packsaddle

For years it had been a tradition that the DE was invited to our Blue and Gold banquet and he would do the FOS thing at that time. But I sympathize with Basementdweller on this. One year the guy showed up and then shocked the families with a tirade about homosexuals and atheists. It was a complete surprise to me but that ended the tradition. The DE is no longer welcome at the Blue and Gold. Even without the tirade, it's almost as if the families were being panhandled while on a family outing. What am I saying? That's exactly what was happening. But the damage was done. Several families left scouting altogether, without another word. Only years later did they confide to me that they were so offended that they didn't want their sons to associate with BSA.

Hey Ed, don't forget "Voodoo Economics." We need to maintain a sense of religious parity if we can.

I'm trying to find the place in the HB where the BOR signs to approve the advancement. I can't find it, can someone help me out? What page is it on?

Did you just tell us to go quickly and hang ourselves?

Hal, he's not asking about an Eagle BOR.

mn_scout, I agree that boards meeting often and regularly can accomplish many things. But for this unit, there is no need as we don't have boys ready for advancement that often. Also, keep in mind that the model you quoted is there as a guideline. Meeting on a set date once each month would cover most needs but there is no reason a unit cannot have a BOR any time they want to. The guidelines are also good because the adults who must attend the board can plan for boards in their schedules, but there is no requirement to do it this way. The scout would also have the benefit of being able to plan but again, there is no actual requirement for the lead-time.

Has anyone on the committee gone through training? The boy should not have to confront the committee about this. The SM or other adult leader should inform them of the actual written requirements. I've heard of this unwritten requirement to bring the HB but we've never had the problem. The boys usually bring it - anyway we haven't added any requirements over those that are actually written.

Yeah, we've been able to avoid all of these problems by holding BORs whenever they're needed and even maintaining flexible COH dates. The only big productions we do are when families want to put something together for their Eagle COH.

I think Eamonn is justified in his confusion because it is obvious that the 'best' minds in our leadership failed to anticipate this crisis because they also failed to understand the 'house of cards' itself. Or else they just hoped the collapse would happen on someone else's watch. This has been building for as long as we've lived on deficit spending and as long as we've resisted paying that debt down. I had a glimmer of hope just before Dubya arrived but he blew it badly. I don't have much hope that anyone can fix this one. I sincerely hope I'm wrong about Obama but I think the most he can do is delay it for a while...making it even worse when the bill finally does come due. Or else, we'll crank up the presses and pay for the debt by taxing via devaluation/inflation. In a way, I view this mechanism as the fairest option available because it will punish those of us with savings more than those who will earn a living in the future. As a matter of fact it will take more from those with the most savings. Keep running the presses, let the Chinese paper their walls with greenbacks. If they ever run short of food, they can just buy the midwest. Eamonn, the numbers in your account were just numbers. At any moment that account had a certain amount of purchasing power, depending on the market prices for whatever you wanted to purchase. You'll notice that as your 401K lost, say, 50% of its value, so has housing in some areas of the country. In this respect your account still has its original purchasing power. Anything that has not decreased in price as much (such as homes and property in this area) has actually experienced some appreciation in value with respect to those other things that have lost value. The problem is that because the banks screwed the pooch, they aren't lending so even property that hasn't lost much value is not easy to purchase. The essential thing to keep in mind is that 'money' is merely a convenience that we use to transfer wealth. The wealth is something that has value. On that basis, the value of part of Florida has diminished with respect to areas in which the real estate market has not been hit as hard. The real estate is the same as before, the values have been (and are continuing to be) readjusted. People and families are caught in the middle but the marketplace has no conscience. It has no sense of purpose other than to optimize the efficiency of transactions. The market has no sense of morality or ethics other than whatever we bring to the transactions as individuals or through our regulations. We've been living a lie. Now we are going to pay for it. Dearly. Is the economy bad? It's not bad for me. I can survive this thing quite nicely. I won't be able to buy my Cobra but that's just a dream anyway. I'll find a way to make more money. It's not really that hard. Maybe I'll capitalize on the new budget policies. Take a look at Bill Gross's thoughts and his strategy for PIMCO. Of course you need to have something to invest. Catch-22. But if you've got it to invest, the time is right to capitalize on the misfortunes of others. The analogy to evolutionary forces is not by accident. Those who are effective competitors will prosper, those who aren't will perish. Like Gecko said, "Greed is good." It's bad for some of my friends who recently bought homes for so-called 'fair market value', only to be upside down in less than a year. They sunk their available savings into the down payment and closed just before the market turned. Some of them are now unemployed, unable to re-finance, young families still in school, locking in their losses to the 401Ks by selling to stay afloat. Life isn't very sweet for them right now and things are going to get a lot worse. Anyone ever heard of an OptionARM? http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/apr2009/bw20090416_103126.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily The good news is that the one-year delay will allow those of us with something to invest, to prepare to make more money off the unfortunate. But that's the American economic system. Love it or leave it.

