CalicoPenn

Imagine you're the leader of a pack with parents that are too busy or can't be bothered to assist in the running of the Pack so you do everything you can to provide a program to the BOYS in the Pack. Imagine that you're already overwhelmed with the numbers of boys in your pack as it is and that while you may want to recruit, you feel that having an influx in Sptember is just going to be too great of a burden. Imagine that the District Commissioner gives the Recruiting / Membership chair the names of people who helped man the booth last year instead of the UNIT LEADER!!! Imagine that the District Commissioner calls you on a Friday asking about Back to School night on perhaps the last weekend you've got available to go somewhere with your family before back to school and Pack meeting craziness starts and takes up a lot of your time. Imagine you get a call from this same District Commissioner on Sunday who announces that since he hadn't heard from you, you'll be there with your son, from a completely different Pack, to recruit for your Pack when you didn't ask for any help. Imagine if that same District Commissioner then went behind your back and texted members of your Pack to come help recruit. Imagine if you've developed a different recruiting strategy than attending Back to School Night because you want parents, like yourself, to be able to attend Back to School night as parents and not workers and now you have to put something last minute together because some guy from District can't take the hint and is now undermining the planned recruiting effort. Arrows? I'd be doing much more than shooting arrows your way - in fact, I'd probably just be done with it and walk away from the Pack, maybe by not showing up the night of the first Pack meeting without telling anyone - just because that's the vindicitive kind of person I'd be if some guy from the District was doing this to me and let the District Commissioner, who apparently wants to by my Pack's Cubmaster, deal with the fallout. Yeah - you stepped WAY over the line. You are NOT the Cubmaster for the entire District. You have been told NOT to contact members of the Pack and have done so anyway. You were NOT asked for help. Let me explain something of the reality of Scouting - see those silver tabs on your shirt? They signify that you are a SERVANT leader. Your job is to serve the other leaders. See those ladies and fellows with the Cubmaster/Scoutmaster/Advisor patches on their sleeves? Those are the TOP adult leaders in Scouting - your job is to serve them. Where is your Unit Commissioner for this Pack? Don't have one? Why not? That's your job - to find Unit Commissioners to work with the units. It seems to me that you're trying to do everyone's job but your own. DC vs Cubmaster? If it's got to the point where it's a X versus Y relationship instead of a collaborative relationship, you've screwed the pooch big time on it. You need to step back, you need to apologize, you need to stop interfering, and you need understand that you may have started this Pack on the road to total destruction. In my view, in a DC vs Cubmaster struggle, the DC loses, every time. (This message has been edited by calicopenn)

As Twocub says, district and council events are optional for units - they are great for filling in calendars but individual units decide which events, if any, they will attend. Your job, as District Commissioner, is to find and train Unit Commissioners to interact with the leaders of the units, not to datamine for direct parental contact, nor to undermine the planned program of the Unit Leaders with your own suggestions directly to the parents - unless you want to sew dissension amongst the parents and perhaps create more problems, like the potential loss of a unit. A unit that is "Cubmaster-run" with a "paper committee" should actually be a bigger red flag than whether the unit calendar includes district and council events. It can signify either a willful leader not delegating, or it can signify a leader stepping up to keep things afloat because of a lack of interest among the parents to step up to leadership roles. Are you even sure you know on what side of that coin this unit falls? The Cubmaster has told you not to undermine her program - your job now is NOT TO UNDERMINE HER PROGRAM. If she's operating that unit without a committee, with just a program staff, things are probably pretty stressful if she's got no one to delegate the routine administrative tasks to - and you've just added to her stress. Your job is to have the Unit Commissioner invite the Cubmaster out for a cup of coffee to see how she is holding up, and carefully (without insulting her) finding out how the unit is being run. There is a Unit Commissioner, right? If not, get your own house in order before trying to run other people's houses. For all you know, the Cubmaster is the only person who can make the Roundtables, is taking on yet one more task to keep the staff she does have informed and that the program staff is making the decision not to participate in these events as a Pack. If the Cubmaster is telling you that $9 is too big of a fee, you might want to consider that she probably knows more about the economic situations most of her families are facing then you do, even if you know some of the families, and that she is trying to keep Scouting affordable for everyone without creating a have/have not divide within her unit. As a Commissioner, if the top leader(s) in the Pack said "don't contact my parents directly and contact us only through the Cubmaster/Committee Chair/COR, then you need to respect that. In fact, that's what you should have been doing all along. The reality is that DC's/UC's have no real power - walk into a Pack Meeting unannounced/uninvited and you can quickly find yourself back on the outside looking in through the windows. If you're told specifically not to come to meetings and you show up anyway, you can find yourself being escorted out by officers of the law if you refuse to leave. Sure, you need to handle charter isses - but no DE is going to let a unit fold because the DC/UC is in a whizzing match with the unit leaders - they'll take care of it themselves without your support. I take that back - the DC/UC does have some power - they have the power to royally hack off unit leaders who decide to say the heck with it and leave causing the units to fold. I've seen it happen - it's not pretty. (This message has been edited by calicopenn)

