CalicoPenn

We've had a lot of discussion about challenging Scouts to be more mindful and adventurous in camp cooking, and invariably, discussions like these lead into dutch oven cooking and challenging Scouts to use dutch ovens more. Great discussions but a piece of equipment that doesn't get much mention at all used to be standard equipment up until about the early 1970's: The Reflector Oven In my Troop, reflector ovens were automatically issued to every Patrol for every campout - we had to special request dutch ovens. Just about every Patrol used a reflector oven at least one meal a weekend - even if it was only to bake up biscuits or Pillsbury cinnamon roles. They started falling out of use as we transitioned from cooking over open flames to cooking over Coleman Stoves. I know that open fire cooking is much less common than it used to be but for those that have the opportunity to cook over open fire, have you tried any reflector oven cooking? Have you tried running a reflector oven bake-off? To expand a little, has anyone tried solar cooker cooking and what was the result?

Five pages in and I don't recall seeing anyone mentioning one of the elephants in the room - The cost of higher education. How many scholarships do colleges and universities give out for Scouting? How many do they give out for Athletics? Yes - it's going to be pretty unlikely that a High Schooler is going to get a scholarship for football or basketball but schools offer scholarships for a lot of sports other than football and basketball. Hardly anyone pays any reall attention to soccer, or baseball, or swimming, or tennis, or lacrosse (etc., etc.) yet all of these sports have scholarships from most schools that offer these sports. Had a tenant that offers elite volleyball training - their sales pitch to the kids is Olympics - their sales pitch to parents is Scholarships.

After burning out as a counselor for GLBTQ youth (one suicide prevention failure too many), I'm now doing commercial property management, mostly industrial - and sometimes I think it was easier to deal with suicidal 15 year olds than with business owners who don't pay their rent. I've also worked in fast food and retail, been a bouncer and a chef, an inventory control specialist (fancy title for "guy who counts parts") and an environmental educator and in college, worked for Maine National High Adventure, BSA, both in winter (OKPIK, before it became a local program) and in summer, raked blueberries, worked the potato harvest (drove the tractor from field to sorting house mostly), picked apples, Saturday janitor for local Bangor radio station owned by famous horror author, 4-H camp counselor, cook on windjammer, seed picker for Johnnie's Selected Seeds, shipping department of wreath maker and egg gatherer at small egg farm (for a whopping 25 cents per dozen).

One Scout made the most unappetizing looking yet tastiest blueberry pancakes I've ever had - he forgot to drain the blueberries before he added them to the batter - turned the pancakes a shade of green that could only be said to resemble a bruise - the saving grace is that the blueberries he bought were packed in blueberry juice and not just water. We used dutch ovens almost exclusively for cobbler and stews - it wasn't that we weren't creative enough to cook other things but as T2Eagle said, most things are better cooked by other methods - and we really didn't want to do deep fat frying either. However, I did cook up a chicken dish for my patrol that required a long cooking time in a dutch oven - bone in chicken thighs covered in tomato juice (yes, juice - not sauce) then cooked for an hour - after an hour, I added asparagus and onion and cooked for another hour until the tomato juice had been severely reduced to 1/4 or less of what was first added - and then all served on a bed of wild and brown rice. Everyone loved the chicken - if I had to do it over again, I would use white rice - and the only complaint came from the patrol mate who got clean-up duty that night and had to clean the dutch oven (I helped him with it so he wasn't that mad). (btw - we didn't use charcoal, we used coals from the fire - if someone had suggested 4 charcoal briquettes down and 3 up, the old timers would have laughed him out of camp - things have certainly changed since the 1970's). In our troop, patrols always cooked together, and the adults cooked their own meals. One of our Scoutmasters tried to get us to think beyond spaghetti or burgers by having the adult meals include things like baked potatoes with steak, or roasts, or ham. After a couple of campouts without us following the example, the SM asked the SPL why we didn't try cooking more like the adults and the SPL told him that they were cooking things that took a long time to cook and they had an advantage because they had someone who would stay at the campsite in the afternoon and start cooking at 3:30 or so while we were out and active and not usually starting our fires for supper until 5:00 or so which wouldn't give us time to bake a potato, let alone a roast. An agreement was reached where the adults in camp would start the cooking of any food that took a long time to cook provided that it was all prepped and set-up and ready to pop on/in the fire by lunch - and we had less hot dogs and hamburgers for a while. One of my favorites was to cover a cheap cut of roast, about 2-3 pounds, in a couple of pounds of moistened kosher salt then wrapped mummy like in cheesecloth which would also be moistened before being put directly into hot coals for a couple of hours (on coals then colas shoveled on top - replenish as needed). When it was removed from the coals, the salt and cheesecloth would be hard enough to need to use a hammer to break it open - the meat inside would be perfectly seasoned - not too salty - and mely in your mouth tender.

