Stosh

Maybe so, but they are wanting to join an organization designed and intended for males. It doesn't make any difference what other people's opinion is. My opinion of what my next door neighbor does is of no importance to the rest of the world. They run their own show in their family, I'm not a part of that process. It's none of my business and if I want to do what they're doing, I'll do it in my own family. And to answer @@Peregrinator if there is only one troop in town and the adults want it co-ed and your son doesn't want that, he isn't welcome in the BOY Scout program in that community. He's SOL, too bad. So the alternative is TLUSA or some other guy hang-out organization in town, if there is any. There is no such thing as BOY Scouts in today's world and that's Peregrinator's point, maybe there should be what the organization intended in the first place. 50 years ago it was all male and at it's peak of importance in society. Today is it no longer all male and it's membership and prestige has declined steadily. Show show me evidence where that has been a good thing. Using created numbers, assume that the membership of 100 boys 50 years ago is now co-ed venturing/adult leadership, etc. what we have today is reduced membership to say 50 with half being female means that the number of boys in a BOY scout program is only a fraction of what it used to be. So much for the improvements in the program.

Few questions here.... What's the difference between 10 minutes of Introduction and 15 minutes of CM briefing? The first half hour is 5 minutes of productive Flag Ceremony with 25 minutes of adult drivel. 10 minutes for closing??? Out of that whole hour, the boys only get 20 minutes? I would be bored to tears with that agenda. Here's my take. 7:00 - Opening Flags with CM BRIEF comments. 7:05 - Break out into den activities 7:30 - All dens must quit activities and start games 7:55 - Closing Flags Except with the important flag ceremonies, and 2 minutes worth of CM comments, all the rest of time is FOR THE BOYS!

Why would the boys join BOY scouts if they wanted to hang out with girls. That's like having a football program that does soccer and rugby as well. Makes perfectly good sense to me.

What it boils down to for me is, BSA is expecting it's volunteer leadership to lead a program they know very little if nothing about. They don't have the skills in dealing with boys of a certain age as their first child goes through the program, they don't have the outdoor skills and they are not comfortable in the new environment, and they are unfamiliar with BSA policies as well as the local traditions of the troop they are associated with. I used to teach the Webelos outdoor/overnight training for our council 20 years ago and back then there were people who were wondering why the participants had to actually stay overnight as part of the training. I think the number one reason for this issue was that about half of the participants had to stop at Walmart on the way to the training and buy a tent and sleeping bag and the cost for the training was well into the hundreds of dollars..... So here we have newbie moms and dads taking kids out into the woods and until their Webelos training had never spent the night in the woods in a tent themselves. I'm thinking Barry is being generous with his 3 year estimate of getting these adult leaders up to speed with scouting. Compare this situation to mine where I have 40 years of working with youth and well over a thousand, if not two thousand nights sleeping out under the canvas. When was the last time I had a camp fire? Well, I guess that would be last night when the granddaughters were over and we did a grill out and topped off the night with S'mores as we sat around the fire. The longevity of these leaders is very short-lived and they press their boys to get through the program and Eagle early so they don't have to do this for very long. They quit as soon as their kids do. My boy hasn't been in Scouting now for over 20 years and I'm basically having a great time as SM of a new troop. Now the question is, how can one develop a training curriculum to handle that? It isn't learning the skills of Trail to First Class, it's a dumbing down of the program to where non-camping/non-outdoor people can get the Eagle badge for their kids. As non-campers themselves, the STEM program seems to be the ideal ticket for the adults. The Boy Scouts is no longer an adventure, it's a program.

On the Cub Scout level, I believe our G2SS insists that at least one parent must accompany their son on any overnight activity. There is no such thing as Cubs camping with just their adult leaders. By the way, when I was a Cub back in the 1950's, there was no camping ever done with the packs I was involved with. It was all Den Mother run and it was always some fun activity or short trek to see something. I remember touring the local newspaper and saw them typeset, visited the fire department, etc. It was always entertaining and fun. Parents were not around, just the Den Mother and many a helper or two with the rides and more complicated activities. We never had any Cub Scout Day Camp kinds of things where it took massive amounts of adult to keep hundreds of kids busy with basically summer camp with no overnight camping. I found that by the time they reached Boy Scouts, they were no longer interested in the local council camp because they had pretty much "been there, done that" with everything the camp had to offer and now with 7 years ahead of them in Boy Scouts, the local camp is no longer an option.