I'll bite - with explanation at the end: In your opinion, which of these relationships fall positively under Scout Law/Oath? 1) Plural marriage (one male/multiple females, or vice versa)? YES 2) Group marriage (multiple males/multiple females)? YES 3) Same sex marriage (monogamous)? YES 4) Same sex marriage (plural or group)? YES 5) Open marriage (traditional marriage but openly having other sex partners)? YES 6) Adulterous relationships? NO 7) Bisexual relationships? YES And the explanation? It hinges on the concept of "Morally Straight". My PERSONAL opinion is that, with the exception of one in the list, none of those things mentioned are immoral. You're moral compass will probably be different - so arguing with me over whether something is moral or not is a useless exercise because I'm not going to change my view of what is and isn't moral to match your view, just as I wouldn't expect you to change your view of what is moral or not. I'll resepct that you have a different moral code than I do if you respect that I have a different moral code than you do. By all means say you disagree, but don't say I'm wrong. I'm right for me - you're right for you and if you say I'm wrong, I'll say you're wrong - and that doesn't lead us anywhere. As for the one I said didn't positively meet the Scout Law/Oath? In all but Adultery, I assume an openness and consent with ones partner(s). Adultery involves lying to ones partner(s) and I believe that lying is not moral. All that being said - I wouldn't want anyone discussing or modeling these in front of Scouts, just as I don't think heterosexuality should be discussed/modeled for the Scouts. The position of the BSA for many many years has been that sexuality is something for leaders to avoid, that the proper place for it is in the homes and in other institutions chosen by the family. It has no place in the BSA and that's how it should be.

I'm going to go against centuries of thought and writing on "natural law" and suggest that mankind took a wrong turn on this a very long time ago. I think they started on the right track when they began to refer the Law of Nature as Natural Law but veered off when they brought Human Reason into the equation. I believe that true natural laws are the things we cannot change through the use of human reason (internal willfullness is how I would define reason as opposed to inventiveness which can create artificial constructs to at least temporarily defeat some natural laws). I also believe that human natural law is quite different from non-human natural law in that non-human natural law takes includes everything in human natural law but human natural law does not take in everything in non-human natural law. For instance - the law of gravity is a natural law - we can not defeat it by pure reason alone (we can temporarily defeat it through inventiveness, but even then we're still subject to it) and both humans and non-humans are subject to the law of gravity. On the other hand, a natural law for non-humans might include killing ones offspring by instinct because of birth defects or conditions that would make survival unlikely while this wouldn't be a natural law for humans as humans can use reason to overcome such an instinct. If we used reason to create a law - such as a law against murder, or a law against same-sex marriage - these aren't natural laws. We may think they mimic natural laws, but they're human laws. Just a thought.