Parent's pins aren't a pin for uniform wear - consider this, most parents don't have uniforms. Some Troops have a tradition that mothers would wear parent's pins on a strip of cloth pinned to their outfit at court's of honor. Other's didn't. Fathers might wear them on the lapel of a sports coat, if they wore sports coats. For most people, I suspect that the pins ended up in jewelry boxes, or perhaps mounted and framed. Here's a good "rule of thumb" to follow as you decide whether to wear such a pin - did YOU earn it? Like Twocub, I'm not about to play uniform police with anyone about where and how they wear patches and pins (unless I'm officially invited to perform a uniform inspection using the uniform inspection sheet), but I'm less likely to slightly roll my eyes at a person wearing Eagle Scout mentor pins as I would be about a person wearing parent pins on a uniform for awards their children earned. It's good to be proud of your children - but when you're wearing the uniform, it should reflect that you're proud of all the Cubs and Scouts you're working with. It's also not unusual in the Boy Scouts for there to be pins handed out that are meant for non-uniform wear which I believe those council pins you were given are in the category of. For the purposes of the weekend, however, I might have worn it as a temporary insignia centered on my right bocket, where all other temporary insignia goes, otherwise, I'd tie a bit of cloth to my hiking stick and put the pin on that. There is, however, a pin that can be worn on adult uniforms that has not been mentioned - the Service Star. As for Wood Badge Beads - they can be worn with the official Field Uniform.

I neglected to congratulate you - so I'll correct that error now - Congratulations. Winter Camp sounds pretty neat - 5 days in November - either people are giving up Thanksgiving with their familes, or you have an interesting school schedule - I would have loved a 5-day camping trip in November when I was a Scout - no more bugs or allergies. So that you understand my perspective, I tend to measure ceremonies against my own Eagle Scout ceremony and if they're any longer than that, I'm pretty much over them (my only exception is OA ceremonies - but those are a more solemn ceremony as opposed to a celebratory ceremony - those ceremonies are designed for later reflection). So how long was my Eagle Scout ceremony? About 5 minutes - I asked that it be done at a regular Court of Honor without all the fuss and folderol of other ceremonies I saw - my best friend's was over 30 minutes long - and my parents popped for cake after the Court of Honor. I also try to think of the attention span of the audience. An all-camp campfire? 10 minutes is too long - the 11-14 year olds are already wondering what the next skit is going to be after about 2 minutes in and the 15-17 year olds are considering if it would be worth the later grief if they pulled out the cell phone and started texting their buddies. Burying the axe in the log is going to be the most exciting thing about that whole ceremony to the Scouts - and that's the first thing done - it would be like Thor defeating Loki in the first scene of the movie - everything that comes after is just anti-climactic. But that same 10-minute ceremony held as a separate event with fellow woodbadgers and other adult leaders sounds just about right - If there is time in the schedule, invite fellow Wood Badgers and any other interested adult leaders to a beading ceremony at your campsite with cobbler served afterwards. For bonus points, if there are a couple of other members of your Wood Badge patrol or troop that are ready to receive their beads, maybe they could piggyback on.

The code never says that the US flag should leave the podium first - nor does it say it must lead all the other flags out of the room at all times. It actually states quite specifically that it must lead other flags if carried in a procession. By delaying - by letting the other flags leave first and then waiting for quite a few seconds (and it only takes a few seconds to withdraw all the other flags) it could be said that the US Flag was no longer part of a procession of flags, but was now the sole flag being removed. To summarize - being marched out with other flags, it's a procession and the US flag must lead. Being marched out on its own, after other flags have already been removed, it's not a procession. Moving (and briliant) ceremony accomplished, flag code intact!

