GernBlansten

>>>I don''''t care who you are

We just switched to a varsity patrol. It was due to frustration in integrating the ages and the young scouts getting short changed. Older scouts not stepping up to mentor their younger peers, losing interest in scouting and just not working. When the issue was brought to the PLC, they suggested the varsity patrol. So far the enthusiasm has been boosted. We do require that all varsity patrol members have a POR and most are troop guides assigned to the other patrols.

Wow, good eyes. I was devastated at the cancel of their tour. Never have a duet produced such a high quality sound since the Smothers Brothers. I bet he picked up the jac at a rummage store, surely he could never have treked Philmont. Just look at his eyes.

I''ve done two national HAs with my son. Northern Tiers and Philmont. For us Philmont is cheap because we are just 3 hours driving from it, NT we are looking at $2500. So for $600, we get 11 days of supported camping. We live in the Rockies and could just grab our packs and head into the wilderness topographically more diverse than Philmont, but it wouldn''t be the same. The biggest difference is the shear scale of the operations. One of the reasons Philmont is so special is the size of the parcel and the number of scouts there. You never see the same trail twice. You rarely cross paths with the same crew, yet you always see other crews. Interaction with crews/staff from all round the country is pretty cool. Philmont breaks up long days of hiking with activities that you might never experience. I just can''t see a local council being able to even come close to the experience. Any scout who has the opportunity to go but doesn''t, really is missing out.

I''ve always favored the term OMNI-sexual. To be used when describing some of my old college roommates who would have sex with anything.

Stumbled across this. Looks cool. Lots of scout references. Heading off to OKPIK in Colorado again this January. Might get me one of these for my quiver just to see if its better than building a quinzhee. I didn''t mind the quinzhee, but man it was a lot of work building it. Anyone use one of these? http://www.grandshelters.com/

My view of home schooled kids is that there are two camps. One camp is the highly involved, and educated, parent who wishes to provide the most intensive educational experience to their children and willing to put forward the time and effort necessary to raise a very accomplished student. These parents frequently seek scouting to broaden their children. We have a few in our troop. The other camp are the parents who fear exposure of their children to the unwashed masses and retreat to a isolationist mindset of reducing their children''s scope of influence to a rather small and controlled subset. These parents rarely seek scouting as a venue for their children, unless that unit restricts membership to their church. The stories of the highly skilled home schooled children come from the first camp. Even if those children were integrated into public schooling, they would excel purely because their parents would be highly involved in their public education. So in my mind, homeschooling really is not the factor, parental involvement is. Its just that homeschooling is the extreme of parental involvement.

Sorry, a little quick on the submit button. No, he should be able to pick up where he left off. It would be insane to make him start all over again.

No

You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave. What is this cult I''ve gotten myself into? I need an intervention!

Hey, survivorman boiled water in a plastic water bottle. Gotta try that next campfire.

Camp shoes? Crocs. Super light. Super comfy. Saw several with them at Philmont. And if you get the neon colored ones, they double duty as signaling devices. Someone even said you can boil them and eat them too.

"See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." GWB Mission Accomplished.

Perhaps the question should be asked differently. When would the BSA insurance not cover a scout leader? I can think of only one instance...criminal behavior. Say the leader took the boys to knock over the Piggly Wiggly and one of the scouts sprained his ankle on the get away and the parents sued the leader. Same with your household policy. If you shoot someone while you are committing a crime and they sue you for damages, don''t expect your homeowners insurance to protect you. What would nullify your BSA coverage? Bad luck? nope. Stupidity? Nope. Gross negligence? Unless its criminal. Ignorance of the G2SS? Nope. Indifference to the G2SS? Nope. But they might revoke your membership.

I figured it would come down to its all the adult leaders fault and not scouts or the parents. If only we had more prep camp outs, better communication meetings with video of past camps, and perhaps we could invent a machine that will stop the earth so we have ample lead time to make sure all the scouts are fully prepared to face the horrors of summer camp and the dreaded duty roster. Come on folks, we are talking about 2 or 3 scouts out of 35 that went to camp. Yes, we have parent orientation to explain what happens at summer camp. They all nod in agreement when we explain that their little gems will be in patrols doing chores and being led by other scouts and have to cook and clean and sometimes they might not like it. They all nod. Its when junior gets back from camp and tells mom how horrible it was to have to clean other scouts dishes or to wipe some poop off the latrine seat because some other scout missed the hole and calls it hazing because another scout told him to do it that mom''s nod turns into a shake and calls it hazing and the older scouts bullies.

Surely if it was the case that BSA would hang a leader out to dry if they failed to file a LTP or follow G2SS, there would be cases where one could point to. Has this ever happened? Sounds to me like a scare tactic used by council trainers but without teeth.

Perhaps its just my upbringing, but I think these kids are way to coddled by their parents and resent being required to do some work. I don''t think its worth the effort to try to retain them. I don''t think its even worth writing a letter to these parents explaining it. If they ask, I will respond but chasing them down to beg them to stay in the troop is just not my gig. I think most boys are smart enough to understand that its their turn to do the dishes and if they don''t get done, there won''t be anything to cook with next meal. They need to just do it. Growing up is hard.