I'll bite but first a definition of terms - I'm going to use the word polygamy rather than the terms polygyny or polyandry or group marriage. The term polygamy actually encompasses all three (so no, polygamy does not differ from group marriage - polygamy includes group marriage as well as polygyny and polyandry). I think the next thing we need to come to grips with is why is polygamy banned in the US. History reveals that it had nothing to do with morals and every thing to do with 19th century politics and bigotry against one specific religious sect. Do I need to mention that the particular religious sect is the Mormon Church? Arguments against polygamy to this day end to dwell less on morality and more on the notion that polygamy is a threat to social freedom and democracy. Even the Supreme Court that ruled on polygamy in 1878 said that marriage is about sustaining the conditions in which freedom can thrive and that polygamy threatened those conditions. To answer Eng's question, I believe the Boy Scouts isn't even thinking about it because it's not on anyones radar. There is no political party using polygamy as a wedge issue, and there isn't a significant portion of the public questioning the illegality of it, unlike same-sex marriage. To answer Beavah's question, I think the argument that polygamy is a danger to social strucures and freedom is utter hogwash and I really woudn't have a problem with it being legal, provided that every partner in such a situation consents to every other partner, whether it's a polygynist, polyandrist or group marriage situation, and is of legal age to consent (the most famous recent case captured people's attention because some of the "wives" were under 18 (and the public doesn't care that in 30 states the age of consent is 16 and in 9 it's 17, we get creeped out by 40 year-old marrying 16 year olds)).

Beavah, Think back to what triggered this latest batch of news stories - it started with a report of a woman who happened to be a lesbian being removed from her leadership position as a tiger leader for her son's den. Prior to this story, most of the stories were about young men (or not so young gay men) booted out of the Scouts when it beccame known they were gay. Young SINGLE men. Had traction for a while after the Supreme Court ruled on the Dale case, then the media mostly left it alone, maybe reporting on a case near the anniversary of the Dale decision, but for the most part, it fell off the media's radar. Soo what is different this time? The story wasn't about a gay male that was single. It was about a partnered woman who was a PARENT. This time, the Scouts dumped a parent who happened to be a well-liked leader and happened to be gay, happened to be a woman, and happened to be the parent of a cute kid in Cub Scouts. I'd call it the perfect storm of sympathetic "victim" of the BSA policy. I think even folks that would accept rationalizations (misguided as they are) about keeping single, gay males from the Boy Scouts looked at this situation and paused to think something was just not right about this. A petition was started, headlines were made, the BSA came out and said they would study it, and I think that would have calmed the media storm and folks would have let it go, until the BSA did something really stupid. After first claiming they would put together a committee to study it, they announced just weeks later that (oops) we've had a committee studying the issue for the past two years all along and this is what they said. That pot that was cooling on the stove? The gas was turned right back on and it didn't take long to go to a full boil. I suspect the media felt like they were being poked by the BSA when they said they would put together a committee then revealed they had one all along - the media doesn't like to be lied to and while we might quibble over whether the BSA lied, I suspect the media feels the BSA did. The BSA gave the media a bigger bone to chew - and they took it - asking the President and his presidential rival their opinions, following the stories of Eagle Scouts returning medals, following stories of parents leaving Scouting with their sons (the latest one I read about today comes from Oregon where the entire adult leadership of a Cub Scout Pack has pulled their sons from the Pack and have quit Scouting), and of other parents - no one has really mentioned it but the story about the leader that was "thrown out" currently being discussed also mentions that this leader is partnered and that he was a leader in their son's Troop. He may be a bit less sympathetic because he's a man - but the parenting angle is there again. In other words, the media is focused on gays because that's where the story is right now. When a story with a sympathic athiest or girl "victim" becomes known, I think we'll see that take up time in the news cycle too.