Sorry - I don't buy the whole "The Hebrew words are nuanced" argument to accept the word murder as a proper translation of either an Old Hebrew word or an Old Aramaic word and I don't buy it because back when they were written, they weren't nuanced - they knew exactly what they were saying and what those words meant, and used those words deliberately. Those "nuances" are modern intepretations of what some scholars think the word might have meant - it's mental gymnastics (not really the word I want to use but this is a Scouting forum and the "M" word isn't appropriate) to say the word for kill didn't really mean kill - it meant kill in this kind of fashion and not some other kind of fashion. If they meant murder, they would have created a word in their language that meant murder.

I've got to say that I am less worried about how the flag is disposed of than I am of how the flag is treated when it isn't being retired. Every time I attend a hockey game in the Chicago area, I get truly disgusted by the behavior of the folks I will describe as false patriots who wrap themselves up in the flag - generally young men from 18 to 35 - who have never served a day in their life (and I know this because had they served, they would never - ever - do this) who, while still wearing their baseball caps, will start cheering 2/3rds into the singing of the National Anthem while women, and older men, and active duty military personnel and veterans continue to salute the flag respectfully, and possibly sing along (or at least mouthing the words). I may be even more disgusted with the management of the teams and the singers of the anthem who haven't put a stop to this nonsense.

Which English translation is most acceptable to you? When I was growing up, the 6th commandment was almost universally translated in English as Thou Shalt Not Kill. Today, many English translations read You Shall Not Murder, which is then used as justification for killing people in war, or giving people the death penalty - after all, murder is a specific subset of kill and it isn't murder if you've killed someone in war. Is this a proper translation? Considering the word Murder is derived from Old English and proto-Germanic languages arounf 1300 CE, it would be a pretty big stretch to translate a biblical hebrew or bibilical aramaic word (or words) into the word Murder.

I'm sorry to see you go BD. I see and share the frustration in your post and it's a shame you'll no longer be around to help counter that rich suburb direction that the BSA seems to be heading for - in the years I've been active in the forum, I've seen a lot of people heading that direction change course because of commenters like you who show a better pathway (and it sure does seem that people who come in looking for validation for their shortcuts and don't get it move on pretty quickly. Good Luck and if you ever feel like hanging around the campfire again, we'll make a space for you.

The question then comes down to what is the proper way to retire the flag? I like the ceremony that started this thread (though I do agree that Tiger Cubs should first be spectators of the ceremony and work up to participant at the Bear/Webelos level - we sometimes forget that progression in some things is a very good thing) however in any discussion beforehand or afterwards, I would suggest that the Cubs/Scouts know that burning the flag is just one way to "retire" a flag. As has been pointed out, synthetic flags really shouldn't be burned. Yet for most people, the only way to "retire" the flag is by burning. What I believe is that we have stopped taking definitions seriously - and perhaps what I say will be dismissed by some as pure semantics, but sometimes (often, I think) semantics, is pretty important. I think we're making the mistake of confusing Retiring with Disposing. There is only one word needed to describe how to Retire the flag: Respectfully. Perhaps a large group ceremony (which may or may not include a disposition component - there is no rule that says you have to burn the flag in a ceremony retiring the flag) where speeches or stories are told (I really like the idea of telling the story of a flag's life) is the way to go for most people but an individual, a couple or a family group might retire the flag with quiet meditation on the flag. Maybe I'm just a sentimentalist but my idea of retiring the flag is to consider the flag as a living object and to take that flag's "soul" into one's heart. Like a human, once the soul is released, the flag (body) is now a shell of what the flag (body) represented. Disposing is a different matter - burning seems to be the most popular. Cutting up a synthetic flag is certainly acceptable. Burying the flag is something that can be done. I'm for recycling the flag if it results in cool projects like the Eagle Scout's project (but I do oppose recycling the flag into clothing or handbags). I personally would have no problem shredding a cotton flag and adding it to a well operating compost pile - there is something attractive to me about the flag taking on a new role in nurturing a vegetable or flower garden. And despite the image so discriptively put of a landfill, I don't take issue with disposing the now souless flag shell in a landfill. There is one thing, though, that I do have a serious objection to and that is the retiring of flags that have been draped over veterans/soldiers/sailors/marines/guardsmens/airmens coffins - I don't believe that these should ever be retired - my preference is that if the family does want to give the flag up, that it be given to the local historical society, with a picture and brief resume of the person who that flag honored either for display or for storage. I'd love to see the American Legion or VFW or other national veteran's group take on that responsibility through their chapters.