I don't think you do. People today aren't the outdoors campers and are not skilled in campcraft the way they used to be. Today "camping" or glamping tends to be more RV, 5th Wheel crank out, stop and plop camping at a KOA with a game room, store, pool and other "outdoor" activities for the kids. So even if an adult says they have years of camping experience, it may mean absolutely nothing for the BSA program. Because of this, I believe the BSA is dumbing down it's outdoor program because they can't maintain it at the level it once was. Even our modern Eagles don't necessarily have the skills to run a troop in today's world. Seriously, look at the program. Trailers, dutch ovens, rain flies, every modern convenience known to man and it all comes together at the KOA or if one is really going to rough it, the local state park. My back yard has more adventure to it than any BSA camp can offer. It has one camp site located on a very high ridge that is an arduous climb to get to. I'm still working on the trail, but I have the site complete. The Mrs. insists we have it ready for next summer. OMG, no toilet facilities? Nope, but I have a couple of spots already set aside that have a great range of fire for this fall's deer hunt. An outdoors person is who you are, not what you know and can teach. One has to have a love of the outdoors to pull off a successful program and that is instilled in the hearts of young men and women at an early age. Parents today that didn't have that experience and develop that sense of love of nature, will take 3 years to "learn" enough woodcraft skills to get by and will burn out because of the pressure to get a lifetime of woodcraft directed by office cubicle techies in Irving TX. It's no wonder they burn out after 4 years. I started at age 4 in the woods in a 13' camper that I didn't like, but I loved my little pup tent, and by the time I was into adulthood working with youth I didn't need a whole lot of "training". I have worked at this for 45+ years and have no intention of burning out quite yet. I might wear out before I burn out, but I'm definitely not going to rust out.

I guess I'm of a different opinion. As servant leader of my troop, I do whatever it takes for my boys and my adult volunteers and if that means extra work getting the paper work done at the office, it's worth the effort. Sure they are going to screw it up, but with evidence to back up my side, I do find that results do come quicker and if the office knows I'm a pain in the a$$ with my paperwork, they tend to take extra precaution with my submittals now. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and if it's for my people, I can get pretty loud. I had a DE once tell me after they had left that position that they were seriously afraid of me. as well as it should be when it comes to my paperwork! A dog that barks well, doesn't need to bite.

Not to worry if anything gets sent to I&P to die it's gonna be either you or me.

If rats tasted as good as rabbits, we'd be eating a lot more of them. Rabbits are the most efficient food to meat ratio of any domestic animal. It has been known for many decades that the protein meat of the Martian colonies is going to be rabbits.

So don't have a license law. If one doesn't make laws against shooting the rodents, then there's nothing illegal about it. I don't need a small game license to shoot rabbits in my garden area. I do need a license to hunt them on the rest of my property because of the laws. I don't need a license to trap mice, rats, gophers, ground squirrels, etc. Heck, I have a major mole, ground squirrel problem and I hooked them up to the pickup truck and my problem went away. No law against that.

With the agreement with GSUSA of not going co-ed, how does BSA get away with STEM co-ed? Like GSUSA only worries about the outdoor stuff that they don't do anyway?

Surfing without waves sounds about as much fun as kayaking in the backyard.

Good topic on nutria. Not being from Louisiana I didn't know. At first I was kinda drawn back by the thought of eating "Swamp Rat", but then began to think that rabbits and squirrels are also rodents that get eaten on a regular basis. I have rabbit in my freezer and dine on it all the time. If it's decent tasting, I'd be feasting on it all the time. There probably isn't a hunting season on an invasive species like that so it's a pretty cheap source of protein. We have hunting seasons on rabbit here, but when they're in my garden munching on my produce, all bets are off.

I had a boy restore a park area that was passed from a Veterans organization to the county to the city and the city's Parks and Rec Dept was supposed to maintain it. Yeah right, it was a mess and had been neglected for 30 years. One of my boys went in and cleaned it up back to it's original condition. It looked great, but by the end of the summer it hadn't been mowed or cared for one bit by the city. Another organization did recognize the boy's efforts and pulled some serious fundraising and political leveraging and now the city has a nice park where the Veterans Memorial Park used to be. At least he was successful in getting the need recognized by the people of the city.