I'm trying to figure out what the issue here is. Is it about adults not being able to earn youth awards like merit badges and the Eagle Scout rank? Seems to me there are plenty of awards out there that adults can earn - from training awards, to the District Award of Merit all the way up Silver Beaver that the youth can't earn. The awards even have nifty little patches that go with them to sew on a uniform. And there's nothing stopping any adult from reading a merit badge book and doing the activities in it on their own - I would think most of us would have grown out of the stage of needing a little round patch to validate the work we did. Is it about adults not having fun? Seems to me that's a problem with the attitudes of the adults, not of the boys. Like desertrat, I recall my adult leaders in the 1970's as being jolly folks - they all seemed to enjoy being on outings, and going to meetings, mentoring lads and smiling while we had fun running around playing capture the flag and they sat around the campfire and just watched. My mother was a den leader for a long time - she did some of the same crafts year after year after year - but always had a smile on her face working with the cubs - even if it was a craft she had personally come not to like anymore. The leaders I work with today? All seem to have smiles on their faces because they've got the same "It's for the boys" attitude I remember from my time as a youth, and remember being taught when I started as an adult leader. I don't recall anything anywhere saying adults can't have fun in Scouting - I would hope that the adults who are volunteering are having fun - and if you're not, please go away before you let that kind of negativity affect the boys in your unit. Scouting, and parenting in general, shouldn't be a chore - when I'm on vacation, I can tell the parents that are having fun and the ones that aren't - the ones having fun are the ones that are playing the silly (to adults) games at the Micky D's playlands with their kids - the ones that aren't are the ones staring at their kids through the glass, crossing their arms and looking at their watch every 10 seconds. The ones that are having fun are the ones letting their 5 year old decide how long to look at an animal in the zoo and where to go next - the ones that aren't are dragging their kids around without caring what the kid wants - those are the ones with the crying kids. One final thing - a typo correction - it was 1952 when the Scouts stopped awarding Eagle to adults, not 1962.

Audiences have hooted like owls and hissed like geese for a long time to express dissatisfaction. Though not restricted to the theatrical arts, it was probably most common there (much easier to hiss at actors in a play than to hiss at the mayor and not get into trouble). Even Shakespeare made reference to the practice in Troilus and Cressida (about 1602) when Pandarus, in the final speeh, says "my fear is this, some galled goose of Winchester would hiss" and he wasn't referring to the bird. By about 1860, "giving the big bird" was slang used to describe the hooting, hissing and booing at events and likely referenced the hissing of geese and hooting of owls - both big birds. Giving the big bird was a well established taunt but by the Victorian era, booing was the primary means of vocalizing displeasure and through the vaudeville era, giving the big bird meant the booing, hissing and catcalls of the audience. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the one finger salute wasn't known as "the Bird" until the 1960's and was likely a re-defining of "giving the big bird" from the verbalized taunts to the physical taunt. As for where "Flipping the Bird" came from? It probably came from Broadside Magazine, a music magazine from the 1960's and 70's that mostly followed the folk revival and had a pretty broad definition of what folk music meant. It appears that the earliest printed use of the phrase "flipped the bird" that has been found was in a review of a Grateful Dead concert (well that should have been obvious) in 1967 when the writer wrote "The Grateful Dead flipped "the bird" to the audience, tuned their instruments, blew up amps - for what seemed like forever - then disappeared, leaving people disappointed and brought down." Use a phrase like that in an influential magazine about one of the most followed "folk" bands on the planet and you've got yourself a new and lasting phrase. (Info from English Language and Useage site). Oh - and as for the Battle of Agincourt as the origins? That is most likely what we would call an urban legend based on another legend that the English archers were motivated by a speech that the French would cut off their middle fingers (or alternatively, their index and middle fingers) if they were captured. In none of the written, contemporary (written at the time) accounts of the Battle of Agincourt is there any mention of English archers showing the French their fingers. It's doubtful that a story that the French would cut their fingers off would have swayed the archers because they knew if they were captured, they would be killed. The story that Henry had told his archers the French would cut off their fingers came from sources in Burgundy which soon after Agincourt was declared an enemy of the Crown of France and likely was told to jazz up Burgundians. The Burgundian chroniclers of the battle weren't eyewitnesses, and since Burgundy was fighting on the French side during the battle, how would they possibly know the contents of a speech Henry (if he even made such a speech) made to his archers. As with all urban legends, they tend to get more detailed over time, and when more details are added, the legend becomes less and less likely. For instance, it's claimed that the English used the salute as a way of saying they could still pluck their strong, English yew, bows. Just a couple of problems with that - bows are drawn, not plucked - if the English had plucked their bows, the arrows would travel about 2 inches - maybe - English long bows at the time had a draw weight between 80 and 180 pounds. The other problem is that every one of these tales all claim the bows were made of English yews. They were not - English yews are too moist, they can't dry enough to be able to make a long bow with the draw weights that the English were getting and even at lower draw weights they break too easily. The yews the English used came from Spain and the Italian alps. Plus "Pluck Yew" - really? An 8th grader can tell you what that would mean. That really should be the biggest hint that the Agincourt legend is just not true. Finally, the two-fingered salute was likely a late 19th, early 20th century invention by the working class of Britain as it doesn't appear to have ever been mentioned being used prior to about 1900.(This message has been edited by calicopenn)