A special needs adult earns Eagle Scout with a really cool project that uses parts of retired flags to honor veterans. I think the only thing to discuss about this is why isn't National doing more to spread this inspiring and positive story?

Sorry - Winter Camp? I'm guessing that is a district event for Troops to attend - an event for the boys. If that's the case, then there is something that you should keep in mind as part of the decision making process. As proud as adults are about earning Wood Badge, or any other adult training award, and as many times as we sit through Courts of Honor watching the Scouts be recognized for their achievements, the Scouts just don't really want to watch adults giving awards to other adults - especially Wood Badge awards. In my experience, non-Wood Badge adults don't like to sit through beading ceremonies either - and in most cases it is a ceremony with long recitations of what a person ticket was, and rounds of Gilwell being sung - Scouts and non Wood Badgers tend to get that glazed over look rather quickly and the whole flow of an evening gets destroyed pretty quickly, especially when they don't know you. You might be able to get away with a small and short ceremony at your own unit's campsite, with a short explanation of what Wood Badge is (and by short, I mean the explanation should be something like this: "Wood Badge is an award that <fill in the blank> is receiving because s/he went through a special training course to be a better Scoutmaster/ASM/Leader" and without the lofty rhetoric that seems common to Wood Badge ceremonies but if the plan is to have it at a campwide gathering, I'd suggest waiting until District Dinner.

I guess he's changed his proposal

Depending on who you talk to, Moses, traditionally held as the person who handed down the Torah, of which Leviticus is part, was born somwhere between 1592 BCE and 1271 BCE. Scholars hold that Leviticus was actually written down sometime between 538 BCE and 302 BCE (and potentiall up to the 600's BCE) so there would have been at least a couple of centuries, if not more between the Code of Hammurabai and Leviticus - either way you look at it though, the Code of Hammurabai pre-dates Leviticus, as well as the other law books in the Torah. Moses may have known something of the Code of Hammurabai and he definitely would have known about the laws of Egypt at the time.

Does anyone know who this group (catholicscouts.org) is?

The thing is, historically, Man is the root source of most of our behavioral values - the Code of Hammurabai predates the word of God as written in the Bible by a couple of thousand centuries - thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt nor commit adultery, a good portion of the Levitical laws - all come from Hammurabain roots - those values have endured for almost 4,000 years - Boy Scout values of trustworthiness, loyalty, helpfulness, friendliness, courteousness, kindness, obedience, cheerfulness, thrift, bravery, and cleanliness haven't changed in the 100+ years of Scouting - the only one that changes is reverance and that's mostly due to our embracing of a wider variety of religious and spiritual traditions, as well as a societal change that promotes individual spirituality over organized religion.

