qwazse

LCD = lowest common denominator scouts (and parents, and some scouters). Focusing on them, disappointment is certain. At WSJ one day our scouts scuttled off leaving their dining area littered. There was an LCD scout in camp slumming in front of his tent. I approached him, and asked (in that ASM-ish way of asking that is basically an order) to police the boys' dining tarp, count the pieces of litter that he picks up, and be sure to tell his fellow scouts when they returned how much their mess he cleaned up for them. The scout looked at me, and seeing that I was indeed talking to him, got up and proceeded to clean up camp while I returned to plunging my laundry in my 5 gallon bucket. He did a find job, so I thanked him. Then he said, "My home troop doesn't give ask me to do much because I've got a reputation for not being very responsible." I told him that if the SM and I waited for someone responsible to come along, nothing would get done. I could spend all day fuming over scouts like that. Or, I could ask them one favor (give them one order) after the next, until they started acting like the 1st class scout who I expect them to be. And there is no mistaking the skill differential of a scout from a troop or crew and other fine young men and women of this community. On average, they seem to have done more, interacted with more people, cooked better food, and generally navigated college or military better. So, weather it seems like bean counters at National notice it or not, once again I will repeat, without reservation: Skill mastery in a wide range of areas is definitely BSA's most valuable asset.

I've seen far too many scouts take the same course every year long after they earned the badge to think the little round medallion was the goal. Skill mastery in a wide range of areas is definitely BSA's most valuable asset.

Plan A makes the "where we want ... when we want ..." assumption, so your first deadline is for deciding go/nogo with that plan. If your committee says they have no stomach for waiting any longer, you should decide that Plan A is a no go ASAP. Plan B contains a different "where" for the same "when" or a different "when" for the same "where". Or, you make each those two different plans. It depends on how much energy you have for that sort of thing. Creating each plan consumes a lot of energy. (As many of us know because our jobs -- if we're blessed to have them --- are now already operating on plan B and there's pressure for us to have plans C and D at the ready.) The challenge as scouters is to be open-minded and positive. If you have good district scouters, let them know that you are looking for some plans B and C. They might have something to offer. I was in a situation where plan A tanked, and Seabase offered a plan B1 (FL Keys instead of Bahamas) and my committee found a plan B2 (Bahamas, but we'd have to pay more). My crew went with plan B2 by majority vote -- and fortunately we didn't lose the minority. But, with 4 from my family on that trip, my big-ticket scouting budget was tapped for multiple years.

That's a strong argument for camps moving to 14-day sessions.

My daughter took a flight this week. Six passengers on each leg. I'm pretty sure the airlines will be ready to take your $$s. IMHO, the right call to make is have a plan A, B, and C. Be open to your committee helping you decide to drop plan A now. Some people find keeping options on the table too stressful, and you've already mentioned why that might be the case. But, if the you all come out of that meeting willing to keep everything on the table until next month, and even the month after that, roll with it. In these situations we learn a lot about our teams.

I'm editing in order to deccentuate the negative .... I want to quietly make one modest evaluation: That is one awesome group of scouts! @TMSM, there is only one thing you should strike from your list: I am thinking of bragging to my troop about your troop. But if you throw in the towel now, the scouts who know which forums I browse will get wind of it and say, "Serves you right for listening to strangers on the internet." Don't let National freak you out. If your scouts and their families are letting you keep channels open, spend time on those channels. We work for smiles. I agree about not making these online sessions feel like school. Troop meetings should be shorter and more like roll-call and reports from PLs. Screen time should involve boys posting their accomplishments. Provide that structure. The scout/family who really needs you or has something unique to offer will reach out.

It is possible to re-purpose HA bases: https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2020/04/15/helping-at-all-times-summit-welcome-center-a-drive-thru-covid-19-testing-site/

This is uncharted territory for everyone. I would have no problem supporting scouts trying to fundraise if they found a clever way to do it safely. Such innovation among youth gives me hope for the future.

One of our scouts had a virtual EBoR already, as will another couple of scouts (I think). One Life scout might need an extension (although we could get creative with social distancing and accomplish the project). Otherwise, it's up to the scout to come to us with a reasonable plan B for T2FC or whatever rank. That plan needs to show skill mastery. This is nothing new. Life scouts can be really great instructors but can't remember what EDGE stands for. If a few kids can claim they know what they know because of that scout, I'm signing off on the requirement. I think the tough call is positions of responsibility. Guiding boys to live up to their PoR's requires creativity.