Scoutmaster's vision? Should the Scoutmaster's vision be "go with what the Boys want and mentor them through it" rather than some grand plan to move the troop in one direction or the other? A Scoutmaster is a weathervane - it points the direction the wind takes it - the Scoutmaster is not the wind, the boys are. We rotate Scouts through POR's far more regularly and often - we shouldn't be afraid to di it with adult leader positions - a 3 year rotation seems about right to me - the 1st year the Scoutmaster perfects his skills, the second year, the Scoutmaster identifies his replacement, the third year the Scoutmaster trains his replacement, the 4th year, the new Scoutmaster, already trained, perfects his skills.

Oh geeez, just what this board needs, another giant bucktoothed rat,errr rodent (well, that's how we translated it in 4th grade French class). (And I'll say this - it's a good thing castor oil came from a legume and not le castor, though given the taste....)

"Because rules are for the guidance of leaders. They may be useful ideals, guides and goals, but they may not be necessary all the time, or there may be exceptions that will benefit the Scouting program. Take the "Counselors in Training" (CIT) program in many Scout Camps. Very likely it is a program that can be used well or poorly. Used well it provides additional manpower at low cost to Scouting that provides useful teaching and leadership experience to Scouts and benefits everyone. Used poorly and it can lead to poor quality experiences for the CITs and for the young Scouts they teach, or fail to teach. The difference is the leadership of the Camp Director and Program Director --- and the Scout Executive that appoints them." Have you given any thought to the possibility that there is a poor quality CIT program affecting both the CITs and the Scouts because the Camp and Program Directors DIDN'T follow the rules and made up their own because they have a local perspective that no one can understand? Rules aren't guidelines for leadership - they're the parameters of leadership. Leaders that follow the rules rarely get in trouble for following the rules - Leaders that don't follow the rules, for whatever justification they make to themselves for it, are the ones that get into trouble. A good leader knows how to accomplish his goals within the rules - a leader that finds a need to ignore the rules because their circumstances are different is a poor leader. There is a famous top tier university that has a football program in shambles and is warned that they could lose their accreditation which could cause the university to shut down because people who were once praised for their leadership didn't follow the rules. Waiting until someone is hurt to rein folks back into following the rules is way too late. As for authority of the BSA versus the Council's and CO's and who gets to make what decisions? It's just my opinion, but I would suggest that given that National has the power to revoke individual and council charters, the ultimate Boy Scout authority rests with National. During the fight over the direction the Chicago Area Council was taking while the Owasippe struggle was taking place, National came in, sat down both groups (the board in charge and the folks that wanted to replace the board) and told them flat out that National would disband the board and name their own slate if things didn't cool down, and that neither side would be happy. That's real power - so go ahead and answer the question about who has authority and know that ultimately, National, by virtue of being the folks that control charters and the brand, is the top dog. "Centralized decision making has been the downfall of companies and countries." Do I have to point out that this is a truism that is just as true for decentralized decision making? Every company and country is destined to fall - it's as inevitable as biological death. Unfortunately, I think the BSA is caught between two rocks. The first being they have to provide ever-more detailed rules because there are people that can't seem to understand the rules in the first place - how often have we been asked when the 6 months in rank starts? The rules always said, quite clearly I thought, that it was when rank was awarded and rank was