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@@robhixkg, welcome to the forums and thanks for your service to the boys. Note: the requirement only talks about elevation "gain". So, they could set up a campsite at the foot of the mountain, hike up 1000', have an outfitter cache some cycles at the summit, and cycle a long winding route back to camp.

I stand corrected! So, in deference to tomorrow's rekindled college football rivalry, here's a concise blurb from Penn State's extension service http://extension.psu.edu/food/preservation/faq/ziplock-bag-omelettes Basically, nobody actually found it to be harmful, but it sounds like a dumb idea. The company's nuanced statement (https://ziploc.com/en/sustainability-and-safety, emphasis mine): When label directions are followed, Ziploc® brand products can be used with confidence. All Ziploc® brand Containers and microwavable Ziploc® brand Bags meet the safety requirements of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for temperatures associated with defrosting and reheating food in microwave ovens, as well as room, refrigerator and freezer temperatures. And a recent statement from rep that hews the company line http://community.anovaculinary.com/discussion/459/plastic-safety So, it sounds like nobody has actually stuffed rats with zip-omelettes to confirm how bad an idea it may or may not be. LNT is the main reason I would not go for gimmicky cooking tricks. If you have to carry out your zippy's, why bother? But @@blw2, going through the trouble of finding these details, I learned that Ziploc does offer a recycling program. Turn them in with your shopping bags. You do turn in your shopping bags, right?

Why? Fun. Forget MBs, it's just plain fun to be someplace where hundreds of scouts file in for flags and campfires. It's also nice to not drive far away for that experience. The problem: with membership decline, you have to pull from a wider area to get the same numbers in each camp.

@@blw2, in the general case, that may be true. But Perd's ASM was referencing the manufacturer specifically for his justification. So, he won't have to cast to wide of a net to address a challenge to his assertion. A good start: look for warning labels on the box! Then the corporate website -- where, far from alerting, we are being encouraged to "boil, baby, boil." From there, the CDC and FDA are great resources for this sort of thing. (Brace yourself at the CDC website, there's bound to be a warning about something you've already eaten today!) The point is ... tell your source precisely. A student may question it (e.g., Scouting's persistence regarding whisky and wound care), but at least there's something to hang a hat on.

How wrong it is depends on how wrong your son thinks it is to not remember a knot while wearing a badge with that cute little motto on that smile-shaped ribbon. The ASM may have noticed the signature on that requirement of someone who had been letting boys skate by without solid mastery of skills. Was the knot from the 1st class requirements, or from a merit badge the boy earned. If the SMC was held adjacent a pool and a land navigation course, your son may want to ask himself if he could demonstrate the other 1st class requirements when they would be needed the most. We need to take the focus off the ASM and ask ourselves, "Is this helping the boy grow?"

For not approving, they sure have a lot of recipes to encourage the practice https://ziploc.com/en/search?q=boiling. I think you have an EDGE method victim here. (Explaining without reference.) The only cure is a good dose of "Show me where it's written."

Let's take one step back from charging anybody except the perpetrator with a crime. Part of my last lifeguard training was watching videos of a kid drowning to death in pool fully staffed with guards who had succumbed to distractions. None of those guards were charged with criminal negligence. I believe the family of the child waived their right to civil charges on condition that the security videos would be made public for training purposes. However, each of those guards knows they let the trivial events of the day overwhelm their ability to make sure each swimmer was safe and healthy. They dropped the ball. Likewise, you can legislate until you are blue in the face about pro's being mandatory reporters. But, it's the volunteers calling the public authorities (which the story that @@T2Eagle found indicates that's what happens) that insures the maximum resources are delivered in the minimum amount of time. If that happens, what council does or does not do is rendered moot.

@@minn, welcome to the forums! An artist friend shared this image. It's a shame that BSA has an extreme prejudice against fashionable denim. Over the years, a lot of girls have written in to BL. The editors are aware that its readership is by no means all male. Their current advice columnists are a male-female team. That's partly because boys write in with questions about dating. But also because, girls whose interests will require to navigate traditionally male institutions like seeing the name "Jenny" in the by-line of a boy's mag. in some families, a boy scout may not be interested in the subscription, but his sister will.

