Eagle94-A1

Repeat after me: HI, My Name is Fred8033, it's been 18 hours since I had anything to do with Scouting, and I am a Scouting Addict. 🤣

Mixed emotions on MBs at meetings. One one hand, I do not think they should be done all the time and the primary focus of all meetings. Scouting is not suppose to be school. You will lose Scouts. On the other hand, if the troop's activity for the month has a MB, and some prep work needs to be done AND the prep work is MB related, I do not see a problem. Best example I can give of this is Canoeing MB. We had a canoe trip planned, and the meeting before it were prep work i.e. part of a canoe, paddle etc, packing for water trips, strokes, etc. we even moved the meeting to a nearby lake to practice on the water before the trip. But in rare cases will an entire MB be completed at the meetings.

Possibly. How often does BSA give out information like that? How often has someone asked for information from the professionals, and they delayed, or wouldn't give the info out? How many times have professionals ignored and lied to volunteers? How many times have professionals not given out info that could directly affect a CO. And if coverage was there, then why are major COs like the UMC being asked to contribute to the claims? And I can tell you the higher level pros lie to the lower lever pros from experience. Blaming the bankruptcy may be the polite way of saying why they do not want to be involved. And even clean slates sometimes have stains on them. Tell me BSA's insurance will not go up, even with a clean slate? Those may very well be some of the additional reasons. But many COs, not just the various Catholic diocese, are no longer chartering BSA units, i.e. UMC Church, Elks, Baptists, etc, because of the bankruptcy. As we well know, a lot of information, some of which were hidden from volunteers, came out in the bankruptcy.

Depends upon where you are at IMHO. Scouting is NOT flourishing in my neck of the woods.

I cannot blame them. BSA has lied to COs for a very long time about the recharter fees also covering the CO. Sadly we learned the truth in the court case.

ghIq maHeghnIS! PS Hopefully I got the Klingon correct.

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scout_Memorial Cannot find the info doing a quick search, it may be on the hiking trail brochure we did in DC, but I read that the artist wanted a Neoclassical look on par with some other statues in DC.

The full article goes on about the Valkrie look the artist was going for. Wings definitely need to go. Change the torch to a lantern. As for the sash, I had to notice it with a closeup to notice it. It looks like scalemail armor to me.

I agree with @AwakeEnergyScouter. I would have skipped mythology and classicalism altogether, see BSA Memorial in DC for the reason. I think having representatives of ladies in the last past and present, 1940s Den Mother, 1972 Sea Scout and Explorer, 1989 Female ASM, 1998 Venturer, and today's female Scouts would have been better.

@OaklandAndy, Which is why no groups are allowed to recruit, meet, etc at the schools. 4-H, GSUSA, etc also do not have access.

No one is allowed. Pros won't even talk to the school system.

THAT IS THE BIGGEST UNDERSTATEMENT EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( Yes i am shouting so I can get the attention of any pros here.) My council has been unable to recruit in the public schools for 9 years now. My county went from 8 packs to 2 packs. <u old pack went from 60+ to less than 20. As for troops, we had 8 troops with the average of 28 Scouts. We are down to 5 troops with an average of 9 scouts per troop.

Some major donors, think Fortune 500 companies, were being threatened with boycotts. Government agencies with Explorer Posts were targeted with lawsuits for violating the separation between church and state. Which is why career oriented Exploring went under Learning for Life, and more traditional outdoor Exploring became Venturing. Folks targeted the Dept.of Defense or Dept. of the Army (sorry do not remember which) for allowing the BSA to use Fort A.P. Hill, now called Fort Walker, for jamborees.

At least you are in the Eagle database. One of my long time Scouters, whom I have seen his original certificate, medal, and photos, is not listed.

My thoughts. 1. I was promised back in 1998 that SCOUTNET 2000 would change this situation and everything would transfer as you move from council to council. To quote Vezzini... 2. If there is a way to merge numbers, can someone please share the directions? I have at least 5, possibly 6 if national issues their employees ID numbers, and I would love to merge them all.. 3. I know they go back as far as the 1990s. But again the numbers are council specific. So some council may not have used them. My understanding is a national database accessible to all councils didn't come out until 1998, and it was phased in. Some council got access to it in June, others November. And trust me it was a mess.

Sadly almost 100% of the "rumors" I read here and elsewhere turn out to be spot on correct. What I find funny is when I cite documentation from national, or more specifically the court case documents, I get angry looks, and am told I am a rumor monger.