awarded effective at the end of the BOR - yet we still got folks saying that it was after the court of honor, or when it was entered into a computer program, or it started on the 1st of the month following the BOR - no wonder the BSA writes a new advancement book that reads like military specifications for making fruitcake. The second being people reading things and wondering if they're rules? JM gives us a great example of this when he talks about his swimming hole issue - he wants to know if they broke the rules by not creating a non-swimmer area for an impromptu swimming activity when all the participants were swimmers, and for not using buddy tags. The answer is no rules were broken - safe swim defense says you create the zones non-swimmers, beginners and swimmers - but there is a caveat (and in JM's defense, the BSA has the caveat elsewhere) and that is that you have to set up the zones for each PARTICIPATING swimmer group - if you have all non-swimmers, you only need to set-up a non-swimmer area - if you have all swimmers, you don't need to set-up non-swimmer and beginner areas. No rules broken - no worries. Not using buddy tags? Not required - using the buddy system is, but buddy tags are not - they're a summer camp tool - used by summer camps to monitor access because they don't know the 20 people in your Troop - they might count 20 people coming in and 20 people leaving but they'll have no idea if one of those 20 is a lad from another unit leaving. But even if it was a rule, as an example of a good leader working within the rules - there are creative ways to do it without taking a lot of time - for instance, if each Scout has a walking staff with their name on it, they pair up their staff with their buddies staff on shore - viola, instant buddy tags. I can't help but ponder that one of the points of the Scout Law is relevant to this discussion: A Scout is Obedient. I think most of us agree with the BSA when they say that means that a Scout follows the rules, even those he disagrees with, and when he does disagree with, he works to change it, not ignore it. Question - Do folks think that the Scout Law applies only to the Scouts and not the Adult Leaders? It seems to me it takes more energy to justify not following a rule than it does to follow the rule.

Seems folks are pretty much on the right track but are missing something here - just one little tweak that might make it all fall into place. According to the latest Eagle Scout Service Project Workbook, which includes the rules for fundraising, all money left over, regardless of the source, goes to the beneficiary. Since the fundraising application is also required for securing donations of materials, it's reasonable to conclude that surplus materials should also go to the beneficiary. The Scout has asked the beneficiary if they would like the materials - I think that's only half the question - there's one more question to ask that I think will take care of the ethical quandry here. I'd suggest having the lad ask the beneficiary this question: "Since you do not want the leftover materials, will you approve of them being donated to Habitat for Humanity (or other worthy charity - maybe one the beneficiary supports themselves - it's not unusual for non-profits and churches to support other non-profits or ministries) in your name?" My guess is that he'll be greeted with a "What a wonderful idea, why don't you donate in our name and make sure they know its from your Eagle Scout project" kind of answer. If the beneficiary says no, then I think you can feel free to donate to whomever you wish - but I would donate it to a charity and get a receipt.

Below are the requirements to earn Eagle Scout in 1952 (60 years ago) - the requirements did not change from 1936 until 1958 so the 1936 requirements were active: 1936 Eagle Requirements Be active as a Life Scout for at least 6 months (prior to this change, you had to be First Class and didn't have to earn Star or Life first) Earn 21 merit badges, including the following 13: First Aid Lifesaving Personal Health Public Health Cooking Camping Civics Bird Study Pathfinding Safety Pioneering Athletics OR Physical Development (Swimmingnot listed, but required for Lifesaving) Let's not compare Oranges to Clementines, shall we?

