CMSteve

Our troop was in an adjacent campsite. It was no more than 150 yards from that site to hard shelter. The alarm did sound beforehand, by a couple minutes. Staff are youth also and can't be expected to go through each campsite. Moreover, the trees that fell were not nearly dead - it was wind shear that sliced them in half. Just my two cents.

My troop was there. There were 60-some-odd trees downed during this storm. Some trees were uprooted, but a number were sliced in two some 20-30 feet up. There were two oaks that were uprooted and fell on either side of this poor Scout's tent, but the oak standing between the other two that actually fell on the tent had been lopped off midair. For reference, it takes 94+ mph winds to shear a tree like this. It was a microburst that came almost out of nowhere, though the hard shelter alarm was sounded a few minutes before the accident. There were a lot of boys wanting to go home that day and the next couple of days, let me tell you, but aside from the affected troop most stayed and, I believe, ended up being glad they did.

Hi all--first post here. Thanks in advance for weighing in on my question. :-) I just became the Cubmaster for my Pack this Summer and am looking for ideas to make the meetings memorable and fun. I've had a lifelong interest in puppets and puppetry, so naturally it occurred to me to bring that into the picture. What I'm considering is having a Cub Scout puppet as a recurring character to address the kids or maybe do a little sketch with another puppet here and there. It'd be only a three to five minute segment, so it wouldn't take a whole lot of time, but as I said, I think it would be memorable. Although I know I would have loved a well-done puppet show (and yes, I know the difference between a dumb, haphazard puppet show and an actually funny one) at any stage of my life, I fear that in this day and age it could be considered too childish by the older kids. I don't want them to tune out. My son is a Webelos I and is practically begging me to do it, but that may just be because he's a chip off the old block(head). What do you think? Good or bad idea? Any suggestions? Steve Douglas