More than one question but the essential answer is, yes he can do another BOR just after the 6-month mark and still make the COH. The COH is entirely up to the unit. Assuming that someone can walk the paperwork through the council after the BOR, you theoretically could do the COH later the same day as the BOR. We have actually done this although not for quite a few years. And that one was a special case.

Ed, you just used a triple negative. Could you clarify that?

Yes, some of these things have popped up within the last year. The Eagle application thing is the most recent. I don't know why we even have to fax something to them. Are they aware of email? Think abou it. You have all the records on Troopmaster. It's a computer file. They make you PRINT a piece of paper and FAX that to another piece of paper over a phone line. Does the adjective, 'moronic', come to mind? How many $million did they spend feathering their new offices? I admit, I have a negative attitude toward them. I started off with a positive attitude but they have persuaded me to the dark side. I have said before, if we could just keep the camp, the rest of the council could vanish and we'd be better off for it. Part of the problem, I think, surrounds their lousy records. I think they are aware of this and now rely on the troops to keep the 'official' records. Thus, the troops must do all the leg work for council people who have nothing more than the power to say 'NO'. The other part of the problem, IMHO, is that people who mostly care about bean counting want to control the process by making others count the beans for them, changing the rules from time to time on how to count them. This should not be necessary. Bean counters who can't even count beans correctly should just go away.

Yeah, Gwd, that's possible, the district might be laying it off on the council. At my end it doesn't make much difference. The project work book has a page where four signatures are required, one of those is the district guy. 1. One previous district guy would meet with the boy individually (G2SS?) and go over the project. He was a hard-nosed type who had a certain idea about what could or would qualify and he'd send them back with advice on what needed to be added or changed to meet his approval. If the boy got past him, then and only then, the others in the process would be allowed to sign the workbook. If any of those others signed before the district guy, he'd send the boy back to get a clean workbook and his project would be rejected. 2. Then, that guy had some kind of fight with his superiors and he left. The new guy who showed up out of the blue, was an 'anything goes' type and, well, for a while 'anything' went. It was left to the troops to make the decisions and that was fine with me. But all of a sudden he didn't want the boys to worry about checking with him before the end of the project. We never had a problem with him and for a while, the only problems we had was with the council's errors in recordkeeping. He was suddenly replaced (I think he had a job move or something). 3. Then, the new, new guy came along. Now, he requires the boy to meet with him and go over the project. Then and only then (and it HAS to be in this order) the boy must get the signatures of the school, etc. person who will benefit from the project, and then the scoutmaster and committee chair, and THEN, after all those other people have approved, the district guy is willing to make his decision. One trip out to the district guy, a trip to the benficiary, then the troop people, and then back out to the district guy - this is the best that can happen if everything is done right. And THEN he can actually start the project. None of these changes were announced. We discovered them when the boys were sent back saying they didn't do it right and had to start over. In a couple of cases the boy thought he had been rejected from Eagle or thought he had to pick a new project. Communication has been a problem. Don't get me wrong, all these guys are good guys. But they or the district or the council seem to have certain ideas about how things are to be done and the boys have no way to know this stuff. The forms have bean-counting blank spaces and few instructions on the order that the beans must be counted. Now, as for the Eagle application itself, for a while we just had to make sure the council had the correct records. A phone call was all that was necessary because I had literally spent years going back and forth to SHOW them the advancement forms that we had sent to them with the CORRECT dates and other details. Dates were wrong. Awards were wrong. Boys were suddenly one or two years younger than reality. Boys disappeared and emerged in other units. Boys remained on the rolls long after they left scouting (but we now know what THAT was all about). But after all that effort they learned that this unit, at least, had better records than THEY did so a phone call was sufficient. Now, suddenly we are told that the boy or some adult must drive an hour to the council office and meet with the council records person to check all their dates and get that signature BEFORE they can get a single other signature on the Eagle application. If the dates have problems the boy must correct them and go back again with the blue stubs or some similar record to verify the dates. That's the second two hours on the road. Once that signature is in place, the boy is allowed to complete the EBOR. If the EBOR convenes and that signature isn't already in place, a NEW application has to be filled out with signatures in the proper order. I'm not making this stuff up, we've had the experience. According to the district guy, this particular rule is coming from the council. We have discovered each of these details by having forms rejected because we didn't get the signatures in the proper order. So far, no boy has been rejected because of any of this, but if the boys had had to do it on their own, some of them would have quit, or at least that's what they told me. There is a need for bean counters in the world. But there's also a need for the people who actually do the work. The bean counters don't seem to realize that they are supposed to facilitate the work. The bean counters seem to think that THEY are the customers. They're not. I wish bean counters would just step aside and stop hindering things, and count their beans leaving the rest of us in peace.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Paternity would probably be in doubt (at least without a DNA test). But if this was a bet, I'd place my money on the 'NWIH' spot.

