qwazse

The course instructor turns in a training report with the names and unit # of the participant to the council registrar. This is basically what the online training does, but it consumes your time (setting up an account, logging in, printing certificates) instead of the council's.

This was how we made most activities work. The younger sibling "minder" wasn't necessarily in the other room. (That simply won't fly with some siblings.) We could have den meetings at the church hall, and our tag-alongs had a circle of couches at one end of the hall. This worked for them all the way up through Boy Scouts. If siblings could participate without disrupting the boys, we would let them. I certainly hope your Cubs enjoy their hike. Although some folks here feel that yours is an example of an inevitable (and in some ways untenable) coed program, it's nice to know that the male Wolf cub(s) won't be lone wolfs. And, if the boy(s) and the girls can stand each other for a little bit, they might indeed bring friends and grow two "linked dens." And we'll have something there that wasn't there before.

@5thGenTexan, if I'm reading too much into your situation, just assume that there might be some other scout or scouter who needs this frank discussion. Your #1 job is to survive your anxiety. I know a couple of friends who failed to do that, and the world is worse off without them. Turn in any firearms. Not joking. The glove compartment of your car will be just fine without one. We guys are really good at hiding stuff that will do us harm long before it does us any good. And the trail of sorrow is long. Years after the fact one friend was asking me about why his best buddy did what he did, and I had no good answer. Another recent widow is still trying to connect the dots with lines that aren't there. She is very dear to Mrs. Q and I, but we feel helpless to consolidate her. You can take steps to make sure your loved ones are never in that position. Take them. The other reason to work on you is because you can be sure that there is a boy or two who needs to meet a caring adult who fights the same fight he does. Chances are, he won't introduce himself. You'll have to be on the lookout for him. If you can't conquer this thing enough to get outdoor training, become a committee member and serve where you can. You need a buddy/mentor you can confide in. Period. Will you ever go camping? Maybe. But I find there's a big difference between a night out on my own with a buddy and one with kids under my charge. I have to beat back a world of worry every time I leave the house to join my troop. So I can respect that not everyone can or should saddle that responsibility.

Posting images of litter, vandalism, or the occasional wayward pig is especially valuable to a group dedicated to a particular place. If they know something needs fixing, they will direct their clubs resources there. A vibrant group posts images of repairs as well so that folks can appreciate the human effort needed so that folks can hold spaces sacred.

I'm beginning to sympathize with the Mayor. The suggestions make for a program that is unworkable and unappealing. More over, the whole tone of the report is demoralizing. Think about it, if "your own" aren't safe in a ride-along, what about when some cop picks up some kid violating curfew?

Restaurant supply and cake decorating stores carry wide rolls of parchment and foil. The also have very good cast-iron cleaning products. While we're talking welding gloves. I need to restock, but finally in my size. (XXXL ... no I can't palm a basketball ... yes I can span an octave and a half ... no I can't play stride piano.) Any recommendations?

The best strategy was to set up some workstations at a regular meeting so they could log on and go through the course. We have not done this with the new course, so I'm not sure how workable that strategy is.

Once again, we are dealing with a lack of relative risk. Policy makers don't need to compare the rate of abuse in an extracurricular program to rates in school. They need to compare it to rates of abuse at home. Unfortunately, nobody gets sued for cancelling a program and sending kids home and putting them at increased risk of abuse by a relative or friend.

When he was on res, Bob personally took the addresses of our employers. His enthusiasm for this practice was palpable. He said he did this for every scouter he met, even those who didn't serve him coffee as good as mine! Epilogue: When he was CSE, our scouts attending Jambo or some regional event would look him up just to say, "Hi". Some of their dads were self-employed, and their wives would get that letter! The guy became a household name!

Preschool siblings stayed in a corner with their coloring books, or played with dolls, or stayed home.

I follow one wilderness FB page (all-volunteer). It astounds me the number of people who ask for the coords to one feature (unnamed on the trail maps) at the heart of 64 sq miles. It astounds me that in this day of indexed browsers that they even have to ask. But it astounds me even more because the way I navigated to the place was to look for where the contour lines were closest together and chart a course via where the lines were were farthest apart. That gave me a good idea of where to expect to find a cairn. It simply never crossed my mind to ask anyone if they thought my approach was a good one. Lots of folks post pics of that one feature, but I prefer the ones of their feet in the rocks and bogs leading up to it!

@ianwilkins sleeping below deck in the summertime tropics is extremely uncomfortable unless you burn $s to fuel the generator running the A/C. Who needs sleep when there are stars to watch?

Oh what a tangled web we weave when we camp with scouters from other parts. I like @CalicoPenn's approach. But, it sounds like what you witnessed was a case of over-bling. I'd talk to the person involved who you're most familiar with, and ask what they were thinking. Explain that it confused one of your scouts.

Just got my patch and travel tag in the mail.

Got paint? Plywood? Giant puzzle on 2'x2' tiles. If you have two, the scouts can race each other.

