SueVerner

So of the 3 tests for activity level (active status) of a Scout, the third is "The Scout meets the unit’s reasonable expectations; or, if not, a lesser level of activity is explained. " Can anyone share with me your unit's definition of "reasonable expectations"? Our troop is having the same problem others are having: Scouts who never or almost never attend meetings, outings, etc., and therefore aren't helping the younger boys as they themselves were helped, but they certainly do show up every 6 months to get their BoR or every 3 months thereafter to claim their palms. We'd like to define active status and reasonable expectations for our boys in order to head this off in the future.

I don't believe that compassion is irrelevant; sorry you do, Stosh. And I do not eat animals, visit zoos or aquaria, use poisons for rats or anyone else (ants, termites, etc.), or wear leather. I don't have any idea why you, JBlake,think that I (or "one," as you write) am not aware of other suffering of other animals - I'm very aware and dedicate a good chunk of each day making others aware. And Perdidochas, I keep posting for the same reason you do - because we all keep posting about what concerns us. Your mind may not be open, but others' minds might be.

"Fish are food." And the tiger says, "People are food" and isn't at all interested in whether or not you feel pain because he must kill to eat. It's good that people are able to make ethical choices not to inflict unnecessary pain on anyone - I wish we would make that choice more often. Qwazse, how does fishing teach us to be less cruel? I've seen plenty of fishing - it always looks cruel to me. You torture a worm or cricket or frog when you use him/her as bait; you torture the fish by hooking his mouth; when you catch to eat, you torture the fish by threading a string through his gills or leaving him to flop on the creek bank, slowly suffocating; even when you catch-and-release you torture the fish by hooking his mouth and then twisting the hook back out again. Where's the compassion in any of this?

Perdidochas, do a bit more research and you'll discover that fish do, in fact, have advanced nervous systems. They feel pain. They can learn, and they have long-term memory. Size of brain is not as important as what that brain can do. My brain is approximately 5 times larger than an infant human's brain, but you wouldn't say that a baby can't feel or learn. My brain is approximately 1/6 the size of a sperm whale's brain but we both can do a good bit with them, and we both have nervous systems that transmit the idea of pain - as do fishes's brains.

Fishing is animal abuse. Fishfeel.org

Thank you. I do have the ILST stuff. I'm looking for more ideas beyond that - again, specifics for making some of the other positions cool, like notebooks, or games, or good ideas for them to help organize or interact with the troop, etc. And Sentinel947, I don't know what pm is but I would like to talk w/ you further.

Part of my Wood Badge ticket is arranging for youth and adult leader training events. I'd like to hold a weekend-long training event for our newly-elected youth leaders and their corresponding adult leaders so they can work on some plans together for the upcoming year. I'd like to provide some fun and creative things for these guys to do. I've got plenty of resources for chaplain and a fair amount for SPL and ASPLs, but I can't find much help for training our scribe, webmaster, quartermaster, other than "tell their them job duties and provide necessary paperwork (such as patrol notebook)," etc. Anybody have any more interesting or inspiring ideas? Thanks in advance!

A young man who attended my cooking merit badge class last month telephoned me last night to discuss a requirement that he has completed since the clinic. I talked w/ him for about 15 minutes and at the end, he called into the next room (or nearby-ish) to ask his parents for his SM's phone #, so I know someone was near, for what that's worth - if anything. Should I have had this conversation? I don't know how to arrange for "no one-on-one contact" over the phone. How else can a Scout contact a badge counselor who isn't local to him? Is there another / better way to handle this?

Is anyone doing any kind of BSA program in homeless shelters? Rather than incarcerating every citizen in America (which is a key goal of law enforcement here in Georgia), I would prefer to teach values to at-risk children BEFORE they grow up to become the dregs of society. I am investigating the possibility of starting Cub packs, Scout troops, and Crews (to include the girls) in homeless shelters in the Atlanta area. The obvious biggest problem would be attendance, as many folks are transient. Does anyone have any experience with this, or any thoughts on the subject?

Why else would Cub Scouts have a tartan? Which brings us back to my original question: can we find a way to get the Nat'l Board to allow kilts?

I saw that tartan, and I've also seen a note somewhere or other - maybe on the Clan McLaren website? - stating that the BSA has a registered tartan, too, but I can't find it on the Scottish government registered tartan website or elsewhere. Anybody ever seen it or know where to point me?

My boys wear shorts under their kilts. As to the comments about the kilts not being official uniform parts, I must say that blue jeans aren't either, and at least 50% of our troop's boys wear blue jeans to all events - Courts of Honor included. Apparently what you wear on your bottom half doesn't seem to "count," so why not a kilt? As someone mentioned earlier, at least a kilt looks more formal than blue jeans - even clean, decent ones. And I have an official skirt to wear with my uniform shirt, but I guess as skirts are no longer sold, my skirt is no longer official and I shouldn't wear it. I'll wear it anyway, because it looks much nicer and more formal than those crummy pants with the saggy pockets and the zippers that break the clean line of the pants, and because I already own the skirt and can't afford to keep buying new uniforms every time the national office thinks we could do something more cool. I have four kids to buy for - BSA is lucky I spent the money on an adult uniform at all!

My thought was that if the story about Laird McLaren from the really old days is true, then all Scouts, not just Scottish Scouts, could wear McLaren. (I've never heard or read that he specified only Scottish boys, although the intent may have been there.) Somewhere in some research, I read that there is a Boy Scout tartan registered in Scotland, but that seems rather superfluosly repetitively redundant if Scouts have, in fact, been granted permission to wear McLaren. I think Scouts could therefore just wear the McLaren tartan, assuming that permission HAS been granted -I see no need to create a whole new one.

Also, a decent McLaren kilt can be bought for around $50 from a website or two that I've found. No, it won't last forever, but it's a good, basic acrylic kilt. A nice nod to McLaren, and extra nice if your boys have Scottish ancestry (our Scoutmaster does, but he's a McDonald - wonder if he could wear their kilt or should wear McLaren if he were inclined to wear one?).

Is there still interest in making a kilt part of the official uniform? I love kilts and bought both my boys McLaren kilts last year. The other boys think they're neat, but some of the adult leaders have pointed out that these are not official and my boys should therefore not be wearing them, as we're trying to emphasize the official uniform. (I agree with this position, actually; I'd LOVE to see our troop members wearing their uniform shirts tucked in, uniform pants instead of beat-up blue jeans, pants where God meant them to be so that I don't have to see the boys' underpants, uniform hats instead of backwards ball caps, etc.) But because my sons and I like the kilts, and we ARE using the "official" (kinda) McLaren tartan, I'd like to see what can be done to add that as part of the uniform. Heck, if the uniform shops want to sell them so they can get a little more income, so much the better.