I think Beavah is correct. It bothers me to have watched this creeping insinuation of stuff that these boys have to keep up with. In this unit, we do understand the age level of these boys and their level of maturity. A few (very few) can manage this process on their own (the paperwork and arcane extra requirements that the council and district add). All of them are capable of doing an Eagle project but that other stuff is just awful. And I think Beavah is also correct that the projects tend to be compared to each other - with each one expected (by someone) to exceed the previous one - in scope or some other kind of investment. Thankfully, at least locally we've been able to keep this within realistic boundaries. This weekend we're going to have an ECOH for several of our boys. They represent a big chunk of their cohort and they all finished up as deathbed eagles. I am fairly confident that if I and other adults had not taken considerable time to explain to them and guide them through the details, some of them would have given up. And I know for a fact that for some of them, their reluctance to even attempt this process was due to the reputation it has gotten from all the trouble previous boys have had. It could be a lot simpler and clearer. It ought to be FUN! I should not have to perform the function of 'Eagle coordinator'. There should not be unwritten rules and requirements handed down from council and district, that we can only learn by mistake. Those unwritten requirements should not change overnight, without notice, at someone's whim. It is all so unnecessary. The problem is not with the boys.

Ed, as Bob Dole has often said, "Down Boy!"

Eagledad, there are plenty of other options besides the two that you mentioned in that dichotomy. Just using Ed as the example here, I think the problem is that those verses and their meaning seem clear to Ed - and because they do seem clear to Ed, Ed can't accept that they might not be clear to anyone else. Ed is projecting his own outlook onto everyone else. At the same time, others who think the Bible is NOT clear can't accept that it IS clear to someone else (Ed in this case). To me this provides good support for the approach that Trevorum and Dan take by NOT viewing the Bible as the kind of authority that others seem to think it is. Unfortunately this elevates the communication disconnect to an even greater scale. Religion seems to accomplish this with great ease, the only solution would be for everyone to think what Ed thinks, in precisely the same way that Ed is thinking them. THAT is never going to happen. It staggers the mind to think of how much time, resources, and energy has been wasted over the millenia, trying to sort all of this stuff out - to no avail. I suspect we never will. But it conforms to evolutionary law: when individuals of a population occupy the same niche and exploit the same resources, intraspecific competition will tend to separate sub-populations that compete with each other for those resources, in time perhaps enough to become genetically distinct and perhaps reproductively isolated. Perhaps that is the real function that religion accomplishes. And if myths, God, or gods are necessary to do that, then we can blame evolution for that as well. Egad!(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Sheldonsmom, if you're on the clock, your time belongs to the employer. That's the workplace. When I was a supervisor I couldn't care less what people did on their own time (as long as they didn't drag in drunk) but when they were in the workplace, activities that weren't related to work were a waste of taxpayer dollars. As far as I know you are allowed to pray at school. At this school you're allowed to discuss religion with anyone who is willing to discuss it with you. This is a public school. I think it's true for any public school. And anyone who wants to is free to stand on one of our street corners and yell at all the sinners, it used to happen frequently but he moved his show to another town, I saw him recently. Maybe he's more successful there. As far as equal not being equal, how about some specifics?(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

