.40AET

Yes Sir. I failed to use quotes when citing a news source. @CalicoPennsent me a nice note last night. The sun is shining brightly on the new fallen snow this morning and I have a new perspective. I generally stay out of politics and accidentally followed a feed into the forum.

My apologies. The bottom of the quote was from a news feed, not me. I am not calling them dishonest. Again, I'm sorry and will stay out of this. Today appears to be a bad day. I'm logging off. Best of luck to you and everyone else.

Crap, I fell for it. After some searching, it seems as though there have been 6. Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-control advocacy group responsible for spreading this bogus statistic, should be ashamed of its blatant dishonesty.

I was surprised to hear that this was the 18th school shooting of the year. (6 weeks into the new year)

Thank you for the correction

There's more to the vote than the requirement of having 50% of the Troop present at the election. In order to be selected, a Scout needs to get 50% of the total number who are in the room voting. We have a big troop and both parts make it hard to send more than one or two scouts a year. 102 scouts in the Troop. Must have 51 scouts in the room for the election. A Scout who is selected needs 26 votes to be selected. There's nothing more frustrating than seeing 6 of your finest Scouts get 22 or 23 votes.

That’s awesome. Our committee is made up mostly of parents who believe in MB colleges and don’t “do” much.

After reading for months on this site, I asked for 2 books for Christmas. These are the North Star to which my compass points. My wife gave them a special place on the fireplace mantle.

I don't like it either, and I've been busy looking for a new way. I'm excited to have a bright new ASM, he brings a new perspective to the Troop. We have been looking at things the same way for years and he brought a big idea right away. We have natural patrols, they just don't travel together. We have 11 patrols and if 3 Scouts from each patrol sign up for a trip, they can't function on a campout as a natural patrol. Thus, the SPL moves them into patrols for the campout. I didn't say that we don't have a PLC.

For as long as I can remember in our Troop, the Scouts have never traveled as "Natural Patrols". An SPL is selected for each trip to offer an introduction to leadership for any Scout. The Scouts who signed up to be Cooks are spread out across each of the Patrols. The SPL and his 2 ASPL's will shuffle all of the Scouts into patrols for 6-8. This has worked and the Scouts haven't come up with a better way. We do the same thing with Summer Camp so that the SPL can assign camp and dining hall duties to each patrol. It's worked fine in camp as well. Last weekend I was talking about this with a one of our bright new ASM's. He suggested keeping the natural patrols intact as much as possible and simply combining 2 patrol fragments to make one patrol for the trip. I thought that this was a great idea and I asked him to propose it the PCL at the next meeting. I'm hoping that this is another small step towards the pinnacle of scouting.

So we're going to Checzoslovakia?

All of the adventures are different. We did the Bahama's trip last spring and snorkeled 4 or 5 reefs while sailing all over the Abacos Islands. Like Quazse mentioned, you don't have to be a great swimmer to go. They provided life vests, mask, snorkel and fins. We had 2 adults who didn't really swim and after the first reef, they were the first to be suited up and ready to go. We fished off the back of the catamaran all day and night. Most of the fishing was catch and release, but we kept the big ones. We got rid of the barracuda, he looked to mean to eat. The Captain took us to an area where we dove for conch and brought 5 back in for dinner. Great stuff!! Sailing is as much of an adventure as drinking coffee while watching the sunrise over the low lying islands. Good times!

I felt that sharing some good stuff was necessary since I've already been on Amazon looking for squirrel door stops.

The pebble of service tossed into the sea of life.... Congratulations!

I read this last night and loved it! We do an Iron Chef competition between the patrols every year and it's a big hit. The PLC decides on a theme for this year and the Scouts compete for the best dish. Bacon was a theme once that was a huge hit. Who would have thought broccoli cooked in bacon fat would be so darn good. We have a Chile specific Iron Chef every so often. Getting the stoves out to cook gives all of the boys an opportunity to use a lightweight stove and check the requirement off during the event.