yknot

At the pack level some years ago, one of the leaders excitedly brought in some OA dancers, thinking it would thrill the youth and inspire word of mouth recruitment. Instead, at least half the parents dragged their cubs out the door within minutes and pack leadership had to subsequently field some rather outraged questions from the school district since it was held in a gym, and issue assurances it would never happen again. At the troop level, interest in OA has been zero to minimal for the better part of a decade. Parents and youth here are heavily focused on pursuing Eagle and any other accolade that will look good on a college resume. In this social media age, however, people have increasingly become sensitized about recognizing and not being associated with anything that could be construed as demeaning, questionable, or politically incorrect. Frankly, people outside of scouting and even many within it, don't know what OA is, which is maybe good. But once they understand what it is and read up a little about it, they generally don't seem to get much past a couple of the words or a stray post on Facebook before deciding it's not for them. This has come up in BORs with scouts and in conversations with parents. Personally, I think rebranding OA away from the AI imagery and language to become something more focused on the scouting trail could be a boost to membership. I think if there was a national youth survey on how they currently view OA and its associated imagery, ceremonies, and language, it might help give a better picture of how to shape a meaningful scout honor society.

It seemed most of the commenters were survivors. I'm glad most of them stopped commenting -- everything seemed to be very triggering to the point that I worried about state of mind for some of them. It's good if, with the sense that the bulk of this has been decided, good or bad, for them, they have moved on. It would be unhealthy to remain in that state of agitation throughout the appeal process. Although I imagine if anything significant crops up, they'll be back.

What connection does the Order of the Arrow have with North America indigenous cultures? As far as I know, it is a BSA honor and service society. Is service performed for local tribes or reservations as part of OA society membership? Do the local tribes and communities benefit from volunteer hours given by OA members or from any fundraising efforts or support, either from the local OA lodge, national group, or the BSA? Do OA members volunteer their time on reservations they way they do to council camps? Are there any kinds of standardized BSA scholarship programs offered to reservation youth? Do the lodges pay any licensing fees to their local tribes for the use of the regalia and images? Do the national groups? Just wondering what we give in return for having been able to use some of this iconography if anyone knows ...

There are plenty of Swiss in North America and they've brought that iconography with them.

Swiss culture. William Tell.

Don't be afraid to reach out outside of scouting if your scouts are bored and you don't have a lot of scouting resources nearby. County parks department naturalists, state wildlife biologists, local universities, Audubon state or local chapters, watersheds, hiking clubs, outdoors groups like Trout Unlimited and Ducks Unlimited. They are great resources to help adult leaders become more educated and more interesting, and they also can come liven up a troop meeting by sharing some knowledge or meeting up with scouts to give a demo somewhere. Through Audubon, I got a national expert to meet up with us with us at a hawk watch. He exploded the Miss Drysdale stereotype with his cowboy boots and laconic raptor tales. My son and I just went on a hike through one of the last stands of primordial forest in our state. It was on a university ecological and research preserve, and it was led by a PhD student. He made leafless trees fascinating to everyone there, including my usually too cool for school teenager.

GSA numbers have dropped -- they are closer to 1 million than 1.7 million -- but not as precipitously as BSA. Interestingly 4-H increased dramatically from about 4 million kids pre pandemic to about 6 million now. Locally, I know a lot of kids who have discovered 4-H. It's mixed gender, family friendly, and very economical. Sports are also interesting. A lot of people are saying youth sports registrations are down, too, but that's primarily among the traditional types of sports that have been tracked. I can't seem to lay my hands on it, but about a year ago there were statistics about the effect of the pandemic on youth involvement in sports. While a lot of the traditional team sports lost players or reversed what had been an upward trend, a lot of youth apparently shifted to other more niche sports during the pandemic like mountain biking, horseback riding, and tennis, and haven't gone back to their old sports. Kid involvement in sports across the board -- when you add in the growth in new areas -- is actually up.

In an email I received today from the state Methodist conference it includes a notation that the UMC/BSA Affiliation and Facility Use agreements have been finalized as of December 15th. Final versions to be used going forward are on the methodistscouter.org website. I've read these several times and perhaps I missed it but I was struck by the high cap of $7.5 million per incident/$23 million total for general liability claims.

... for you. Experiences with Covid seem to be very individual. I think the key lesson with Covid is that what works for you, works for you, and not necessarily for someone else. I'm very glad you are doing well. For myself, I don't think I won that same genetic lottery and have been thankful that the vaccine and boosters have so far apparently done their job to keep me and the other high risk individuals in my sphere healthy.

Cambridgeskip is a good bet if he's stopping by. If not, have you been on reddit? There have been a few UK people on there in the past few months looking for the reverse. You could also always try Bear Grylls. He does answer some queries. We did Canada because I had nephews in Scouts Canada. My scouts were impressed with how much they camped in the winter, the fact that they don't have snow days, and that they, at that time, had to swear an oath to the queen.

I've had to get water to events that have needed a lot and have used portable plastic stock tanks. They are an investment but if you do this all the time it might be worth it. They fit in the back of a pickup. I have also used plastic 55 gal drums with lids that are not too bad $. You'd still want some personal drinking water but this is the way to get a lot of gallonage for washing, cooking, watering stock. People whose wells fail or need to truck in household water also use these. There were a lot of stories in the news this year of people doing this in the southwest. You might be able to get some used.

What a great year. You've been to some beautiful, interesting places, including Platform 9 3/4. We don't have one of those here in the US. That I know of.