It most likely means someone who was born with a congenital birth defect that would not allow them to procreate.

While walking through the wilderness, Linus was interrupted in his reveries by a burning bed of petunias. Linus was about to smother the flames with his Blanket when he was brought short by a powerful voice emanating from the flames. It was the voice of the Great Pumpkin and Linus trembled before it. The Great Pumpkin said "Linus, I want you to build me an Ark" Linus asked "Why, oh Great Pumpkin". The Great Pumpkin replied "I will soon destroy the heathens of the world with 40 days of rain and 40 nights of snow." Linus asked "Is that because the dinosaurs all caught small pox from us and died off before they could finish the job?" The Great Pumpkin replied "Let's not talk about that. Oh heck, I'm getting too old for these kinds of special effects extravaganzas. Look, why don't I just give you a couple of stone tablets with some rules to follow - mankind will just ignore them anyway, but it'll make me feel better." Linus asked "Couldn't you just write them on a piece of papyrus? I've already got one hand full carrying this Blanket". The Great Pumpkin sighed, and said "So be it - Behold!" And in an instant, the burning petunia patch was replaced by a single tree, and on that tree was a single piece of paper with 10 rules, typed, in 12 point elite, single spaced. Linus read the rules and they were thus: 1) Thou shalt have no Pumpkin before me - not even one of those cute blue moon pumpkins. 2) Though thou shalt have the right to bear arms, thou shalt not use pumpkins for target practice, or for catapult ammunition. 3) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's pumpkin. 4) Thou shalt observe pumpkin day and keep it pumpkiny. 5) Thou shalt not steal pumpkins. 6) Thou shalt not use turnips as a substitute for pumpkins when making Jack-o-Lanterns. 7) Look, just use canned pumpkin when making pumpkin pie - it's so much easier than making the filling from scratch. 8) Thou shalt not take the Great Pumpkin's name in vain. 9) Thou shalt honor thy pumpkin patch and keep it watered. 10) I'm a busy pumpkin - just fill in the blanks yourself: "Thou shalt not _______ or _______ to______ and ______ or _______ if ______ and _______ by ______ on ________, understood?" Linus gazed upon the list and wept tears of joy, which he wiped away with his Blanket. He gathered the villagers and read them the list. Sally walked away laughing, Lucy conspired with Snoopy to steal Linus' Blanket, Charlie looked for Patty to start a baseball game, even though it was hockey season, Marcie and Woodstock went back to reading Proust, and Schroeder played selections from the Pumpkin of the Opera on his toy piano.

Gee, I don't know - seems folks have been polite enough not to mention that all you've been doing is lurking and not participating and now you expect your opinion on behavior in this room to be taken seriously. To me, that's like not voting then complaining about what the politicians are doing. I'm really not trying to minimize what you're saying - there's no doubt most of us think the same as well, but I can't help but think that we're being lectured to by someone who hasn't given us a chance to evaluate whether his own behavior would actually match what he's preaching. It's one thing to be holier than thou when your past and present actions support being holier than thou. It's quite another to be holier than thou when no one knows you. In other words, welcome to the forum, jump in and be part of the fun and remember the bar you've set for yourself when we start discussing something that you're really passionate about.

I've got to echo what pchadbo is saying - I think you need to give him a year to see how the council is currently operating it's program - see the summer camp and day camp programs in action before making changes, see how the year plays out - this fall, he'll have his year - then it'll be time to really watch and hold his feet to the fire if nothing changes

