SR540Beaver

If you follow the plan for how to charter a unit, first you have to have a charter partner, so you have to have an IH who recruits a COR who recruits a CC who recruits the CM or SM. If it is an established unit, the most important adult position to fill is the position that is vacant. http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Media/Relationships/TheNew-UnitProcess.aspx(This message has been edited by sr540beaver)

bovine, As a Chapter Adviser, I constantly run into SM's who say, "we don't do OA in our troop". I've had a disagreement or two with others here who support that view. Obviously the SM holds the keys to allowing an election team to come and do an election......but why would they deny a youth an opportunity to be honored by his peers and participate in something that would enhance their scouting ecperience? It's kind of like saying, "we don't do advancment, service, camping, etc.". It just doesn't make sense. OA is an individual honor. Allow a team to come do their presentation and hold an election. Then it is up to the individual candidate to determine if they desire to complete their Ordeal or not. It isn't a troop decision......or shouldn't be. Now, in a troop that does support the OA, there should be active adult OA members who make sure this years slate of candidates have a ride to Ordeal. Sadly in my experience, that usually isn't the case. Adults get nominated based o nthe resources they bring to the OA, not as an honor like the boys......but still, it is an honor to be nominated by the troop committee. This is made known up front. Each year, of those troops that allow us to come hold an election, 99% of adult members do noting to support the youth in their unit who gets elected. Sad, but true in my experience. When we have discussions with SM's about doing an election, the first words out of my mouth is that if the SM is not a member, he needs to be the adult nominated for that year. It's hard for an SM to appreciate and support something he knows nothing about.....so you are on the right track. Talk to your committee and have them fill out the adult nomination form when your next election rolls around. Next year, nominate another adult from your troop. The year afterthat, another. Each year when Ordeal rolls around, parents who have sons elected to OA won't have to worry about driving 3 hours to camp and not being allowed to stay. The troop will have actice OA adults who make sure the boys get there. OA is about the boys and the adults are about making it happen for the boys. I will add that since we run into the same transportation issue of not having active adult OA members at the troop level who will drive boys to Ordeal, the Lodge rented a school bus. Our Ordeal was this past weekend and our camp is an easy 2.5 to 3 hours away. For $10, any candidate, youth or adult, could come to the council office at 6PM on Friday and ride the bus to camp and return home on Sunday at 12:30. It certainly improved our attendance.

"The only "Real" Boy Scouts are those whose great Scouting passion is to camp out of a backpack or canoe." We call those kind of scouts "sissies" around here. We don't consider them "REAL boy scouts" unless they wander off into the wilderness alone and shoeless when it is below freezing. We don't give them Webelos III luxuries like a compass or water bottle. We give them a flint and steel, a knife and a piece of bubble gum. Those that fail, but survive are ridiculed by the REAL boy scouts who thrive.

perdidochas, I agree on the AOL being Cub and crossover being Boy Scouts. I'm an OA Chapter Adviser and we do crossover ceremonies for the Packs in our district. Many WDL are one time WDL's and dont always realize the difference between AOL and crossover. They ask us to come do an AOL/crossover ceremony and I explain that we don't do that. AOL is the highest rank earned in Cubs and not everyone who earns AOL crosses over and not everyone who crosses over earns AOL. The Pack needs to recognize and and celebrate AOL with the Pack. Crossover needs to be seperate. Can they happen at the same event? Sure, but they need to be seperate items on the agenda. The vast majorrity of the ceremonies we do happens in February in conjunction with the Pack's B&G. We have a few oddball Packs that "do what works for them" that want a crossover as early as October and as late as May. We try to accomodate them as much as possible, but we are doing OA elections in the October to December timeframe and working on Ordeal and Brotherhood ceremonies in the March to May timeframe. Last year, we did 7 crossovers in a 9 day period. Since the crossover is the last item on the agenda and some Packs think a B&G should include dinner, songs, skits, awards, advancement, recognizing grandma and grandpa, pictures, etc., our guys get stuck there for up to 3 hours before they do the ceremony. When you do as many as we do and especially in a short timeframe, the guys start burning out really really fast. We are going to try something new for next year that used to be done in our district back about 10 years ago. We are going to do a district crossover ceremony where any of the Webelos Dens and Boy Scout Troops who want to participate can come together on one single date at the beginning of February and do crossover. This helps the ceremony team from buring out. It helps the Packs by getting in sync with the claendar and it helps the Troops by getting all of their new scouts at the same time instead of having them straggle in 1 or 2 boys at a time over a 5 month period. It has met with positive repsonses from everyone we've asked so far. Oh yeah, the Packs can do their AOL at their February B&G and then come do the crossover the first of March.

