Ankylus

We just returned from Philmont yesterday. One of our crews had a scout who nearly lost an eye to a limb after retrieving a bear bag in the dark. (One observation this time is that Philmont consistently chooses the bears over the scouts. Another is that some of the back country staff are getting arrogant.) We are still waiting to see how badly the eye is damaged. He apparently won't lose the eye, but will lose the tear duct. He's 14....that's a long time with a dry eye. Our sister crew climbed the Tooth of Time to spread the ashes of two ASMs who were killed at Northern Tier last year when a tree fell on their tent and crushed them to death. Never heard about that one anywhere. We also were discussing tent placement when someone mentioned the the Philmont incident two years ago where the scout drowned in the flash flood. Our ranger (who I liked a lot) several times said during that discussion, "We don't like to talk about that here." I think a lot of this is actually suppressed.

I do believe my oldest son's first patrol leader was the son of a billionaire. The father was at the time a CEO of a major corporation you would know the name of and is now currently CEO of another very large corporation. He was also on the national Board of Directors for the Boy Scouts of America as well as a couple of other Fortune 50 companies. The mother is from a wealthy family and went to Punahou School with President Obama. If they weren't billionaires, then I don't know any. There were, in fact, several millionaires' children in that troop. And there is a troop where this city's wealthiest elite go to church and school. That troop has 256 scouts in it. I am willing to bet you can find at least one in that troop. I am willing to bet it happens more than we know of if only because there are lots of billionaires and their families who fly below the radar. They're not all Paris Hiltons and Kim Kardashians. The general public just isn't much interested in the wholesome kid going off to scout camp.

Thank you, both for the link and the kind words. We will see to this.

This morning I attended the funeral of one of our first year scouts who died tragically on a family vacation. The family asked the troop members and leaders to wear their uniforms to the funeral. His death will be a loss to the troop and not just his family. He was a good scout and will be missed. We will probably do something at the troop level, like hang up a memorial in the scout house or something like that. My question is whether there is some kind of posthumous or honorary award, recognition, rank advancement or something like that available from within the scouting program? The family would really like that, I think.

Yes. Houston. There are a LOT of Baptist churches within 20 miles of me. Church of Christ....no doubt...as well as the other Pentecostal denominations. But in general, Pentecostal denominations aren't even as strong as supporters as the Baptists were.

OK. As a term of art, you are correct. I was using it in the vernacular sense. I concede that point. What about the rest of the points I raise?

No, I am not forgetting that girls are appealing to boys. And we all know that boys have no other place they can meet girls. Not in school, not in church, not at the ballpark, nope...no place at all to meet girls in this culture. The old, "well, everyone else is doing it", excuse. No dispute that every other scouting program is doing it in the world. (Not precisely accurate, but close enough.) (1) we shouldn't be interested in being like everyone else, (2) we shouldn't care what everyone else is doing--we should care what works for our children, (3) it may work, but would it work better otherwise? What do you think my mind is made up about? There is nothing abstract or fictional about the political left. Or did you think Hillary Clinton ran as a Republican? I agree with the rest of that paragraph. "All politics is local." First, that cuts directly against your point that "the model has worked in pretty much every other country with a Scouting organization.". Please be consistent. But I don't blame any particular ideology for Scouting's success or failure. I "blame" BSA's response to that ideology's attacks on the program BSA provides. The rest of that I mostly agree with, except to the extent that what program I deliver is controlled and determined by BSA, unless I choose to deliver only a BSA-based program. So the "local" sentiment is nice and all, but misplaced.

Here are three ways: the acceptance of openly gay leaders, the admission of openly gay boys, and the admission of "trans boys". My source is my personal observation. Every Baptist church within 20 miles of where I sit did not recharter within 2 years of the acceptance of gay leaders. Also, although not as strong as my statement: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/us/boy-scouts-transgender-policy.html https://www.dallasnews.com/life/faith/2013/06/05/some-churches-severing-ties-to-boy-scouts-over-allowing-gay-youths https://baptistnews.com/article/churches-drop-boy-scout-ties/ And I didn't say it was an official policy. The Baptists do not have a national "policy setting" group like LDS or the Roman Catholic church.

OK. All I know is that every Baptist church within perhaps 20 miles of where I am sitting did not recharter their troops. Maybe its different where you are. But they certainly pulled out here.

Agreed, whole heartedly.

To me the loss of LDS is not remarkable so much for the loss in membership or revenues as it is two other factors. The first is that as BSA continues succumbing to pressure from the political left to change it's program, it will continue to alienate a lot of it's faith-based partners. The Baptists left a couple of years ago. LDS is starting to leave. And there is another thread about how some Roman Catholic dioceses are booting the Girl Scouts for moving to far to the left, and I don't believe they will hesitate to do the same to BSA. The second is that this, in turn, will cause BSA to panic about loss of membership and revenue and make further ill-advised changes to the program to recruit membership from new places. I really don't see them returning to their fundamental roots. That leaves one place to evolve the program...away from what I understand to be it's core mission. If I am mistaken about the core mission, then so be it. It is not the organization I think it is or want it to be and I can react accordingly. I am sure they don't care too much about me, what I believe, or what I want. But if I am right, and they are going to do that, then they need to make a conscious decision to do that and announce it so the rest of us can make the decision that is appropriate to us.