Planning and navigating a hike with your surrogate patrol would be well within the grasp of most scouts and their communities. If one of us were not essential at this time, I would have planned and sent an "Easter Egg" hunt. Colored chalk eggs would be drawn on boulders and walls throughout the neighborhood trails and parks. Using CalTopo (a free dot-com product), I'd drop pins at some of the locations. Objective: before the next rain, with a member of your surrogate patrol, navigate to the pin and take a selfie of yourself with the egg in the background. Same thing could be done with a five mile hike, only there the scout would write a plan and send it to you for approval. Parents' can't hike? A car ride to some interesting (but often overlooked and rarely visited) locations could work. You need the parent who would follow the scout's directions to the letter (except for running stoplights, etc ... ). The one activity that I think is definitely "off the table" for now would be swimming. Unless a scout has a family of guards and a private location it's off the table. My family has the personnel and safety gear, but ain't nobody going swimming until Memorial Day, when we tell that Great Lake that it can warm up for summer.

If it's a choice between ditching the SM and ditching ad hoc requirements, I'd hold on to the SM. Nothing is saying you have to tell scouts about any of this. I certainly haven't. In fact, here is exactly what I said to them (via E-mail with gratitude from our CC) ... Feel free to adapt to the tone you'd like to set. Remember, smiles are our paycheck.

I do favor the scout using his/her family as a surrogate patrol. The challenge is looping in the PL, TG, and SPL. I don't know about your scouts, but the academic program has not let up for mine. In some ways it's harder. Note: evidence of wild animals should include recordings of bird songs and calls of other beasts. A scout could report smells as well. But this all amounts to a 3 month delay. I don't see it weighing on our younger scouts all that much.

@BoysLivesMatter, I have the highest respect for GS/USA, and have had to talk "off the ledge" many young women who didn't. But, for decades the rhetoric at the top of both organization made it increasingly difficult for folks with interests in both to work together. How did it do Boy Scouts any good? Well from a leadership perspective, it kept me engaged as both a Crew Advisor and ASM. I'd like to think that my presence was a positive influence ... or, as I explained to the occasional scout from time to time ... I didn't do any more damage than what was already there. Certainly, when it came time to place flags at veterans' graves last Memorial Day, it was a joy to meet the young women of Scouts BSA in my district -- and then again at Klondike derby. They caught me up and told me summer camp went well too. Some were chomping at the bit to be old enough to join a crew. Now, you don't know me from Adam, and maybe once you did you'd rather not try to recruit me for a few spare hours. No problem. Maybe I'm the only person who's market share you'll miss out on. If so, I'm sure you will be joined by others who will settle their hammocks down in bear country and keep the Constitution at the ready. The digger, sanitizer, and toilet paper in my backpack does not discriminate by age, religion, sexual orientation ... or sex! @John-in-KC, World Scout Jamboree the Swiss exhibit included a bed of hay for a scout hankering to wrestle his/her opponent!

Welcome to the forums. Best of luck on your endeavors. The idea? Doesn't sell to me. My better scouts were venturers in a coed crew. Scouting in the company of girls did wonders for my boys. On the other hand, that you don't want to discriminate on the basis of religion would be a selling point at my church.

That's one way to keep up with GS/USA. Honestly @Cburkhardt, I can't imagine a more effective way to distance scouts than making sure that the closest camp to them is something other than their district (now that districts are as large as councils) camp. Moreover, after this year, who wouldn't rather send their kid to a camp with no more than a couple hundred kids in attendance per week?

I was musing over rhetorical device -- not the International Classification of Diseases ... for which COVID-19 is a very handy term. People are going to nickname diseases whatever makes their point. I'm just suggesting one way to do this. Other scout associations worldwide are definitely better at education regarding zoonotic disease. Still, I learned about most diseases at scout camp. That included polio ... I remember my SM giving us a minute on the Salk vaccine. He told us of a childhood wondering who would be next to be put on an iron lung.

I don't think any obfuscation was planned on the part of the PRC. They are quite comfortable with folks fuming over their reeducation initiatives. But, they are paying for the prejudices they've inculcated. Two police officers were taught to be so afraid of the apocalyptic fantasies of Christians that they muzzled a doctor wanting to tell the world that his patients were suffering and dying from novel contagion. Some folks want to play a rhetoric game naming the virus after its country of origin. I'd like the name of those two police officers so we could name this bug after them.

Resurrecting because some friends in Northern States are noticing ticks in their house or on their pets. Winter was mild. It's that time of year again folks!

Yes! I shake lots of hands. Then wash before meals, snacks, or going out for my coffee. You all touch the same toilet handle ... just saying. Everyone in my family scratches the same dog, and I've seen that beast roll in some nasty stuff!