Pack, The singular St Patricks DAY or Octoberfest weekend is a far cry from what current immigrants do. I know, I drive thru our "Mexican" part of town each day going to and from work. They are living here, but in their own little microcosm. They have little desire to assimilate into the American culture as previous immigrants did.

I love my iPhone and my iPad. I use them.....A LOT! But I know when to use them and when to put them away. One of my biggest annoyances is during OA Chapter ceremony practice when I have guys actually put their ear buds in to zone out and listen to music. Uhhh, we are hear to learn ceremonies. Just because you don't happen to be standing up here right now doing lines does NOT mean you don't need to participate or pay attention. You might have valuable experience that the guy up there doesn't that you could share. I try to stay in the background and let my Chapter Chief and VC Ceremonies handle it.

Our troop is 45+ years old. I know that since I became a part of the troop back in 2005, we've had the same patrols that were there prior to our arrival. We don't move boys around in patrols unless they ask for some reason. Mixed age patrols have always been very effective for us. Older scouts rotate out and new scouts rotate in from the new scout patrols. Moving new scouts into existing patrols is not an exact science. It's a bit subjective and a collaboration of the new scout ASM's, TG's, PLC and SM along with taking the new scout's desire into consideration. We look for a good fit between the existing patrol and the scout joining them.(This message has been edited by sr540beaver)

There is no reason for it not to count. From your description, it isn't "camping" in someone's backyard in the suburbs and running in the house to use the facilities or pop more corn in the microwave to eat while watching movies on the large screen. I can leave my suburban home and be at one of our council properties in less than 15 minutes. While it is still country, the "city" has encroached enough that it is surrounded by homes on acerages. There is water and latrines in each campsite. You can get 3G signal in camp. Jet liners fly over headed to the nearby airport and there is a lot of light polution at night from the city. But as the sun goes down, you can hear the coyotes howl and see deer along the tree lines. You can curl up in your sleeping bag just llike if we had driven 200 miles away. It's still camping regardless of the close proxemity to the city. I'd count it as long as they are camping the same as they would if you went to a location far away from town.

I kind of alluded to this about a week ago in this thread. I've found it easier to lose weight now that my son is aged out of scouts and gone to college. I'm still active in scouts, but I'm more picky about the roles I take and how many I take on. When I was an ASM in the troop, a Campmaster, on WB staff, A Jamboree ASM and a Chapter Adviser all at the same time, I lived in my uniform. There were weeks where I had some sort of meeting or obligation every evening of the week. Trying to stick to a schedule of getting any kind of physical activity beyond mowing the lawn or watching what I was eating was darn near impossible. I'm not blaming scouting for making me fat, but the deeper I got in, the harder it was to maintain a healthy weight. It was much easier to grab a burger and eat it while driving across town than it was to make a salad, sit down at the table and eat it slowly. Right now, I'm on the Jamboree committee, a Chapter Adviser and the NYLT Course Director for our fall course. I only have to get myself around to the occasional meeting now instead of getting my son here and there for all of his scouting activities and the slow down has helped. I'm now home more than I'm gone scouting and I can more easily control what I eat and what kind of activity I engage in. Scouting didn't make me fat, but it sure didn't make me skinny either. I'm doing that on my own.

There should be a bidding process.

Ahhhh, breastfeeding! Those were the days!

BTW, Scouter-Terry gave a few of us the blessing to create a facebook group with the name "The Scouter dot Com Facebook Group". Search for it and join it if you'd like. I'd post a link, but I'm at work and facebook is blocked.

I know EagleDad. We met here, found out we were in the same council and met back around 2004 when I was helping start a new troop and picked his brain on boy led. I tried to meet up with Eamonn at the 2005 Jambo, but kept missing him at his campsite on the far side of camp. I am "friends" with a number of our posters here on facebook.

Godwin's Law is basically that given enough time in any online discussion, a comparison to Hitler or the Nazi's will be made. That doesn't mean that such a comparison is incorrect, just that it will eventually happen. One should read up on the Nazi Kristallnacht to understand why SP has made the comments he made. One only need exchange the word "Jew" with "rich" to see the similarities.

There is no right or wrong answer on this because troops vary so much. It's a necessity for us because we run 50 to 60 youth per year. It isn't out of the norm for some of our trips to be 4 hours away from home. Parents can't just drive the boys to the location and leave......and we all know there are folks here who are critical if you have more than the SM and a couple of ASM's camping. I'll admit, I sometimes have the same issue as I've seen up to 20 adults go camping with 40 boys. But we have a well established culture in our troop of the adult area and the patrol areas and people are not welcome to just wonder into anyone's campsite without asking permission first. We have trained adults for climbing and our own climbing gear. We do mountain biking. We do backpacking. We do good old fashioned car camping and cook in dutch ovens. The larger the troop, the more people there is to transport and the more food and gear too. A trailer just makes things much easier and can help reduces the adult footprint.