I absolutely think some of these things should be looked at in the program. There are some things that have equivalency. I also think this kind of review needs to be done at the cub level. Swimming might not be the best area unless you can correlate it to a universally regarded lifeguarding test or standard. For personal fitness, though, 6-8 could definitely be accomplished outside scouting if a scout is involved in a youth sport or has a semester of PE targeted toward fitness or one of the relevant fitness awards. It could only be a positive for a scout to be able to create linkages between scouting and a merit badge counselor and his or her chosen sport and coaches. Our high school has an environmental sciences academy. Why shouldn't those students be able to apply their work towards a merit badge? Frankly, I think the merit badges do not give much of a jump on the adult world because the very tools used to execute them are so far behind the times. There is very little that is current about many of them. Finding ways to make them more relevant would be a positive step in my book.

I like "take part" vs. "explain".

It can vary across the country but in many states the badges are extremely redundant with a lot of the high school curriculum and are too homework like. The could easily be condensed into one. The core one is Nation. A couple things could be replaced with items from Community and World. Mapping out where a fire or police station for example seems silly for a troop age kid. It is more relevant for cubs and is already in that part of the program. At the very least, there ought to be some opt out options for information that is covered elsewhere.

I first reacted humorously to this but on a serious note, this is yet another of my many issues with how Scouting views leadership, what kind of leadership it values, and how it develops it. The program kind of assumes that extroversion is good and through things like songs it encourages even introverts to learn how to be extroverts, i.e., leaders. Some of the most effective leaders, though, aren't extroverts at all, they are introverts. While there are some great extrovert leaders, it's not the only leadership model out there. However, scouting places a very heavy emphasis on valuing kids who are extroverts. Kids who are clearly uncomfortable with approaching older scouts or adults with questions or for signoffs often drop out unless it's recognized and some mentoring is done. There's a great book on the topic: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. I think more extroverts, particularly in scouting, should read it.

I am a conscientious objector whenever people start murdering songs. I refuse to carry dead and mangled tunes for others.

I went from hating the idea of this badge and being very dismissive of it to thinking it has a valid place for a variety of reasons.

I agree with a lot of this. I think Cit in Society is really a different animal and should remain its own. I have said before though as well as you that I think the other three Citizen badges are redundant with curriculum and should be merged. I think there's a lot that could be cut out. I do, however, think there is an area that, given the organization's dependence on the outdoors, has to me been oddly overlooked at the macro citizenship level and that is the role of the citizen in Land Conservation and Resource Management. It might explain why so many professional scouters who come up through the program seem to have no comprehension of how to manage, preserve, and protect some of the legacy properties that they have had the privilege of owning (truly past tense in, sadly, too many cases).

I prefer to look at March to March numbers for that reason. The majority of recharter extensions, etc., have been cleared by then so the numbers are the cleanest. I think the 2023 March numbers are particularly important because most of the dust will have cleared in the aftermath of the UMC recharter extensions which end Dec. 31.

I think you're right about the GMC churches. It's not just LGBTQ issues, there's a basket of issues including the UMC's support of BLM type initiatives and the proper role of women. It hasn't been articulated in some of the more public statements but some of these breakaway churches also don't want women pastors and some other things that align with more conservative views, and that makes scouting even less of a fit for them. The UMC churches, on the other hand, have been struggling with membership erosion/aging and financial woes. UMC is working with consultants like Steeple.com to help local churches attract extra revenue by hosting telecom towers, EV charging stations, etc., and renting out any space they can, which means scout groups may have to be prepared to rental or usage fees. A couple of non UMC churches near me have recently started charging community groups that they have historically supported for room usage and storage. I can't imagine UMCs will be far behind.

I'm going to be crazy here and say you don't need to make every single camp out an all weekend affair. We did plenty of local single night camp outs just to get outside during tough to schedule months or extra nights because someone needed one. You don't need to take a trailer, you don't need to cook feasts and lug tons of food. After work Friday night to Saturday a.m. works well. Plenty of time to hike and do stuff. Almost zero food prep/meals unless someone needs a signoff. My nephew's troop did a couple local Sunday night camp outs and the novelty was kids/parents getting up at 5 a.m. to shower and get to school and then swagger around the halls all day.

I think it's based on the realization that you're either all in and very hands on in running the unit or you are not. The FUA and Affiliation agreements just seem like they could be used to continue to "charter" a unit in all but name, leaving the same kinds of in practice oversight issues in place. You probably shouldn't have youth on your property unless you are willing to take responsibility for them.

There are probably a lot of reasons for that including that as one of the largest CO groups, UMC were affected by a significant number of lawsuits and claims. Unlike the Catholic church, though, which has been experiencing this all along outside of BSA, many in the Methodist community were shocked by the reality of their liabilities as the bankruptcy unfolded. I also think you have to look at what's going on with the Methodist Church overall. Like BSA, they have seen significant membership erosion and who's left is aging. Where I am in the northeast, they were mostly rural hamlet churches that are now closed, sold, or about to close. A chartering organization agreement requires active supervision and while many of these older congregations might have sentimental reasons for wanting to continue to charter the units they've hosted for years the reality is that many are not capable of it. To make exceptions for the few exceptions creates a management headache for leadership that is being downsized.

What we always did was involve them in the planning and preparations for HA trips if they wanted to be, especially any hiking or swimming, but otherwise they went to summer camp as normal. We tried to do summer camp in early July and HA trips end of July/early August because we had a few older scouts who wanted to do both. We generally did HA trips (Philmont, Sea Base) every other year although we did a lot of ad hoc HA type trips on our own. Years ago, the unit was large enough to do a full contingent to summer camp and a smaller, older group to do HA, generally with a mixed unit crew. More recently, the summer camp group has either been provisional or paired up with another unit to take a whole campsite. It works out, especially if the plan is that HA is something the younger scouts not only have to be prepared for but is also a privilege to be worked towards. Over the years, there have been a few kids who were really interested in HA from the get go and there was no shortage of opportunities to fall in with crews from other local units or farther afield. It's not an issue to have have two tracks in a unit.