There are more Christians in US prisons than there are Athiests. I would argue that Christians often reject both God's and Society's moral code. I believe it is rather righteous to make the claim that God is the source of morality for all, and that if people don't follow your own moral code, that they are somehow not worthy. It is just fine if you want to claim that God is the source of your moral code, and that your belief gives you the strength to follow your moral code, but the fact is that even people believing in the same God have different interpretations of what God says is and is not moral, let alone people who believe in differents Gods and Goddesses or in no Gods at all. The case of the county clerk in Kentucky who makes the claim that God is the reason she can't do her job is a good example of this - the vast majority of Christians of denominations other than Apolistic Christianity think she's off the rails. The reality, I suspect, is that much of what we pass off as "morality" isn't really about moral codes at all - it's really societal practices that we humanity has adopted over time. People who don't murder others, or who don't steal, or who don't cheat others aren't really following God's laws - they are following laws that predate mankinds concept of a monotheistic God by close to a couple of thousand years. The first written laws we know of is the Code of Hammurabai from around 1800 BCE - and chances are pretty good that a lot of those laws existed in some form or another well before then. It isn't people's fear of God that prevents most people from murdering or assaulting people, from stealing, etc. - it's people's fear of facing the criminal justice system that we the people, as a society, have put in place. We aren't afraid of God, we're afraid of a jury of our peers - a far more judgmental group than God could ever be. Where it get's tricky is in the realm of what is legal. I believe most people tend to believe that if something is legal, it's also moral - unless there is a rumbling of societal disapproval without a real desire to do something about it - the fine line of public condemnation and private approbation. For many religious folk, viewing Playboy and it's cousins is a big moral no-no, yet there must be an awful lot of Christians in this country who don't have a moral objection to it (either that or Athiests, a much smaller cohort in the US, are both incredibly wealthy to be able to support an industry as large as that one, and are heavily concentrated in Utah - the state with the greatest per capita viewing habit). In public, at least, no one admits to viewing, yet in private, there is a large enough number of people doing so that it is a multi-billion dollar industry. The same can be said about subjects like adultery, abortion, gun control. Moral arguments may be made in public but it's as likely they're being made because that's what most people think society expects to hear and not because of of what it says in the Bible.

I don't think that Boy Scouting would change all that much from what it is now if it did not go co-ed or went back to male only, other than perhaps the loss of opportunities with the loss of female leaders (and potentially those leader's spouses) in the short run until those leaders can be replaced by trained male leaders. Of the two possibilities though (not going co-ed being one and taking it a step further into reverting back to male only being two), I think option two is likely to cause even more harm to the public image of the Boy Scouts and could certainly affect membership numbers. I'm just not seeing some great clamor from men saying they would love for their son(s) to be Boy Scouts, if only the BSA didn't allow female Scoutmasters. I know the 1972 changes get a bad rap from a lot of Scouters. I went through the program with the 1972 requirements. Some of the older Scouts were bothered by the changes at first too until our Scoutmaster took it upon himself to map out some of those changes. It turned out that a lot of the things "missing" from those T-FC rank requirements that were familiar to those used to the old requirements ended up in the Skill Awards, and more importantly, the Skill Awards that were required, so not much was lost. Sure, camping merit badge was no longer Eagle required, but to become Eagle Scout, you still had the same number of camping nights that was required under the old requirements. It can be argued that the camping merit badge was a big loss, but it could also be argued that, given all that was happening in the outdoor sporting world at the time, that the camping merit badge was still highlighting a lot of very soon to be outmoded and outdated methods of camping and desperately needed a makeover. Think Leave No Trace is some kind of new concept from the 90's? It was already starting to become part of the ethos in 1972. That's also when modern backpacking was really getting it's start - no more canvas tents - welcome to nylon. Dig trenches around your tent? Don't even think about it. None of that is new - it all started becoming part of the ethos way back then. I know it's a popular idea that the Boy Scouts were just flailing blindly and reacting to trends it couldn't forsee except that isn't the reality. Search enough and you'll find "white papers" from the research division of the Boy Scouts of America not only discussing the trends of the time, but prediciting future trends from it. The Boy Scouts saw what was happening to the outdoor sports ethos well before those of us in units did. The Boy Scouts also kept track of the major migration of population from rural to urban centers (do people honestly think the Boy Scouts of America came up with a program that was meant to be more attractive to a city lifestyle in a matter of months? They saw the urbanization trend years before any of us noticed). The update in the early 1980's brought Scouting to a more Suburban focus (just as Suburbanization was really starting to become supercharged - yes, there were suburbs from the 1950's through the 1970's but ask any outer ring suburbanite about their suburb in the 1970's and most will still remember farms and fields on the outskirts of town, and how driving from their suburb to the "super-boonie" 20 minutes away was like driving through the country - now the "super-boonies" are packed full of people and they no longer have farm fields either). Changing requirements isn't new either - in 1965, the BSA removed a Tenderfoot requirement that had a Scout judge the width of a river using the Boy Scout way without the use of a tape measure. The BSA removed the requirement because it felt it was no longer applicable to modern life. I read of one Klondike Derby in 1969 that had this as one of it's stations but the "Boy Scout Way" couldn't be found in the Boy Scout Handbook, because the requirement was removed. A Scoutmaster tracked it down in his 1951 Boy Scout Handbook (back issue of a Boy's Life in the Ask Pedro section). I guess the point is that the Boy Scouts of America is always making changes. It's been my experience that the most successful units are those that embrace the changes and go with them.