Correct. a large chunk of the national fees is going towards the lawsuit. And yes, folks did target donors. My understanding is that even with the updated policies, those donors are not contributing again which is why councils can add fees. Sadly my council is in the "lacks talent" category. Between professionals not helping units survive, i.e. recruiting; ignoring volunteers, especially your small business owners who are willing to pay for specific, needed things; and yelling and cursing out volunteers they disagree with, multiple incidents at all levels; FOS donations have plummeted. More importantly, you got extremely experienced, and knowledgeable volunteers who say "The heck with council, and quit. Funny thing is, if a Life Scout asks for donations for their Eagle Project, the small business owners who use to volunteer are the first ones to donate. In my neck of the woods, people do not do popcorn because A. it is way overpriced and most folks locally cannot afford it and B. those units that have done it have had some "issues" with council in which council takes a larger cut than they are suppose to. And I already covered FOS.

YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know one event my council did for cubs would cost $30-$40/ person, but that included meals. I never went to that one. The one I went to was $15/ person, with a max of $60/ family. I had a family of 5, so I appreciated the discount. Meals were not included, and we did unit or family cooking. The last one they had, was the last event at the camp before closing. Since "family" was not defined, we had a lot of grandfathers attending and reminiscing about the camp.

Regarding Scout History. Yes the boys were acquiring his military Reconnaissance and Scouting book, especially after the Boer War, and using his work for fun. When he came back from the Boer War, he saw a need for boys to have some type of positive group, gangs were a big problem. He approached the Boys' Brigade to see if they would use some of his ideas for a Scouting division, and they didn't use it. He then did Brownsea Island in 1907, and Bob's your uncle, Scouting is born. He published Scouting for Boys initially in a series of journal articles, and it was a hit. As for Girl Guides, Olave had nothing do to with it until after she married him in 1912. He started it, and had his sister Agnes as Chief Guide, and she edited BP's work to make it suitable for girls. She stepped down as president in 1917, in favor of HRH Princess Mary. And she continued as a VP until her death. Olave didn't get involved in Scouting or Guiding until 1913. But she got heavily involved and in 1918 became Chief Guide.

My thoughts: Summer camp needs to focus on fun and hard to do MBs: shooting sports, climbing, aquatics, etc. I always recommend Scouts taking needed MBs, do some fun MBs, and having a free period. I did summer camp for 3 years as a Scout, ages 12-14. 3rd year was a HA program at the camp and it was blast. I am glad that my sons decided to do the Frontier Action Shooting at the camp they are going to this. Middle son goes to college in August, and I doubt he will be active until December. And this is more than likely the Youngest's last summer camp, despite his age, because he is burnt out. He got fixated on Eagle, earned it, and said he is done. Focusing on Eagle is slowly killing the program.

Sadly the BSA has pushed and pushed Eagle.

I worked a summer in Europe, and the focus there is fun and adventure, not advancement. We had 8 weeks to plan, and those troops take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to plan their summer camps, and they go all out. I personally prefer their way of doing things because it is patrol and troop focused, not MB and advancement focused. I basically used ideas I saw them do: Bike trip = Belgians, Canoes = English, Wilderness Survival = Germans, Feast and BORs = Scots. I would love for the troop to do this again, but they want MBs.

We started work on MBs: cycling, canoeing, wilderness survival, cooking, etc. But the focus was more on activities and fun, especially with COVID. And the Scouts were told in advance what they could earn if they did ALL (emphasis) the work. For cooking, bulk used it for cooking rank requirements, and we had 3 BORs on Thursday night as a result. This is where I did too much.🤨 I did all the activity planning for the camp, brought it to the PLC, and let them add or subtract to it. I also made the schedule flexible enough in that if they needed to change things around, it could be done. Only schedule items I was adamant on was 1) Board of Reviews starting at 6:30 Thursday night because the committee was visiting and we needed to respect their time and 2. We WILL be stopping at an ice cream shop after the first bike trek. : ) They had no problems with that at all. 🤣

Sadly to many Adults and Scouts see summer camp as summer school. We did something very similar in 2020 when covid shut down camps.. While the Scouts had fun and enjoyed themselves, when offered to do it again, they declined because they want those MBs. And one of my adults said doing your own camp is a waste of time because you are missing out on MBs. But I have some good memories, and so do the Scouts.

And when you tell the new BSA indoctrinated leaders how it should be, they do not believe you, make excuses on why it won't work, or tell you Scouting gotta change with the times. Sad thing is National seems more focused on Advancement, than building young adults physically, mentally, and morally. Just look at the questions on various social media about Boards of Review. Yes it is not a retesting. BUT it is a way to insure requirements were completed, and if problems arise a chance for them to fix it. But any appeal nowadays automatically gives it to them saying, "you do not penalize the Scout for the mistakes of the adults." They praise councils that did online MB colleges giving away thousands of MBs. And I can go on. Yes, BP did not like professional cadre. Only professional I can think of that he liked was William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt, and probably becasue he was not only a Scout, but lived theScouting life, trying out his ideas with his troop to see what worked and didn't work. Just like BP did in 1907 on Brownsea Island.