I''m hitting the time that you all are talking about. I had a goal that I would be active in scouting until my son wasn''t. I would support his unit and throw all my energy in making sure it worked as well as it could so he would have a better unit than I did as a youth. My son is approaching eagle and I''ve done some thinking about what is my role after he becomes like most other teenagers and moves on to fumes and perfumes. We are trying to resurrect our Venture Crew and I''m trying to get my son interested in joining it. I might move from ASM to Venture advisor. If he doesn''t show interest in that, then I''ve got to decide whether I still want to work with other peoples children. To tell you the truth, the enjoyment doesn''t always outweigh the pain. So I thought maybe my role should be at the district or council level. But I really don''t like the politics and some of the folks are just insufferable. So no, I will not serve there. I''ve got lots of things I put on hold to do scouting. I also have a daughter who''s taken a bit of a back burner activity wise with me. I could help coach her volleyball team. Maybe teach her rock climbing or sailboat racing on Lasers. Maybe she will want to do Venturing when she gets old enough. So if after my son gets Eagle and maybe if he quits before he does and I never put on the uniform again, I will not feel the least bit guilt for leaving. I''ve given my time, my energy, my money, my weekends, my patience.

I wasn''t at this particular summer camp, but camp and troop policy is that the duty roster is posted on each patrol box. I don''t think this was an issue of the duty roster, I think it is about these scouts not liking other scouts telling them what to do. They labeled it as hazing and that got their parents all in a tizzy. Probably the same kind of kids that don''t have to do chores around the house either.

Our council does a quick check to see if the number of seat belts exceeds the number of attendees. They then check to make sure there is some scribbling on each signature line. Other than that, there is no futher checks. I often wondered if you put the names of the seven dwarfs on the permit and put the destination as "Hell in a handbasket" that they would catch that.

Had a parent meeting last night with the troop to talk about things and the topic turned to attrition after summer camp and how many scouts did we lose. Kinda getting a feeling why scouts quit after summer camp. As we probed deeper some of the new parents were saying that some kids were feeling bullied and hazed during camp. This got the SM attention real quick. He was there and kept a close eye on the boys just for that reason. See, we have a bully in our troop and he makes sure he can''t be one at camp and has his radar up for any malfeasance. Well, a little more probing and some more tidbits surface. Seems these boys (all first year scouts) who feel they were bullied and hazed thought so because they were told by older scouts to do things like wash the dishes and cook for others and pick up their tents and get ready for flags, clean the latrines, you know duty roster stuff. They didn''t like being told what to do by other boys. These older scouts were their patrol leaders. Now I wasn''t at camp this year but I know that sometimes tact is not the strong point of a 13 year old patrol leader and sometimes a request to do something sounds like a demand. But hazing? Bullying? If an adult had told them do the same things I guess that would be OK with them. Well, most of these boys have not returned. Typical or atypical?

I don''t think the provision was written to provide immunity to congressman while traveling. It was designed to keep the congressman from being jailed and held. It doesn''t say anything about bringing them to justice after the fact.

That innate empathy toward others is instinctual. Its a survival trait. I don''t think its learned behavior. For some, it might be defective or they learn how to suppress it.

Ah, The Deep Pool. Its that dark place where all my thoughts, experiences, teachings, fears, joys, successes, failures dwell. I believe when you are born, your pool is empty. You have no morals, you are subsiding on base instincts. As you grow, your pool fills. Sometimes from your parents, your preacher, your environment, and sometimes just from observed behavior. Some of it is welcome, some unwanted, some downright scary. It forms the basis of your self governance. Your morals.

Morals vs ethics vs laws. I view morals as an internal, self governed set of rules that I expect myself follow. They may come from a wide range of sources, but they are my personal rules and only I can be expected to follow them. A violation of morality is a break of trust with myself. I view ethics as a set of rules that society expects others to follow. They differ from laws in that there are really no penalties associated with violating them, we just expect them to. A set of guidelines as it were. Some of those rules may be brought into my personal morality (remember I said my morals come from a deep pool) and some might even be codified into law. But ethics is that gray area between personal morality and law. I violation of ethics is a breach of trust with society. Laws on the other hand is codified rules that we expect others to follow and punish them if they don''t. Some are derived from morality, some from ethics and some are just plain silly like the prohibition of catching fish with bare hands in Kansas. Here''s an example. I follow LNT. I''ve adopted it as part my moral code. I expect myself to follow it no matter where I camp. My morality. Although I''d like others to share my morality, I don''t expect them too. I expect others to follow LNT ethics in certain situations like wilderness areas. The only backlash violators get is my scorn. I expect others to follow that ethic. Rarely is LNT a law. If you violate LNT, you are not going to get fined or punished unless while doing so you break some other law like littering.