Charged Cotton is cotton treated at the thread stage to make it more water repellent and less absorbant. The industry term for the product is Tech Dry. The process allows cotton fiber to act similarly to synthetic fibers while maintaining the softness of cotton. I wear one brand of dress socks, one brand of athletic socks and one brand of undies (colored black). I buy enough so I can travel for 10 days without having to do laundry. I usually have unopemned packages in a drawer to replace as needed. When it's time to out out and buy more, if the brand has changed or is no longer available, I'll buy enough of the new brand to start over. Since the socks are all the same color and same style and manufacturer, I never have to worry about matching socks - I can just make neat piles. Well dressed? My shirts all come from Bass Pro Shops - I tend to flannel in winter and short sleeved plaids in summer. My jeans are Carhart and I get them at BPS. I purchase new work shirts and work pants as needed - They get professionaly cleaned - and they're boring, not fashionable and last for a long time since they never go out of style and are well-cared for. It may look like I wear the same pair of black pants to work everyday but what I'm really wearing is one of ten pair all in the same style and color - I'm pretty sure I spend more at the cleaners than I do on actually purchasing clothes.

Anytime a President does a trip like this, it's part of the President's agenda. Most of the time, they're fairly open about what that agenda is - we know, in this case, that it's part of President Obama's climate change initiatives. President Bush had an agenda with his Mission Accomplished visit. It's also true that how you view the visit is going to be affected by your political leanings and whether you like the President or not. Sometimes, though - it's tone deafness that people remember, or some gaffe along the way. Bush's Mission Accomplished outing seemed to even his supporters to be tone deaf given the amount of American's still on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time - and the flight suit was a bit of a Dukakis Tank moment - yes, Bush was a pilot in the military but he would have been better served if he just wore casual clothing with a jacket from the ship with his name on it. That his staff allowed a photo of the President gazing down on New Orleans in a flyby in Air Force One on his way to a birthday party, is a pretty big gaffe. Even when Presidents make "spur of the moment" decisions to visit the scenes of natural or manmade disasters all feeds into the Presidential Agenda - in most cases, its to show that the President cares, understands and that something will get done. President Bush's "Independence Day" moment, standing atop some 911 rubble with a bullhorn in hand is a masterful Presidential image. Another on par with Bush's best moment would have to be President Carter touring the site and building of our biggest nuclear accident in the US at Three Mile Island which served to calm down a country that were in as much fear over the possibility of more nuclear accidents as we were of more terrorist attacks after 911. For thos unfamiliar with why that accident was so nerve wracking, the Three Mile Island accident happened on March 28, 1979 - just 12 days after one of the top movies of 1979, The China Syndrome, about a nuclear plant meltdown was released. Bush's cowboy image was just what was needed on the pile of rubble, and Carter's nuclear experience was just what was needed in that reactor. Bill Clinton and Al Gore working side by side clearing hurricane debris is another of those great images (and yes, the "other" side roundly raspberried it as just a photo op). All of these feeds into a Presidential Agenda.

Hi - welcome to the forums. While I don't know a lot about the requirements for badges in Girl Scouts, it seems to me that you might spend the first meeting talking to the girls about all the different badges available and get an idea of which badges they would like to start working on right away (and you might nudge them in the direction of First Aid as one of those badges since everyone can use those skills). Then look at the requirements of those badges to see which activities in them require visits, interviews and outside activities and which can be done at a meeting. Depending on how many groups you split the Troop in to, you might put together a rotating plan - say you have 4 groups and there are 4 badges the girls all would like to work on - each group could take on a badge and rotate through until all the girls have earned them - for any outside activity (I think First Aid requires a visit with a first responder) you could do that for the entire Troop. I could see the rotation schedule a couple of different ways - one is to have each group start and finish a badge before rotating to the next badge - advantage, they earn that first badge faster. The other might be to have them rotate through stations each week, learning a little about each of the badges until all the badges are earned - takes a little longer but might hold their interest throuhg the badges longer too.