OK, who is mankind? Do I have to lie with ALL of mankind to be an abomination? Why didn't it say 'man'..you know...they way it said 'woman'? Or is it talking about lies as in a sort of collective self-deception? When I was dating I lied with the guys pretty consistently if we were talking to girls. Pretty much the same as the girls lied to us. It was all a lot of fun...Different lies maybe. So what does that mean, "their blood will be upon them"? And who is going to kill them? How? Do we have to stone them or are we allowed to use concepts that didn't occur back then like AK47s? Can anyone do it? Do we need a permit..or maybe an Imam or priest to consecrate the deed? Do we have to be Jewish? Christian? Are Buddhists prohibited from this kind of fun? And if this is so clear why aren't people who THINK this is clear out there killing the violators? It's right there in the scripture, right? Doesn't failure to kill them amount to a violation in and of itself? Maybe that's not clear. And if this verse is so important why not all the others in those early books? What about that adultery thing, "And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife [it's almost as if there's a difference?], the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." I mean, we're going to have quite a slaughter if these things are so clear. Or else what is the punishment for not slaughtering them? That's not clear either. For that matter, mere words are enough to bring death, "For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him." There's that blood upon him thing again. I think that a sizeable fraction of all teenagers need to be put to death RIGHT NOW! Wow, I feel the need to take off my shoe and throw it at someone. But back to that original thing, it doesn't mention if a "woman also lie with womankind", does it? I guess that's OK? Sorry, this just isn't clear why it's bad for the man but OK for the woman. But I guess that also means it's OK for BSA to have gay leaders if they're women! Like Trevorum wrote, things are changing.

I guess not but if you ever get down this way to the Elberton, GA area I think you can find something about this written in the gibberish that's on the Georgia Guidestones. I prefer to think of them as the Georgia Blarney Stones or perhaps Georgia Malarky Stones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones But the inscriptions aren't self-contradictory so they must be clear.

I'm already shriveling at the thought. Shivering, I meant shivering!

"Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you." See, this is not clear to me. I am quite familiar with camel anatomy and it sure looks to me like camels 'parteth the hoof' so they should be on the menu. On the other hand, there is nothing to contradict this passage. It simply is something I don't understand so it isn't clear. So I searched the KJV Bible for every occurence of the word "homosexual". Sorry, doesn't occur anywhere. Not once. So I searched for 'gay'. One occurence: "James 2:3 - And ye have respect to him that weareth the GAY clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool" So next time I see someone in drag, I'm going to offer my chair? I can't find a single contradiction to this Biblical mandate to respect people who are wearing gay clothing (whatever that is). But if the link between this and homosexuality is clear to someone, your gaydar is better than mine. Anotehr draeded tpyo!(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Hey, I already have two way-stations for the trip and I've barely begun planning! Thanks, I'll take you up on that when the time comes but I'm wondering how welcome someone would be after 800 miles. But this thread started with Eamonn and I'm wondering if he has had any more thoughts for himself?

Scoutldr, I'm afraid the day of retirement in one's fifties is probably over for most of us (heh, heh, especially for those of us already past our fifties, LOL). But you already know I share your fate (my TSP is in the toilet along with yours) so I understand part of your situation. It sounds like you and the nucleus of leaders who started that unit held it together in spite of everything. Sometimes it's OK to just let the inevitable happen. Think about all the good times and good memories you have from the good days and try not to think about what could have been. Reality is letting you know that you're alone in that vision. What I CAN offer, though, is to join me on the AT in a couple of years. It'll be a great weight loss move too, as well as a way to improve one's outlook.

Man, that's a deal! It won't be for a couple of years yet but unless I wrap my 'cycle around a tree in the meantime, I'm going to do it after I wrap up this gig.