This brings me back around to--what is BSA's core mission? Is it simply to expand membership? Is it to provide jobs and retirement for the professionals? Is it to serve as a proving ground social justice warrior agendas? Is it to teach boys leadership and outdoor skills? What is the core mission? My understanding is that it is to teach boys leadership and outdoor skills. If that is so, then they have made so many missteps that it is hard to tally them all. If we are to infer the core mission from their actions rather than their words, then what would that be? I still think they have no idea what their actual core mission is, and that they blow with the wind. (Don't get me wrong about one thing--they know what they say their mission is, but they don't act in accord with it.) Which leaves them looking at the metrics. The two greatest metrics are revenue and membership. Profitability is probably third. And so that's what they are focusing on. And still, they can't get it right.

I agree that the professionals are all about the metrics, and that it will lead to coed membership eventually. Perhaps not in 2018, but probably within 5 years at most. And that will be the death knell of BSA. Because once girls become a part of the demographic and they start running the numbers, they will begin changing the program to appeal more to girls. Which will make it less appealing to boys. And eventually it will find a steady state where it appeals to some groups of boys and girls both, but it won't be anything like BSA today. And, IMHO, it will be much less of a program. Especially once the leftists get a hold of it and push the feminist agenda on it.

It is a sad fact of life that any organization over time begins to exist for itself and those who comprise its bureaucracy rather than those it ostensibly is formed to serve. Over time it will manifest a will to survive rather then to serve, or profit, or whatever is supposed mission is. BSA had a better run than most.

You may very well be right. But national is not prepared for that and assume LDS will be there. Scouting may be better off, but it will have to survive LDS' departure, first.

One overlooked point is that a lot of LDS boys join BSA because LDS tells them to do so. "This is a good organization for boys, and you should join it." And so they do. Will some of the boys stay in BSA outside of LDS units? Undoubtedly. But I bet most of them will leave for whatever church-approved activity is next promoted by LDS. Most of those boys are gone.

That's all well and good. Out of curiosity, which "civic organizations" and "'friends of' organizations" do you think those might be? I mean, national needs to find these organizations ASAP. It seems to me that if those organizations were inclined to support BSA, they already would be. And, among the organizations you identify, which will step up sufficiently to fill this hole left by LDS? I don't think anything is wrong with your opinion, except that I really doubt that church's anywhere use BSA for their "youth group". Oh, that, and it flies in the face of reality. But what is the mission of BSA now? That, to me, is the critical question. I don't think even BSA knows. They spout a lot of platitudes, but when the rubber hits the road, they just kind of flounder around. So, what is the mission of the BSA? And which new civic organizations are going to step up now that are not already actively supporting BSA?

That's what they said on the Titanic.

Yes, and so it begins. To date, national has chosen the least painful path. They were fools if they thought it would have no consequences. So now it's all pain all the time. I am not inclined to increase my level of commitment in time or in money given the direction of the program, and so they can go find some new sources for those things. “A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.â€â€• William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Thank you for the story and the pictures. It looks like a wonderful adventure for your scouts. There is actually a train called the "Narrow Gauge Railway" that runs between the towns of Durango and Silverton in Colorado. Every time I have been on it (twice?) they have stopped midway to let backpackers off the train or pick up backpackers waiting on the train. I understand it is by special arrangement beforehand. Kind of neat, actually, and a good way to get into the back country. Not to mention both Durango and Silverton are nice visits. http://www.durangotrain.com

I did not mean to imply any such motivation for your troop. I apologize if it came across that way. I agree that there can be legitimate reasons for that policy. But this troop actually told us this when we were shopping troops coming out of Webelos. They habitually add requirements for advancement. In addition to requiring Cooking MB prior to national, it's not enough to tie a bowline, for example. You have to tie it one handed. It's not enough to be able to tie all the required knots. You have to tie them in some shortened time period, like 10s of seconds. They require youth to not only wear black or brown leather shoes, but they must be hiking boots for all troop functions or they are sent home and docked on their attendance. As a part of that, they actually line up and have a uniform inspection at every meeting before the meeting starts. Any uniform infraction, and they are sent home and their attendance docked. A part of the uniform inspection is to make sure their fingernails are not dirty. It just goes on and one. They are quite proud of it.

I like it! But it seems to possess a lot of untapped potential. Somewhat larger, camp names, trails...it could be both a real tool and something to hang on the wall or put on a tabletop.

Take a look at the photograph of young Maggie Momen about halfway through the article. You have to "load more" a couple of times. https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/05/09/exclusive-visiting-the-site-of-the-december-coptic-church-suicide-bombing-in-cairo/ Beautiful picture of a scout.

We have a local troop that prides itself on producing "uber scouts". They intentionally limit all weekend camping to one night to purposefully retard scouts progress in earning Camping merit Badge. (They also required Cooking for Eagle years and years before national made it Eagle-required.) What with the over-scheduling of youngsters these days, it did make it more difficult.

I find this interesting. We have people transfer in and out all the time. Most of that is because a lot of the parents are in the oil industry, and those folks move around a lot. So personal feelings are not an issue in those circumstances. But even on those occasions where there is a transfer between local troops, we have never experienced any issues on a personal level. Everybody has always acted maturely and responsibly. A couple of things I have not seen mentioned, though. The first is that it is my experience that the old troop is not always real worried about transferring records in a timely fashion. It's not malicious, just more of a "not their problem anymore" kind of thing. Second, not all troops keep accurate records. You need to make sure the records you do in fact obtain (when you obtain them) are complete and accurate. This is particularly important if your scout is on a tight timeline with respect to advancement. We had one scout nearing his 18th birthday when we finally--after much prompting--got his records. He had achieved Life quickly, and then coasted into Eagle. So he was Life when he transferred and he spent some time in our troop. When we got his records, there were a lot of holes in it that we had to fill in rather quick fashion. And that was not a lot of fun.