"I reckon if any campout involves eatin' small amounts of freeze dried food out of a foil pouch, yeh probably just don't know what you're doin'." Our troop is big enough that we alternate annually between Philmont, Northern Tier and our own custom treks. We have lots and lots of experience on the trail. We also have two trailers.

You know, if you eat filet mignon for every meal, it gets old after a while. If every campout, every month is standing on your feet for 48+ hours, living with minimal gear out of a pack, eating small amounts of freeze dried food out of a foil pouch, it gets old after a while. Maybe not to some, but for most. I know some guys who could spend the rest of their life fishing or golfing every single day. But not most guys. It just isn't the norm. Same goes for car camping every campout, every month if you do the same program over and over. A trailer gives you options that a backpack doesn't. Heck, you can even throw your backpacks in the trailer to transport them to the trailhead.

I'd say to bring up any topic you want. You just have to realize that like any family, we have our crazy uncles and curmudgeons who have obsessions on certain topics and will beat them to death with negativity.

JoeBob, Do you realize that according to the CDC's BMI calculator which BSA links to for Jamboree, you are considered "overweight" at 6'2" and 217 lbs with a BMI of 27.9. They consider "obese" to be a BMI of 30 or greater. Kind of silly don't you think? I've never liked the charts or calculators. "Normal" weight for guys our height is 144 lbs/18.6 BMI to 194 lbs/24.9 BMI. Can you imagine someone 6'2" at 144 lbs? They'd look like they walked out of a concentration camp. I don't consider that to be "healthy". http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/english_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html

Welcome to the forum RumRunner! Speaking of a 5k, how many councils out there sponsor a 5k or some sort of run? Since we promote physically fit, wouldn't it make sense? Our troop and a few others I know do work a number of runs as a service project. Why couldn't a council sponsor a run as a council fundraiser while at the same time encouraging their members to particpate?

TWOMORROWS, You're on to something here. I'm thinking BSA can create a virtual Baden Powell and everything can be done online.

I don't think it is just in scouting. Take a look around your office or church and you'll see the same thing. I was at an NYLT staff development meeting yesterday and looking around the room at the adults, I noticed that I was the only one who wasn't straining my shirt buttons. That didn't used to be the case. I'm 6'2" and was sitting at 298 when I finally decided I'd had enough on February 6th. As of this morning, May 7th, I weighed in at 268. I'm doing it by making smart food choices and portion control and in 10 lbs mini goals. I'd like to get back down to 200, but that is an ultimate goal. I'd be happy if I can make it to 230. I will say this, losing weight can be very hard depending on the person. It is one of those things like smoking where the person involved has to want to for themselves. No amount of nagging, reminding, coaxing, etc. will lead a person to lose weight. It takes each individual getting to that one singular moment of being tired of huffing and puffing walking up steps, not being able to bend over to tie your shoes or dreading getting on your knees because you know how hard it will be to get up without something to hold on to. I finally hit that wall and had had enough. I will say this, having my son out of scouts and off to college has certainly helped. Instead of worrying about feeding a growing boy, we can more easily perpare foods that work better in our diet. Not running across town for scout functions 3 or 4 times a week plus campouts certainly helps too. It was always easier to "grab something" on the way there or back. I suffered thru the last two Jamborees as an ASM and have not planned on going to the 2013. If I did, it would be as staff. The nice thing is, if I stick to what I'm doing, I'll actually hit the BMI by the end of this summer or early in the fall. I feel so much better than I have over the last 10 years or so. I knew I would, I just wasn't in the place yet to do it. A word of advice, if you notice someone losing weight, praise them. It helps strengthen their resolve when people notice.

Eamonn: "As it is now someone could donate a very large amount toward FOS, where the funds don't go into endowment and there is no real BSA recognition." Well in our council, big FOS donations earn you a coffee mug and custom council strip!

BadenP: "The saddest part is there doesn't seem to be one person at National being considered for CSE that has a clue how to fix anything. Incompetence surrounded by the incompetent. Time to bring in an outsider with some common sense who can clean house at National." Hmmmmmm? Perhaps if Mitt Romney doesn't win the election........

Given BSA's new safety regulations (being discussed in other threads), adult OA members may be the only ones capable of providing service while the youth Arrowmen watch and wait to become adults and use those cool tools.