TAHAWK

Iron Chef Thursday became one of the highlights of Summer Camp - and barred attending any council camp that did not allow us to do our own cooking. (Troop's own SC every other year. Different council camps alternating years.) The patrols really got into it. The PLC would decide on three ingredients that had to be used. Dutch Oven had to be used for at least one course. Other than that the sky was the limit. Yum! The PLC decided there would be three ways to score: 1) originality; 2) quality; and 3) presentation.

Yes. Teepees were commonly made by OA back in the day where I was first in Scouting. Not so sure now. OA is has been weak here for decades.

No hope with adjoining councils? I can find no bar if the Counselor is, as required, a registered member of the B.S.A. (which means YPT) and follows all the B.S.A. water safety rules.

We have two GSA councils left in Ohio. Seems the same is true in PA. When I was trying to rent a GSA camp so the Scouts in our troop could run their own summer camp, I found all the different addresses and telephone numbers all rang into the same lady in Pittsburgh, and most of the listed camps had been sold off.

Spring Peepers? That's gross! Every try patrol "Iron Chef" competition ?

Attempting to post, I often see: "Invalid Server Response" or another message about lacking "human" "verification" - both in pop-up windows. I have to leave the forum, reenter, and then post.

When I was a Scout, a good friend could not pass Life Saving due to a leg in a brace (polio) and so could not earn Eagle. Many more than 21 MB's. Went on every hike. The SM and SPL got together, The SM then bought a new brass eagle for the top of out U.S. colors. In a suitable ceremony at Court of Honor, the SPL presented that Eagle from the top of the flag pole to the Scout as "Our Finest Eagle." I know from conversations, that he treasures that eagle as much as anyone could treasure one of silver on a ribbon as it represented the love and respect of the Scouts of the Troop and the Scoutmaster who all knew his value as a Scout and a person. (No. There was not a dry eye in the house.)

Page 11 of this catalog shows that tent. http://home.earthlink.net/~boy-scout...ter1969-70.pdf Pictured in Boys' Life http://books.google.com/books?id=OvQ...e&q=boy%20scou Plans for Explorer Tent http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/675...h313160/m1/20/

About some things, yes. About some things. no. About the purposes of Scouting, no. About Bruce Tuckman, or Wood Badge, or Silver Stag, or adults on Boards of Review as being, respectively and at various stages of THE RANT, the absolute source of all evilllllllll in Scouting, no. About having no interest in improving BSA Scouting, no.

So it's not much of a replacement for a real advanced scoutcraft course.

Google cotton canvas tent Lots of good stuff comes up. As compared to nylon, it is lots easier to make your own. We wanted a Baker for Winter camping and ended up making two. In the process, a couple of Scouts learned to run a sewing machine.

I have staffed all three versions of Wood Badge, although as a "Junior Staffer" (Quartermaster's helper) I hardly experienced the course the way that a learner did. I took the second and present version, and strongly preferred the second version (a week-long). I am not so much unhappy that the current version has next to zero Scoutcraft training as I am that B.S.A. offers only Powder Horn to address the need for advanced Scoutcraft training. They could call advanced scoutcraft training "Pickles," for all I care. Just offer it. We have tried it in our council as an unofficial training event. To be consistent with the declaration that the Outdoor Program is Scouting's most important method, advanced outdoor skills training should be offered and promoted. A weakness with the current course is that "modeling" the Patrol Method to adults who do not know what it has ever been (basically anyone who never experienced it as a Scout or was not given basic training before 2000) makes "modeling" of questionable benefit. They see a group of adults planning things and adults doing all the leading and may easily miss that it is supposed to be boys planning and leading. They see very little independent patrol activity and conclude that the "troop method" is the way things are supposed to be. In the absence of district-level youth training, most youth leaders will be trained solely by troop Scouters, so a failure to train the adults in the Patrol Method has consequences. Even if the Scout goes to NYLT, where the "modeling" is more inescapable since the youth are to do all the planing and leading (including all the teaching except for one session), can the boy overcome the resistance of the unknowing adult? Not likely. ("We don't do it that way.") It is not enough that all the piece-parts of the Patrol Method are still present, scattered here and there in BSA literature and pronouncements. Statements that the patrol and what it does is more important than the troop, that a patrol is to be a group of friends, that a patrol is not an administrative convenience, that the boys are to do all the leading (health and safety aside), that patrol spirit is built on separate patrol activities, and that a boy is to belong TO a patrol IN a troop, are easily missed absent a clear statement of the elements of the Patrol Method - especially given wrong-headed statements like "All discipline is to be handled by adults" (Now thankfully eliminated from the YPT AV.) and statements that all patrol activities must yield to conflicts with troop activities. BSA needs to set out the elements of the Patrol Method and make it required. The new Scoutmaster Specific syllabus is supposed to directly address the Patrol Method and its primacy in BSA scouting. Mr. Tuckman is a psychology prof at Ohio State, He studied and wrote about the group dynamics in a number of groups, mostly 12-step groups. He has nothing to do with Wood Badge other than Blanchard's use of his Stages of Team Development in the Blanchard version of Wood Badge. You can't even blame Blanchard since his language was "rewritten" by BSA employees who did not nearly understand Tuckman's tool for analysis of group dynamics. That process explains the claim that all teams always go through the four "stages" in the same order, a concept Tuckman and Blanchard expressly reject. "Participants," as they are now labeled, bring different life experience to the course. The staff brings different levels of skill and knowledge. The kind of experience you have depends of those variables. That is true of leadership training as offered by the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force as well. Thus, YMWV First Wood Badge Course 1948 "The syllabus was put into the hands of Hillcourt, Thomas, and Lawrence. They quickly decided that the course should cover all the recently "realigned" basic Boy Scout rquire- ments from Tenderfoot to First Class, as presented in the Handbook for Boys. It should also cover the patrol work described in the Handbook for Patrol Leaders and the troop organization and activities of the Handbook for Scoutmasters. The new Scout Field Book would be the source of advanced Scoutcraft. And each student would receive a copy of the World Brotherhood Edition of Baden-Powell's Aids to Scoutmastership to be studied in advance, to familiarize himself with the principles of the Scout movement."

