Sidney Porter

I was at that parade.

When I was 11 I had a paper route. I found one one of my customers dead sitting is a chair by the slidding glass door. She always sat in the chair. I notice that when the previous day's paper was there and she was in her usually spot. I knocked on the door and she did not respond. I called to police from the the next person on my route. Not tramatized. When I was 13. My grandmother died in the house fire. I was their when they found the body. Not tranatized but In hindsite I probably should not of been there during that process.

This might be an important part? A lot of the Boys and Girls culbs and YMCA programs are really intended as extended care after school programs. There is a contract between the school and organization. My son went to a before school program that was run by the YMCA at the school, it was a business agreement between the school and the YMCA. If we had complaints about the staff our first contact would have been the principal of the school. As far as 4-H. I don't know the structure of the organization but if they have something similar to a charter organization the school might be able to be the charter organization for them but not for scouts because of the discriminatory policies.

Are there that many units that do not camp? I assume that all district run some type of resident camping in the summer. It is not hard to put on a some family camping in the fall or spring up north depending on where you are in the south winter might be the best time to camp. Plus a lot of zoo's, and sports teams have scout night where you can camp either on the field or in the park this might not be the best camping experience but it exposes the scout to sleeping in a tent. A lot of the program is taken care of with those. When we were in FL our unit gave the following opportunities to camp Zoo, minor leage baseball, NFL football, NASCAR track Resident camp, district fall camping 4 family camping Plus Webelos usually had a Webelos camping and camp with 2 different troops In Oh we have 2 family camping Resident camp x2 (we market 2 different councils to allow for scheduling conflicts but scouts typically would only go to one) Zoo, minor league baseball Webelos can have den camping and 1 of the troops puts on a good camping experience for them In hindsite I realize that our FL pack was the exception but I thought our Ohio unit was pretty common.

Each level will have 7 achievements which is suppose to take 3 meetings each. I think that is a piece that people have not talked about. a lot of packs aim for B&G to obtain rank. I think it is going to be harder to reach the milestone in that time frame (which isn't really a bad thing). Sept - Mar would be 7 month, this assumes you have 3 meetings in Nov and in Dec. I think a lot of units have fewer den meetings those 2 months. So I think rank is going to be obtained for most in the April time frame. I am interested in how the packs handle this. Are they going to try to move B&G, are they going to have 2 large event or will one of them become low key. The other big change is the activity belt loops and pins are going away. (The achievements will now be loops and pins for the Web / AOL). AOL can be reached w/o Web to help with 5th grade recruitment. I beleive there is a goal to have more outdoor requirements.

We are currently Web 2 (cross over in 2 weeks) everyone I have talked to is sticking with the the old program. Mainly because you have something to work on in the spring. One of the things that I like about the Web/AOL is that it doesn't feel like you are killing time after they obtained rank.

We have a thread about last child in the woods. This is another book that I think people will find interesting. It is a short book and is available free on line https://timrgill.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/no-fear-19-12-07.pdf The book deals a lot with how society evaulates risk and how that has impacted kids. He touches upon a lot of things that might be an interest to scouters.

List of state foods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_foods I have to disagree with the state nut of Ohio being a food. Although they are showing a picture of the candy rather than the actual nut.

When I hear average size I think 30-50. I think BSA recommends 6-10 in a den.

We have resident camp, summer camp and a monthly pack activity. But we do not have weekly den meetings and monthly pack meetings during the summer. I think the problem with fall recruitment is a lot of units have it too late. We seem to be dependant on recruiting at schools, these usually get delayed until the 2nd or 3rd week. At that point the kids have already committed to other activities.

Not a long article A group of tourists spent hours Saturday night looking for a missing woman near Iceland's Eldgja canyon, only to find her among the search party. The group was travelling through Iceland on a tour bus and stopped near the volcanic canyon in the southern highlands Saturday afternoon, reports the Icelandic news organization mbl.is. One of the women on the bus left to change her clothes and freshen up. When she came back, her busmates didn't recognize her. Soon, there was word of a missing passenger. The woman didn't recognize the description of herself, and joined in the search. About 50 people searched the terrain by vehicles and on foot. The coast guard was even readying a helicopter to help. But the search was called off at about 3 a.m., when it became clear the missing woman was, in fact, accounted for and searching for herself.

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/28/missing-woman-unwittingly-joins-search-party-for-herself Not BSA but hiking related. I thought people would like this. Group tour hiking in Iceland. After the hike one of the participants went to freshen up. When she came back she was not recognized. They thought they had a missing person. She proceeded to join in the search party. The search lasted until 3am.

It is a good book would 2nd the recommendation to read it.