ones. I also own a North Face Pebbles, nice little tent but what do I do when one of the poles breaks? I bought it two years ago and it is already out of production, no parts available! Throw it away and buy a new tent? Thats why I like the Eurekas!