Naw, the jist of the discussion when it comes to female BOY Scout leaders is that people have come to the conclusion that females can develop our young boys better than males for the roles they will be playing in our current and future societal needs. Young boys developing into the kind of male character model of the early 20th century is of little or no value today. Did I get that right? Once we get the female Boy Scouts in the program to take over the leadership roles of the youth, then the handwriting on the wall for the boys will become a lot clearer.

Whoever was tending bar that night must of been pouring a bit heavy.....

So, riddle me this Joker, where in the Eagle project book does it say the project needs to be completed? Nowhere! On page 16 near the bottom it has a space for a contingency plan should something like the beneficiary back out, what will the scout do at that point? The boy that didn't get Eagle because his beneficiary backed out didn't finish his project because of that, but because he didn't follow through with his contingency plan. Everything the boy did for the project and subsequent projects all go into showing leadership. ALL OF IT gets documented in the final Eagle report.

I always have fall back projects that don't involve fundraising, materials or a lot of hassle, just a sufficient amount of organizational work to pull off and if the boy is in full panic mode, could pull one of these ideas together and finish in <2 months. Be Prepared.

We've had the flamingo thingy here in our town, I think the Rotary did it. Wisconsin area.

I&P is a little like the Dead Letter department of the US Post Office. It's basically the kiss of death for the thread for a lot of people.

If one takes paperwork into the council office for processing. Get a receipt of what you dropped off signed and dated by the council person taking them from you. If one mails paperwork to the council office for processing. get a postal receipt which will come back signed and dated it was delivered. Make copies of everything before giving to the office. Assume they will mess it up and will only take 5 years to process. Laugh all you want, it took 5 years and 3 submissions by my committee to get trainer knots for my adults. I never assume they will do it right. That way I'm never upset and concerned when they foul things up. I have written proof of their incompetence, such as, you never mailed them to us. I have a signed postcard dated xx/xx/xxxx that you got the paperwork. Or on xx/xx/xxxx I stopped by the office and Sally Smith took my paperwork and I have a signed statement here saying so.

I'm working with my 3rd CO with my new unit. It's a church so it's not an issue. But my first troop was sponsored by a conservation group and the boys worked the fishing derby, sold derby tickets which doubled as raffle tickets and there was a lot of beer served on the day of the derby. Boys helped out with whatever on the day of the derby, but didn't work the beer tent. Second CO was American Legion, Well, the one end of the building where we held our meetings was the bar. The big summer festival in town was organized by the CO and there was plenty of raffles, beer and such going on and the boys all manned the corn on the cob booth and sold water and soda on the parade route for the CO. Boys got nothing specific for doing that. But come recharter time, all the fees were paid in full and when the boys started raising funds for a troop trailer, one just happened to show up one day compliments of the CO. After all the CO owned the trailer anyway. We aren't in a major metro area, but in the small towns around the area, that G2SS rule doesn't get much traction.

Sounds like a goat raffle but that doesn't cost anything but the ticket printing and getting a goat donated.

Boy Scouts started out as an all male organization for the development of how males involve themselves in the adult world. Courtesy, moral character development, basic emergency skills, etc. How to be a male in society was pretty much the goal. The Girl Guides did their thing for young women. Well, that process went out the window about 50 years ago. Everyone has to have the same opportunities and so no one gets specific training in what it means to be male or female. Now that this thread has moved to I&P I can say that, right? I'm not being judgmental, but males used to understand what their role in life was socially supposed to be and the same for females. Nope, not any more, anything goes, so your own thing, hang out, set yourself free so to speak. Well, once the doobie was gone and real life set in, our lives of non-definition have led to all kinds of new therapies, syndromes and role confusion. Yeah, my generation may have been the last of the chauvinists, but one at least knows where we stand. What can one say about the succeeding generations? Do they know where they stand on anything? Save the Whales......one's kids may need weekly therapy, but the whales are okay. So, my rant is over, but what role is BSA trying to define for it's male members or is BSA now redefining itself as Scouts of America because it really doesn't know it's role development program?

We live in an area that HA is pretty much standard fare. Philmont and Sea Base are the only long distance treks. We do: Whitewater canoeing. Big lake kayaking BWCA Week long canoeing on any river we like. Biking the state bike trails for a week. Ice Age Trail We don't do Phillmont and Sea Base much because of age restrictions and cost. The rest of the treks are pretty cheap fare. Next summer will be 6 day canoe trip in June instead of summer camp. Boys are 2-3 pre-FC scouts and whatever Webelos cross-overs that join. Canoeing and Fishing MB's are on the schedule already.