Guys, I think there are some wrong assumptions being made about @@thrifty and Thriftyson. First, parents -- inasmuch as they transport a youngster, help him order his private world (i.e. clean up his room, file away partials), and observe his daily activities - are de facto partners in the MB process. In Venturing we call this "stealth advancement" and advisors are trained to give similar nudges to venturers with lines like "I see you've already done X, how would you like to earn Y?" In my experience, the minute you throw out an encouragement like that and get a favorable nod from the scout, you become heavily invested in the process. Sure scout is doing the reqs, 100%, but it sure feels like scouts and adults are earning and learning together. So let's not pounce on "we" like it's some Fruedian slip betraying some parent trying to relive his/her childhood. At least in Thriftyson's case, it does not sound like it. Second, we should not hold scouts responsible for the quagmire that has become BSA's MB counselor record-keeping. We've fashioned mega districts and conscripted volunteers, then burdened them with repeated YP certifications. (All for good reason.) But in the process, we've lost "community". When I was a kid, every # on the counselor list was reliable because these folks *never* retired, never considered themselves property of just one troop, and always were within an hour's walk until the day they died. The list was on the wall in the scout-house, 'cause nobody was going to copy it to spam or robo-call them. There is no way that there is not some decent guy in Thriftyson's neighborhood cranking out boards and figurines for the next local game night. (Probably some lady as well.) Some caring adult needs to get off their duff and push the paperwork to bring them in the fold. That may include providing a lunch where the would-be counselor could take YPT. I'm not quite sure how, but we all need to figure out how to restore our "community" of MB counselors in the face of post-modern nomadic society.

Thanks for the correction in my parsing of the article. I'm not sure if it makes matters better or worse if the antecedent of "he" was the victim or the perpetrator. The other SM/ASM should have called the authorities in addition to his SE. Either he blew it, or there's more to the story. I've had some pretty good SE's in my council. Good enough to become CSE's. But there is no way, after taking that YP quiz for i-don't-know-how-many-times and reviewing similar material in other organizations, that I'd count on them making that call for me. I'm also not saying that the SM who reported was corrupt. He may have heard back from HQ "Thank you, we'll take it from here." And simply forgot in the face of a stressful situation that he had more to do. Training gets thrown out the window easily enough when times are tough. He counted on his council (1st wrong) and council did the bare minimum (2nd wrong).

A straightforward read trumps most anything. Note that in your son's book is a place where he should be recording his activities with his troop. (And he should do this on his own with minimal brow-beating from his folks. Remember: gentle nudges.) Of course it is as good a way as any for him to mark progress toward rank. But, it is really fun (should his book survive the rigors of his scouting career) to have something to pull off the shelf and remember what that first year of scouting was like! Trust me, if he ever becomes an adult leader, it will be an "antique" some of his scouts will love to flip through!

First and foremost, have your scout read the requirements and ask him what he thinks it means. Then do that. But, just so you have it in the back of your head, the requirement is "Since joining, participate in 10 separate troop/patrol activities ..." So, yes, the overnight for tenderfoot counts for 2nd class, and the five activities for 2nd class count again for 1st class. If you think of it as activities per rank, it's kind of a nice progression of 1+4+5.

I agree. Whatever an SE may or may not do. The SM two whom this guy confided was make two phone calls, one to council, the other to the police. However, the skill of a perpetrator is in finding a confidant who will not follow the rules.

Thanks 'skip. I'm a little concerned that recent warming trends will make our winter camps more often similar to yours. Our crew's winter wilderness survival weekend was in temps around 70F (17C?). But, be that as it may, hearing about other places to go for winter challenges might inspire other units to do the same. I'm dealing with a troop that's gone a little soft. They'll do day events like Klondike derby but won't camp overnight under canvas or less. Former SM and I made regular offers last year, no takers. Hopefully things will be better this year.

Welcome, and thanks for all you're about to do for the boys.

This is more for our international scouters, especially you coeducational lot. But American scouters please pipe up if you think you got something special that maybe we should visit this winter. Do you go winter camping? where? What weather do you expect? In what type of shelter? What age/sex youth? Is finding enough adult leaders a challenge?

@@Hedgehog, you're doing a little bit of apples-to-oranges. What was the youngest age (not grade) of your participants? I couldn't imagine throwing any of my kids into most those activities while they were 10 years old.