As @sentinal suggested a spin-off ... If it were not for President Bush taking seriously the culmination of research at the time on the Spanish flu (https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/pandemicflu/) we would have been as unprepared as Iran and Italy (or those two cops in Wuhan who thought a Christian doctor was spouting off some apocalyptic fantasy). Everyone who has posted on this theme on this forum has been knowledgeable from the get-go. That's because the educational component of his and Clinton's programs remained in full force. Precious little that you've heard hasn't already been prepared years in advance. Even, my anti-vax associates build their straw-men out of the material made available by funding from past administration. Trust me, some of my smartest friends were plain stupid about this stuff in the 80's. They could program a computer virus like nobody's business, but they had no clue how that applied to them and their snot-nosed family members. Could supply chain have been managed better? Yes. Considering American ingenuity, our ability to re-direct our workforce is constantly undervalued. My nephew has been screaming for days that his company's 3-D printers are ready to make good on any essential parts contract that comes their way. It disturbs me that Son #1's company didn't instantly pivot to cutting and stamping stainless steel N95's (chain mail anyone?), or to producing shipping containers for companies who were waiting for them to float over here from the other side of the Pacific. But, this is also partly because nobody took our annual flu losses seriously. The working assumption was that we could roll along and >50K flu deaths per year would be acceptable. Folks who highlighted the failures of consecutive seasons of unsatisfactory mortality. Readiness stockpiles should have been loud talking points in every gubernatorial race. We all needed masks, maybe more than flu-shots! As always, why bring this stuff up here? Well, in a few months, Lord willing, you'll be around the campfire with your scouts, and this will require a heap of after action review.

Also, fishing season has opened! Check out your state's competitions at https://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/hofnodnj.htm. Reach out to the one nearest you. Contact your local sportsman's clubs. They might have a program for your scouts as well. Speaking of in-house awards, our SPL's were making little loops of parachord to add to epaulets and represent certain achievments. E.g., all knots tied in less than a minute got a particular color. The insignia dorks among us will dutifully inform us that non-standard loops are not uniform, but since you SPL/ASPLs run inspection, you can decide how many points to take off for such things.

The harsh reality is that we won't know (as in a decent data-based recommendation from the CDC "know") what to do in May until the end of this month. We won't know what to do in June until the end of May; July until the end of June, etc ... There will come a time where we will switch from keeping youth from things like camps (or, more specifically, the evening campfire where all three hundred are packed in an amphitheater) to where camps will be a good idea. But when that will be is uncertain. (BTW, I firmly believe that two-week internment camps -- nice ones, but a rose by any other name -- for all international travelers arriving from anywhere to anywhere would have nipped this in the bud at far less expense.) And it is likely to vary from state to state. Camps, HA bases, and units are going to have to be very agile

@BPPatrolonaRoll, welcome to the forums! It takes time to get to know your youth. It sounds like you've realised that your scouts are into an activity that gets them a medal or a patch after a day's work. So ... you need to look for state/national parks that offer such things. Or, call your fire or police department about small awards they may offer. You may have to talk to your SM about budgeting for such things. Your troop can also make totems that would travel from patrol-to-patrol for things like "best uniform", "favorite skit", "first aid champion", etc ...

Just taking plays from the CDC's handbook ... Natural herd immunity is undesirable because of its mortality rates. It's also uncertain. We don't know how it will hold up during round two, or three ... current antibody tests for past Saars-Cov-2 are not accurate enough to let us know about how resilient people are against a second infection. This is all that is available at round one. That will change if the current tests are accurate, then there will be estimates on how long a body will remain 'on the lookout' for new infections of this strain. Artificial herd immunity, if it is proven to not be as lethal as the original disease, is only as reliable as antibody tests. The real problem (which nobody cares much about in livestock) is autoimmune side effects. If they are few, then we can afford to pay for the care for the claims of damage from the vaccine. If they are many, we will be back to relying on natural herd immunity because people will refuse the vaccine.

Actually, if your doc's office is open (and you're asymptomatic and have have been well isolated ...), now is a great time to get a physical. The waiting rooms have never been so well cleaned, and there aren't a lot of other conditions to treat. (E.g., less work/sports injuries, less asthma without manufacturing and with flu season at an end, fewer communicable diseases ...) A friend in Switzerland noticed the same thing. An antibody test will be a game changer. If you had reported symptoms and your office is a testing site, you may get a call to come in for a test. At which point you can ask the doc if he/she can sign your physical paperwork. When a vaccine clears safety and efficacy trials, expect your kid to get a call. It may be required for school admission, and that may include paperwork. A lost of docs will use that time to sell administer physicals. The nation could have just as bad a problem if herd immunity isn't established by fall because camps refused to open and allow a certain amount of background transmission. Camps have the advantage of rigorous contact tracing. If you participated in week #5, we know exactly who else was with you. If you stayed home, you could be transmitting a thousand-fold more untraceable contacts. Frankly, the wisest public policy would be to require all youth to attend a camp for 3 weeks. It would be the best use of a half-trillion dollars the nation could ever spend. (It would have been better if we required it of all incoming travelers in February!) But, that's way beyond anyone's comprehension.