I've never heard of any such restriction at our reservation.

I'm calling BS @bearess, I saw all kinds of girls coming into venturing, and GS background did not make a difference in who was deferential to men or boys and who was not. But after a few months, they all were able to speak their mind top others. That was actually one of my favorite things about venturers: young women who, while passing on a trail, would look you in the eye and say a bright "good morning." The girls who didn't like the thought of backpacking through bear country, didn't go. They were still a welcome part of our crew! It was that simple. Same things for boys. Most overconfident canoer I ever knew: a comittee member who joined our crew on a whitewater trip. The poor dear, she was not prepared for getting tossed into the maelstrom as often as we did! Most confident: a fourteen year old girl on the same trip who washed up like a drowned rat. I'm on the shore down from a chute with the both of them watching the rest of the rafts make it through (more or less) ... a look of terror on the mom on the right ... a "let's do that again" look on the girl on the left. In scouting, we all are stretched. The youth get to see us flummoxed on multiple occasions. That's part of our gift to them.

I think this falls under "it depends." A seasoned committee won't give two hoots if a member is a DE or a CSE. When Mike Sarbaugh was our SE, and he dropped in on a council committee, it was like "Hi Mike, take a seat and don't eat all of the pizza." Our council has pro's who are SMs and ASMs. They are good people. Your scouts might get recruited for camp staff a little more readily, but that's about it. I would caution to not expect a pro to be your roundtable representative.He'll be quite busy with logistics and paperwork. Send the SM and other MC's to do the handshaking with other units.

So sad. You can second-guess forever. Tall stands of old pine drop limbs on calm days. Thinning them is the only way to curb that. The balance between preventing one calamity while still avoiding the other remains in the hands of the Almighty.

@cocomax, welcome to the dark side. I have 80 year old former GS moms who shake their heads at the sad state of affairs. No matter how you try to pull this off (GS/USA our BSA4G) you're gonna hit this wall with our generation of adults. (Okay, the rest of you can stop laughing. In spirit, I'm more post-modern nomad than baby boomer or gen-x.) Cracking the code is hard. Get these girls in a room and explain to them the problem, and tell them if they want this to happen they will need to start a search. Some suggestions: Grandmothers. Seriously. My co-advisor got her mom to come on a few GS campouts to make things work. Both of those ladies are saints. Veterans. Fire departments. Union halls. Get the word out to them. "Women with integrity to bring up the next generation." College outdoor clubs. APO fraternities. These kids might not have much time. The moms might have to pay cash to get the best young women from this lot to serve as an ASM. Camps and camping schools. Your council venturing officer's association.

My reply seems to have been lost to the ether. So briefly, here's what you and the SM should do. Stand by your scouts and let them know you like what they are doing. (Sound's like that's happening.) Contact your district commissioner and ask if you and the SM may bring this up as a round-table topic for the boy-scout breakout session.

Flip that around, and we can say that a couple of GS/USA leaders who want the girls to camp regularly can get at least get the 15 girls in their charge out there and doing so. For them, programs like one North Face is offering can be a real boon.

Caber tossing! Scouts race to a log. Saw off an end at least 5' long. They get a point for every foot over 5', but they have to hold it upright and "toss" the log so that it at least flips end-over-end and they get a point for each foot the log travels. (Shorter logs generally will go further.)

Risk Relative to what? A 11-13 y/o youth carrying 50 pounds of mulch, rope, a saw,a shovel, and a rake across level ground may pose tremendous risk to himself and others. This risk can be mitigated by a travois, but that often leaves drag marks, a wheelbarrow, but that can require training on load balancing, more scouts, but sometimes in the multitude there is chaos, a wagon. Which is fairly straightforward, and easier to control, often, than one's two feet.

@bearess, I was a little bit tongue (fingers?) in cheek. GS/USA's strength and simultaneous weakness is its segregation. On backpacking trips, I've had to break my venturers coming from GS troops from the habit of deferring to boys. In my case, this happens mostly during land navigation. They would literally cluster on opposite sides of the trail when they reached a crossing. That is the first habit that needs to be broken, because one group would have the right idea and the other the "2 extra miles" idea. And, if the first group cedes to the second, I would have no problem letting them walk out those extra miles. In other instances the girls would take point. E.g. cooking supper or doing dishes. The boys would play dumb, which I found that totally unacceptable. Most of the boys knew full well how to cook and the girls needed to firmly request their participation. That said, the fact that the girls knew to take point and really dive in is a credit to their training. It just took venturing to let them know in deeds rather than words that they deserved a seat at the "boy's" table. So, I don't think @Jameson76 is wrong. A sex-segregated Scouts USA has the potential to replicate GS\USA's foibles. As it stands, the only thing that BSA4G is offering different from GS/USA, is the required participation in outdoor activity for advancement. Where I disagree with him: I don't treat it as a foregone conclusion. There is potential for leaders of BSA4G units to deliver on the promise of scouting in a way that motivates traditional units to do the same.