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The $s have to come from somewhere. So, if not through fundraisers, then through increased dues. Not sure how our pack handles it. The troop does leverage council camperships. They also give the SM a small discretionary fund. Beyond that, if a family is in need, the CC, SM, and Treasurer meet in executive session to determine if they can underwrite a larger portion of camp. This then is reported on the treasurers report anonymously. We make clear to scouts and parents that our ability to do such things is underwritten by fundraising. We also have folks in our community who have said they will anonymously support summer camp for any scout for whom money is an issue. However, we don't publicize that. We just say that if times are tough for someone, it happens, we are hear to help.

We've all of the ways @Eagle94-A1 describes. It depends on the personality of the scouts and the nature of the event.

Well, if you put yourself in cold water, that might lower your heating bill just enough!

One knot guide of mine has several different ways to whip rope. It was more coffee table book than manual, so I never took it with me to anywhere that I needed to practice.

Nice to see we're getting back to splitting hairs over semantics. The fact is, if your scouts and the scouts of some other troop wanted to compete for whose scoutmasters scored highest on uniform inspection, and they asked me or TLS to judge, we'd dock points for "flair" just like we'd expect someone to dock us. Now, for each parent who actually does wear those pins at work/church/gym/bar, I might give points back ... We are all victims of De La Renta's third-world-general look. The fact that 70 years later "flair" means something to us in the context of uniforming indicates that he wasn't entirely wrong.

We break down at #3 and subsequently #5. At least my vision of it. I walked across town (and later drove around the township) to get together with my patrol and hike so buddies could advance in rank. Modern YPT makes that nigh impossible. But even before this year's strictures, the formal patrols weren't pulling this off.

First @rickmay, congratulations to your daughter! By now you know that rank advancement ain't easy. It takes a good bit of dedication on the part of your daughter, her patrol, and her troop. I accept a few dings on inspection and wear an Eagle parent pin and/or mentor pin on the collar of each of my uniforms. So my saying you can't wear a parent 2nd class pin would be akin to throwing stones from a glass house! But, something to think about: everybody in the troop already knows your proud of your kid. What about the folks at church, work, the gym, the bar? Folks made those pins for you to show your pride for your scout when you're not in uniform. This is especially important for fathers of daughters. The rest of the world is still trying to get their heads around Scouts BSA, so that pin on work/casual clothes could turn you into your kid's ambassador! Just a thought.

Class of '09 sounds about right. At the unit level I was getting a snot-load of cross-talk about how to advise my crew. I started asking council and area venturing volunteers, "Am I crazy, or am I right?" To which they'd answer "Probably crazy, but certainly right." Then, one leader put me on to these forums, which were extremely helpful not just for being a CA, but being an ASM. The timing was fortuitous, because a new class of venturers was about to rotate into my crew ... and a large portion had not been scouts (boy- or girl-). Hashing things through here set the tone for when I was in the field. And, it gave me the freedom to call DE's on the carpet for council shenanigans like requiring tour permits for meetings at a coffee shop! But, what I really like is the non-nonsense layout. Very little clutter ... lots of plain text. Current topics are front and center, but very old discussions are still searchable.

Clearly, the scout needs to transfer to a school district where board members make the paper for getting into fist fights. No, I wouldn't make the scout attend until there is a debate. But, I'd say there's a bit of a problem if board members aren't at least discussing the pro-s and con-s of any motions put before them.

Trust your gut. Limit it to one dozen per trained leader. By trained, I mean that before the event your leaders will spend a half day with you working on the project that you're expecting the scouts to do. In the process you go over what must be covered, what could be covered, and what should be covered depending on how focused the scouts are. Then they can cover the discussion parts and help you identify the scouts who really aren't prepared and would need a partial. This means that scouts who did a really good job earning the MB before could assist. It is very likely that you will (or maybe already have) stumble on one or two scouts who already have this as a hobby and could handle a group of scouts in their own right. When you do this however, you want to make sure that you are free to roam around to each group making sure that all the necessary topics are being covered.

Son #1 and his buddy visited a school board meeting. The advantage of going in person was that the president of the board took time afterword to sit and have a chat with them. One I went to as a scout was right after a police shooting in the midst of a domestic dispute. Long meeting, but very interesting. Being comfortable in contentious meetings comes in handy when you have to appear before a town council to complain (for the third time) about a neighbor's customers stepping in to pick up a pack of cigarettes but leaving their car in neutral, allowing it to roll in your front yard.

