Hal_Crawford

760: From what I recall from the Wilderness First Aid course I took last year, neither rubbing alcohol nor hydrogen peroxide are considered useful antiseptics for wound treatment nowadays. Alcohol pads are ok for cleaning skin around a wound or prior to giving an injection (which most of us aren't qualified to do) but that is about it.

Plant and/or animal identifications. Poisonous plant identifications. Even if they don't work on the advancement the older scouts can be pointing things out. Don't try to overdo it, though. Just wrangling 21 10-11 year olds will be a challenge. Attention span is inversely proportional to group size. G'luck. Hal

I just took the online version of Trek Safely. In it they say that someone should take a cell phone on the trek and they show a scout with a JASM patch pulling a cell phone from the tech pocket of his centennial shirt.

Definitely not routine maintenance. Has he checked to see if the project requires a building permit? It might be given that there are ADA and possibly drainage implications. One of our scouts erected two flagpoles as part of his Eagle project. He was surprised to learn that it required a permit not to mention a utility survey because of the digging. As it turned out the code official was... you guessed it... an Eagle scout so he had no problems securing the permit. The contractor will probably know what the local requirements are. Hal

dg98adams: That was my first (knee jerk) reaction as well but the sentence "Digging up the old and replacing with brick" changed my mind. That sounds like more than routine maintenance. It sounds like a significant upgrade and probably more comprehensive than your typical trail project. With three months of planning I would assume that he has been though all this with the rep from the district or council advancement committee. It is always a good question to ask early on because the routine maintenance question is an issue in many proposed Eagle projects. Good luck to your son as he starts the process. Hal

Very Cool! I am a Railroad MB counselor (and a model railroader) so his project sounds near and dear to my heart. Best wishes to your scout for a successful project. Hal

Thanks for this information and a special thank you to whoever removed that bozo and his posts from the forum. I was watching his posts pop up but didn't know what to do. Now I do. Thanks.

You guys are getting me thinking. One of our patrols is named the White Tails. I don't sense that they see it as a double entendre but now I wonder. They haven't chosen a patch yet but the Stag patch seems closest.

Brent: I agree with SR540 but would add that he should put it in writing. Hal

If a group of kids who happen to be scouts go camping on their own then BSA has nothing to say about it. That's probably true. If they are assisted in this by their scout leader who perhaps suggests the activity, helps organize it and or supports it by taking driving the scouts to the trailhead then it begins then it begins to sound like a scout activity. If something bad happens, a camper is injured or killed, a forrest fire is started, whatever, the leader could be held personally responsible. BSA insurance would not cover it. I would ask the leaders who are thinking up ways to circumvent this policy, how good is your insurance? How far out on a limb do you want to climb for the concept of patrol camping? Are you willing to risk your savings? Your home? BSA is doing away with patrol camping because they do not want to take on the liability; do you? The Great Salt Lake Council were sued for $14 million for damages and the cost of fire fighting when unsupervised scouts started a forrest fire in Utah. On your own, do you have the resources to even pay lawyers to defend yourself let alone pay the judgement? Think about it. Hal

Ten years ago some close friends of ours lost their 10 year old Webelo in a house fire. His pack presented the Spirit of the Eagle award and it provided some comfort for the parents. The award still hangs in their home office. In addition the pack made it an annual service project to do a spring cleaning of the small cemetery where Josh is buried. After a Minnesota winter their is always a lot to do. This tradition continues though none of the current cubs and few if any of the leaders ever knew him. Hal

Eamonn: You got me there. A couple of years ago our districts Ship sent four scouts to the district RT to present the colors. The scouts were two very young looking guys, barely 14 and two very attractive, very grown up looking young women. After the pledge of Allegiance they recited the Sea Promise which ends "...To seek to preserve the motto of the sea, Women and children first." That women and children were leading the promise seemed ironic. Hal

Good point. While we have not allowed ipods or similar devices on camp outs we do allow them on the sometimes long drives to camp or other activities. Since we expect scouts to wear their uniforms to and from outings maybe the tech pocket makes sense.

First Aid Swimming Lifesaving Camping Pioneering The first three are absolutely essential to Be Prepared. These are things that separate heroes from victims. Camping is the quintessential scouting experience; it's what we do. Few things scouts do are more impressive than building things with logs and rope. There is a real sense of accomplishment when a 12. year old climbs a signal tower that he has built.

"Don't worry, I've got the First Aid merit badge" and any sentence with the word "tourniquet" in it. Hal

Sorry buddy, I can't spare a dime 'Cause its the new plastic paradigm.

...you will be assimilated.

Not bad at all. I did get a chuckle when a Toten'chip patch is mixed with patches from various high adventure bases. (They say Philmont is great but I went to Toten'Chip!). Hal

The "trust fall" is even used in a Geiko commercial. 'Course it doesn't go so well when a gecko is doing the catching.

Gwd: Well said, thank you. In many ways you could be describing my troop. A group of 9th graders heading toward Life or Eagle, a motley crew of 7th and 8th graders and 7 new crossovers, a couple of which are outstanding and a couple are really immature. With the troop size at about 22 the new guys make up a third of the troop. The new scouts have some great parents in that they want to help out but they all seem to get the difference from cubs/webelos. We also have an 8th grade scout who just joined and another scout who dropped out after a couple of months and has now returned, three years later as a ninth grader working on Tenderfoot. Never a dull moment. Hal

Dan: Fascinating article. Hal

For a minute there I thought we were seeing the "outing in scouting"!

Our council keeps the camp merit badge records for at least a few years. We have used their records to rebuild missing blue cards a couple years after the fact. They keep these archives at the council headquarters, not the reservation. Counselors at Goshen accept partials from previous years or elsewhere. Scouts usually talk to the counselor the first day and find out when they need to come back for their requirements. Since it is often not the things that are done in class (like the observation for Envi Sci) they sometimes just work independently and bring the work to the counselor. Hal

Wow! I didn't even know that Ju Jitsu had even made it to America by 1910. As a wise friend once said to me, "if you learn just one new thing every day, you'll still die stupid". Hal

Sorry, I forgot to turn on the sarcasm light when I said "wonder why". Yeah, the whole process would be prohibitive today. I think even in the pre-WW1 days it would have been a lot to expect a scout to invent something and secure a patent and even then I think that a model or a drawing was required to secure the patent so there was really only one requirement. Apparently there were 10 of the INVENTION (I had the name wrong) merit badges awarded between 1910 and 1915. Makes you wonder what they invented? The left handed smoke shifter comes to mind. Apparently the shorted lived MB that was not replaced by something else was "Master at Arms" 1910-1911. Wonder what that was? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discontinued_merit_badges_(Boy_Scouts_of_America) Hal