Thank you for the insight, perdidocas. I would have been surprised to hear that an app could identify a bird from a photo taken in the field, especially to ID one lbb from another.

I don't own one and hope never to do so. Prefer compass and maps to GPS. I wish they would leave "devices" at home. But it's not about me and what "I" want.

I was not clear. By "recycle" I mean to repeatedly use so long as usable - the opposite of "disposable."

Our high adventure outings have requirements, set by the Scouts, around being ready - not age as such: First Aid MB; First Class; pass swim test. The chance to go pulls them up and holds none back. Those requirements are known almost a year in advance. The Patrol Method is based on friendship. The dividing kids into patrol by adults is based on something else.

I was a JASM at the end of my Scout career. My primary job was to be a resource for the SPL for troop program planning and for PL's and CL's for patrol and crew program planning. As we had six patrols and two crews, it kept me busy. It was an unusual weekend when we didn't have at least two patrol or crew activities going on. (The de facto/default "troop method," may take a big hit in the new Scoutmaster Specific syllabus due out this year.)

Many backpacking mess kits (and eating utensils) are made of polypropylene (recycle code 5), as are many "disposable" food containers and utensils. We supply newbies with recycled until they get their own - which may be never. Many have continued to use recycled or found even sturdier recycled. Resale shops also often have metal bowls. Inexpensive stainless steel "dog" bowls are commoc. Then there is the Dollar store, as mentioned by blw2. Something about "thrifty."

Not a trick of any sort. The last (September, 1945) version was: " 5. Make a round trip alone (or with another Scout) to a point at least seven miles away (fourteen miles in all), going on foot, or rowing a boat, and write a satisfactory account of the trip and the things observed." Here is the same requirement in the December, 1911, Boys' Life http://books.google.com/books?id=Up2MGKHBw1AC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=boy+scout+first+class+%22seven+miles%22&source=bl&ots=wQrAaFfCsZ&sig=yAYxPYa0OwTwENjULDYy7MqT9cE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nudGU932IfGpsASC-IDQDg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=boy%20scout%20first%20class%20%22seven%20miles%22&f=false It was part of Scouting almost from the beginning but gone for the period of growth in the 50's and 60"s.

As we have been reminded, First Class rank in B.S.A. once required a 14 mile foot or boat trip, alone or with one other Scout. Which of the following answers of years past is closest as to when B.S.A. eliminated the 14-mile journey as a First Class requirement? 65 years ago - WW II is over James West, head man until 1943, dies. First Wood Badge Course at Schiff 55 years ago - New Exploring Program is in the works with co-ed social events and green uniform only in Posts. Run up to 50th anniversary begins 45 years ago - First Cub Scout Day Camps. Congress resolves that B.S.A. should "further ... advance its service to the youth of this Nation as required by their congressional charter to the end that more boys in every segment of our society will be involved in its program and future generations of Americans will be better prepared with the skill and confidence to master the changing demands of America's future and prepared to give leadership to it. 35 years ago - Bill begins Boy Scout Handbook to "return outing to Scouting" and is Awarded Distinguished Eagle Award. 25 years ago - First Southern Hemisphere World Jamboree ends January 7th. Females allowed to be commissioned Scouters 15 years ago - Venturing created. Scout tries to build nuclear breeder reactor in connection with Merit Badge work

>Since we have recognized our obligation to teach the youth the proper use of all legally owned knives as of 2011, how do meet our obligation if fixed-blade knives - found in almost all homes - are the subject of "zero tolerance" policies? >The B.S.A. announced in Boy's Life in June, 2008, that: "The best type of knife for camping trips  and most any other outdoor activity, for that matter  is a short, fixed-blade knife with a beefy handle. Folding pocketknives can fold up on your hand while cutting. Not fixed blades. And remember: When it comes to blades, bigger isn’t always better. Avoid blades longer than four inches. A small, sharp blade can cut just as well as a long one, but it’s safer to handle and easier to maneuver in tight spots. With a good fixed blade you’ll be set for most anything the outdoors can throw at you  whittling, cutting, notching, butchering, filleting, even spreading peanut butter." >The basis of all our moral training is trust. >I understand irrational fear. I am irrationally afraid of heights. I do not expect others to conform to my phobias. > My Council briefly banned fixed-blade knives at our camps. The responsible "professional" has been fired and the rule (and many, many others he decreed) is gone, replaced by the Oath and Law.

Nothing wrong with a single patrol. If you miss "patrol competition," find another/other patrol(s) in another "troop."

Some Eagles are more worthy than others, but I do not see any of your three factors as relevant to the worthiness of an Eagle. Sorry. Perhaps you could explain why you set those factors out for voting.