Reading as I nervously monitor this weekend's bites.

Here's a piece on our local radio station about this year's Banned Books Week. The BSHB has some stiff competition in the globally banned book category. But, like the Bible, not even the current edition was on sale at the World Jamboree Trading post. A couple of leaders from Indonesia were really hoping to pick up some BSA literature, the best I could do was send those ladies the link to ScoutShop.

Remember, the method is "Leadership Development" you want your scouts to emcee for their troop because that's a safe place to prove their talents. (This applies to adults. One of our SM's first speech ever was at a CoH. He did very well. After I realized that, I encouraged him to share it with our scouts, and I think it helped a lot of them be more able to put themselves front and center.) The amount that an emcee inserts him/herself into the ceremony depends on his/her talents. A really good organizer who is very introverted will get everyone lined up but will say the bare minimum at the event. This is probably how anyone just doing it for the MB should operate. The scout who figures it's a responsibility that comes with the patch -- especially one he/she had to win an election for -- would naturally be more able than many. Most youth will not have honed their talents until having fulfilled tenures as leaders and also held office at school, or read/spoke/sang in their house of worship, or made impassioned pleas before the UN General Assembly. Of course, there are always one or two who at an early age would hold the floor for hours. (Don't you all look at me like that!) Those ones have to learn how to say less to communicate more!

There are probably hundreds sites about what it takes to be a good emcee. But, here's a link to tried-and-true advice from Toastmasters https://www.toastmasters.org/magazine/articles/when-you-are-the-emcee. My metaphor: if the event was a body, the master of ceremonies would be the ligaments that hold the bones and muscle together. He/she is neither the bones nor the muscle. The bones are the outline of the event ... what needs to be accomplished. The muscles are the people of the event, the bring life to the bones. The ligaments hold muscle and bone together so that the event is accomplished. So ... most of the communication for a troop event involves identifying what needs to get done (and many times what doesn't) and who should do it. Well in advance of the event, the emcee communicates this, identifies the principals for the event, reviews the outline with them, adjusts accordingly, and allocates their time. At the beginning of the event, he welcomes the audience and tells them what the skeleton will be, and who will be providing the muscle. At the event, the emcee has very little to say, because what he/she has to say is very important. He/she has to make the right muscle pull the right bones at the right time. The fewer words, the more likely his/her cues will not be missed. An example: Then, as the court proceeds, the emcee simply repeats himself as he cues everyone down the agenda. E.g., "Thank you, Mr. SPL. We will now hear of our troop's adventures from our Scoutmaster, Mr./Mrs. ____." ... "Thank you, Mr. Scoutmaster. Mr. SPL will now acknowledge the advancement of individual scouts" .... A more articulate scout may put things more eloquently. He/she may acknowledge special guests in the audience. He/she may give a word of encouragement after all the scouts have received their advancement. He/she may ask to could give the report in lieu of the SM, to give the FOS presentation (an ideal job for certain boys who've staffed camp before). But, those "extra's" aren't central to the emcee's job. What is central is his communicating to everyone, "now Mr./Mrs./Miss. will do ____" Needless to say, if you have a youth who seems to do that sort of thing naturally (or, maybe has announced at sports matches and sounds like they could do the same thing at your events), you might have that scout emcee the fist event or two, even if he/she isn't working on Communications MB. So, @rickmay, I think you can be very frank with the SM and ask, "So, what youth can we have emcee the next CoH? Last time, we were really hurting because we did not have someone in that role."

What about my description makes you think the youth aren't planning it? We have a lot more campfires than CoHs. And, SPLs usually need to earn Comm MB too. He is "ordinary rank and file." Regardless, we've never considered it the emcees job to hand out awards.

File this under not-a-hill-to-die-on. If the PLC does a little after-action review and discusses what went well, what didn't go so well, and what we should do differently, you'll soon get a pattern that suits your community. We don't eat until after awards have been dispersed. That's mainly because most of our CoHs are during a meeting time, so most families have had supper, and we only have light snacks afterwords. Needless to say, the scouts move things along pretty quickly. When it comes to awards, the SPL asks the CC,. SM and ASMs to come forward and stand to the side. SPL asks a scout to come forward, announces his awards, ASPL gives a packet with anything they haven't already been given during troop meetings, and scouts go down the line shaking each leaders hand. A little too rushed for my taste, but the scouts are happy, so we leave it as is. Parents shaking the SM's hand? Not a consideration.