Compare the ratings for those television shows with the ratings for The Big Bang Theory, a show about a bunch of scientists, and geeky scientists at that - not a Boy Scout among them. I don't think anyone is saying that traditional Scouting isn't important and needs to be shunted off to history. What National is trying to do is to broaden the scope to be attractive to youth that aren't interested in the traditional Scouting program. Despite the naysayers that just hate National and Councils and think they're nothing but a bunch of money-grubbing imcompetants, the BSA understands the trends and is trying to remain viable - if STEM Scouts helps bring donations and memberships numbers up to help save camps, the I'm all for it. I mentioned once before that most people don't realize that National has a research department that follows and analyzes societal trends, and has had it for a long time. Some just jeered at the entire notion - let them remain ignorant. The BSA isn't flailing blindly - they see the trends, they know whats going on in the world of outdoor sports and activities. Have they responded ham-handedly in some cases? No doubt - but often they're responding to things we just aren't aware of yet. They see beyond our little provincialism in our districts and units. Tell us all about how much your unit is camping - and how successful your unit is and we only need to read through some of the other threads on this very forum to see just how much other units are failing and not successful. A lot has changed in the last 30 years. There are fewer hunters and fishermen/women every year - this year, the cost of the Federal Duck Stamp jumped in price from $15 to $25. That is the biggest price hike ever seen (had it followed trends, it should have jumped to $18 or $19). Part of the reason is it costs so much more to purchase and protect lands (and for those that hate the federal government, the Duck Stamp program is one of the most efficient federal programs there is - no more than 3% of the funds raised go to the adminstration of the program, including running the duck stamp art contest - there is a whopping 3 employees in that whole department - just about all of the funds raised goes right into preserving and managing wildlife refuge lands). But another big part of the reason is that there are a lot fewer game bird hunters out there than there used to be. The 100th anniversary of the National Park Service is next year but park visitation is declining every year - and not just nationally, but state parks are seeing declining visitation as well. The most popular parks are still holding strong - Acadia, Great Smokey Mountains, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Yosemite, but even at these parks, there have been significant changes - most visits today are day trips - people are staying in hotels and lodges with water parks outside the borders of the park. There are fewer people camping in the parks, and those that are camping are demanding much more modern amenities - not just flush toilets and shower houses - but individual water and electricity service at tent sites. It's still hard to get into state parks without reservations on the major summer holidays - Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day, but except for state parks in major tourism areas (like Devil's Lake, Mirror Lake and Rocky Arbor state parks in the Baraboo/Wisconsin Dells area), or major summer tourist states (like Minnesota), it's pretty easy these days to drive up to a state park on a random weekend and have your choice of campsites. REI and EMS was mentioned, and someone linked to Outside Magazine. Yes, they successful - but they certainly aren't touting traditionalism of the Boy Scout variety. They're selling adventure - kayaking down some rapids, board paddling down a placid river, 100 mile bike trips - then having steak and wine at a steakhouse or burgers and brew at a brew pub before retiring to a grand lodge room to rest for the next day's adventure. They're promoting backpacking and canoeing adventures for young, urban, childless single people or couples with well paying jobs and nothing better to spend it on. What family camping they do promote is car camping with big, roomy tents and all the comforts of home. I still love camping at state parks - the most likely people to be camping there these days? Retired people with RV's, small town blue collar wokers and immigrants from other countries (particularly Eastern Europeans). There aren't many suburban folks out there anymore, and good luck finding someone who lives in a major city. These are the trends that the BSA has been facing for a long time - it's easy to dismiss them if you're in a unit where you have an active program and things are working right - unfortunately, for too many units, that's just not the reality they're experiencing.

I like it!