@@Rick_in_CA, for the record, I don't feel denigrated. It's a big country. Someone from the heartland is welcome to pick apart the pernicious East Coast ideas crossing Appalachia. As long as nobody's cussing, I'll discuss his contentions ... in a later post as time allows. @@Eagle94-A1, I saw this quote in a sidebar on Bryan on Scouting's forums a few days back, but the link to it was bad. Your link quotes the title and not much more. So I suspect someone was taking something out of context, and the Scouting story editors could not get elaboration from the chief scout executive's office. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, gets released more widely. @@JosephMD, a youth, male or female, cannot be in venturing exclusively and qualify for O/A. Ignoring historical precedent, it makes sense as expounded here http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2014/07/18/female-youth-order-of-the-arrow/;however, in the ensuing comments of that blog, there is an observation by Mike Walton, "... National Explorer Presidents were also OA members. Females could not be OA members normally but did become OA members under a loophole which was closed in the late 90s." In other words, Crews tend to come with female youth, and national advisors don't feel that female youth should be in O/A, thus O/A is not for venturing or any co-ed program of the BSA. The formula for GS/USA and BSA is quite simple: keep the opposite sex at a distance.

Depends on how often the PL melts the DO.

Thanks for more details, I keyed in on this. Really really important right now: don't ever ask him to work on requirements again, ever. Not until he asks you to provide that concierge reminder service. When he comes from school let him know that you learned a lesson from a creepy guy on the internet who claims to have seen scouts come and go. That lesson is that Boy Scouts is his program, not yours. So, from now on, if he want's your help with any requirement ... even a gentle reminder ... he canhave to ask you and mom. The only thing you want from him is that he live up to the Scout Oath and Law. If he can do that, you'll be happy. Anything else good he does in scouting you promise to be proud of him, because it will be his achievement that he got on his own. Absolutely the number one reason I've seen young scouts quit is because they perceived too much pressure to meet requirements too fast. That pressure did not come from us, it came from parents.

Schiff, this sounds like one of those projects that an improved IT infrastructure could manage. Might be worth sending a note to put your hat in the ring to test it! @@RichardB, I would definitely use the selected incident reports for training (maybe even more so, if it included the field of smitten reindeer). This is something I would pull out of my pack to show once we were out of cellphone coverage and distractions are few. Are they already in printed form (e.g. a flip-book) for purchase?

You will have this issue for the next 10+ years. So condition the behavior you want so that the person who will be paying for the loan will be the one promptly completing the financial aid application. So the dinner discussion (right before dessert) should be: blw2: What do you think about that message Mr. __ sent? blw2son: Message? blw2: Oh, I'm sorry, I presumed you checked E-mail as frequently as you scan for Pokemon. Check it now. After you do, we can discuss it over dessert.

@@Phrogger, welcome to the forums. You're son was rushed into the Boy Scouts. There should have been no problem with him hanging out with the next younger den, maybe visiting the troop for activities that would interest him, until he turned 11. Period. My reply falls under a standard "If I were scoutmaster." If I were scoutmaster, I would like to know above anything else if a boy is struggling with the program. It's very easy to be going full steam in an active troop and miss a boy who isn't tremendously upset, but isn't having fun either. This also trickles down to the older boys. Well-trained senior patrol leaders keep an eye out for boys who aren't "meshing" with their patrol (and, conversely patrol leaders who are "out of synch" with their boys). Example: one of my most vivid memories as a new scout was of my patrol off doing something I wasn't interested in (possibly sleeping in), and the SPL taking the time to show me how to start a fire from coals. From that point forward, my troop/patrol could count on waking up to a fire ... provided they cached enough tinder the night before. Clearly you are hoping something similar happens for your son. But, even though SPLs, PLs and other boys in the troop look so much more mature, they may not have learned the fundamentals of "working the crowd." So, give your SM the "heads up" of the problem and share your ideas. If he believes in the patrol method, he'll have a huddle with the SPL and PL about a good Tenderfoot-scale position of responsibility. Also, we have had younger scouts and their parents meet us at camp if the trails were overwhelming. That way, you and him can do some STEM stuff together then catch up with the troop in the evening ... at least for a couple of months.

Now that I think of it, younger SPLs have a rougher time with mustering and reveille. One especially despised method (from an otherwise very nice young man) was standing in the circle of tents shouting. "Wake up! We're burning daylight!" Older SPL/PLs get by with polite knock on each scout's tent flap until they hear signs of movement.

The story-telling is important. But, as with most strike reports, you have to add your knowledge from training and experience to explain why the boys were at increased risk by not spreading out (assuming they couldn't reach a grounded shelter). What I liked about the Times report: Pictures of the aftermath (which you may want to withhold depending on the maturity of your scouts). That would never happen with an human story. A written explanation of the mechanics of high voltage electricity ... especially in relation to mammalian conductors! Why four points on the ground is more risky than two, which is more risky than one (i.e. squatting with legs together). References to other stories of strikes on animals and humans around the world.