I'm not a very successful fisherman. But when I have a bit of luck, and there isn't an ambitious scout around to do the work for me, I do the "Filet-way". I've tried the criss-cross way when I had an open fire and no utensils besides my knife. The skin does peel away, but there's more bones left to reckon with. Also, I've found it hard to season this way. It's not like steak, where a good dry-rub makes for a perfect opportunity to roast it on the coals. But, like I said, I haven't caught enough to perfect a methods.

I remember we discussed this at one point, and it seemed that the consensus was that it counted. Most likely it could fall under "debate". I tried to find the link, but failed.

In this technological age, calls might never be answered. Consider having a post-cards with your schedule that you all can sign or mail. Ask DLs if anyone is friends with the parents who put their name name down and they personally extend an invite. Consider doing all the phone-calling and inviting in one night. If you don't have a tiger den yet, the CM should be prepared to have an informal meeting to meet the parents. They'll need guidance on organizing themselves.

@mrkstvns, Powder Horn, even an exciting one, inspires folks to up their skills and open their minds to new opportunities. That could allow their older scouts (e.g., those of you with a bevy of young Eagles asking "What's next"?) to form a leadership corps that puts in extra time to master particular activities. There's nothing stopping a troop like @ArmyScout's from allowing older scouts to have the space (e.g., letting them be in one patrol or form a leadership corps) to do that. But, wanting to master some super-activity doesn't is not a reason to start a crew. I went over this with my SPL and a few of the older scouts at cracker-barrel this weekend. I made it clear how demanding being a venturer was for a scout already in a troop. They have some ideas of activities and friends who weren't scouts who might join them. And I encouraged them. But I didn't whitewash the brutal honesty that very few of their friends outside of scouting have developed leadership, so it will fall to them to get the crew flying. And if they have leadership positions in both troop and crew, then both SM and I (assuming that I can't find someone more capable than me to be their advisor) would not lighten up on their workload. Now, what do I have to offer these scouts? I told them it was "leadership" as opposed to "leadership development". They will lead from day one by recruiting advisors and committee. They will lead as I push them to serve and Council, Area, National, and maybe even Global levels. They will make the phone calls, reserve the camps, feed really good ideas back to the troop and do most of the heavy lifting for implementation. (Regarding STEM: Scuttlebutt from my relative with two boys who transferred to TL/USA is that many troop dads are engineers in the space industry, and their is some pretty manic home-grown gear that appears on camp-outs. This should come as no surprise that STEM=excitement. After all, the Super Soaker was invented by a NASA engineer.)

So, the labeling of injector-type tools needs work. I suspect more of them for diverse needs will roll out as time goes on, and there will need to be international symbols for each type of emergency injection. Then, we need to train scouts on reading the symbols, identifying the conditions, and applying the treatment. (This is nothing new, by they way. It wasn't that long ago since we all had to add universal precautions to our kits.) I guess the "holy grail" of emergency drug delivery systems would be a device that first samples the subject to determine what's needed then deploy the appropriate drug. The system would then need to be returned to an apothecary for sanitizing and replacing spent capsules. (Although, based on my experience at Jamboree, the device could just put out a beacon and have a drone retrieve it in exchange for a fully-stocked device.) Let's put our STEM scouts on that one!

So, our state is trying to get overdose recovery kits to likely responders ... Is this the new "epi- pen" that scouts should be prepared to use?

Ditto @Eagledad on the first aid. Being prepared to help others is part of the gig. More people, more odds of needing help. I'm pretty sure the former "runaway horse" first class requirement was aimed at scouts walking through town, not in the deep woods or open prairie.

The thing about pen-knives and other tools, if you are planning to visit a court house, police barracks, or town hall, you might be slowed down at metal detectors. You really do want to see if you can schedule a visit with some public officials. That adds a lot of value to town hikes. But, that also means keeping a small notebook and pencil (or pen, since I guess Texans don't usually have to worry about ink freezing), as the scout might want to record some observations. Sure, phones can do that, until the battery drains. Oh, and bring extra patches. You might want to give them to someone as a gift for a pleasant conversation or courtesy to the scouts. And a spare neckerchief. All the cool kids are wearing them! The really cool kids have one to give away on a moments' notice. Don't be dismissive about matches or lighters, sometimes strangers might need help lighting their cigar!