It wouldn't surprise me if the LDS started opening their units to non-church members to improve their program. Based on the BSA's 2011 end of year membership breakdown, Mormon units average 11 members per unit. Yes, they are first in members in the BSA (420,977) but they also have the most units (37,882) which gives them the lowest average number of Scouts per unit. But I think most of us recognize that it's hard to sustain a good, quality program with low unit membership numbers (and please note, for those that are working with small units now my use of the word SUSTAIN - I recognize that small units can have a good, quality program - but we should also recognize that small units are more likely to fold after a few years and they drivers of the unit leave). The next highest numbers of members is through the United Methodist Church (3741,491) - but with only approx 50,000 fewer total members than the Mormons, they still have an average of 33 members per unit (only 11,078 units). The next lowest average members per unit is the Baptists, but even they are at 25 members per unit average. The highest average number of members per unit at 42? PTA's and PTO's. The second highest average at 41? Parent Groups other than PTA's and PTO's. If I were to try to take something away from this, I think I'd be looking at the average number of Scouts per unit for PTA's and PTO's and trying to figure out what I could do to make it easier and allowable for more PTA's and PTO's to charter a scout unit.

Noah's Tarp is the brand name of a lightweight diamond fly manufactured by Kelty for backpacking. Though it comes with a set of shock-corded poles, it can easily be set up in a number of configurations (like all diamond flies) using just ropes, or using hiking poles, or whatever sticks you happen to find so you can leave the poles behind. You can use it to cover gear, make a dining fly to protect from sun and rain (it's not meant for high winds, thunderstorms or snowstorms), or to make a shelter. There are some folks that take just their tent's rainflys on summer trips but diamond fly is more versatile because it's just a large square (and that's all a diamond fly is - a square tarp, with ties and grommets in strategic locations) rather than being partially shaped to a tent. I would not choose the Noah's Tarp as my first choice for a patrol tarp, unless your unit never does anything but backcountry trips. Kelty, and others, make dining flies that are a bit heavier duty, without being heavy plastic or canvas, that are going to be better for most everyday usage - they'll have thicker, more rugged poles to start - and that's a big plus.

In the beginning, there was nothing. The Great Pumpkin gazed at the nothingness and said "This is sad, let there be Pumpkin Patches!" And lo, from the nothingness came great pumpkin patches, complete with planets, light, darkness, water, and creatures to support them. On the second day, the Great Pumpkin gazed at the pumpkin patches inhabiting millions of worlds in millions of universes and said "This is good, but it's missing something" so using a special pumpkin seed, the Great Pumpkin created man, whom the Great Pumpkin called "Linus" and equipped him with a blue woven cloth, which the Great Pumpkin called "Blanket". On the third day, the Great Pumpkin gazed at the new universe and saw that Linus was lonely, so using GMO techniques, modified a special pumpkin seed and created woman, whom the Great Pumpkin called "Sally". On the fourth day, the Great Pumpkin listened in despair as Linus told Sally about the Great Pumpkin and Sally laughed at Linus and walked away to find non-pumpkiny treats. This angered the Great Pumpkin but because the Great Pumpkin was a gentle Great Pumpkin, the Great Pumpkin decided to leave mankind alone and let them make their own decisions, vowing to rise just once every year on Pumpkin Day Eve in the most sincere pumpkin patch to deliver toys and candy to boys and girls who still believed. On the fifth day, seeing that Linus was the only one who ever believed, the Great Pumpkin said "the heck with it" and created dinosaurs.

It's up to the crew to decide if they're going to have a uniform (or uniforms), what that uniform will consist of, and when they will be worn. My question would be, if the Crew decides that "Class A's" will be worn to meetings, why would only the President wear the uniform and not the rest of the Crew members? I would think that if there is an expectation by the Crew that the President wears "Class A's" to the meeting, then the other officers, and the non-officer Crew members should also wear their "Class A's" to the meeting.

I suspect you know it's going to be a journey to get where you want to be with the Troop and we're just preaching to the choir. It's going to be a challenge, not doubt but I suspect you're closer than you think. It sounds as if you've had ample opportunities to talk things over about how things are done - if the SM you're replacing and the other ex-SM's on the committee have any doubts about you taking over and making changes, I imagine you'll know by the end of the week when you're called and told that things have changed and they've found someone else. You may be seeing a lot of things that you want to change, but as others have said better than I, it's going to take some time, so choose a couple of small things to start. Maybe replacing the tarp is not the first battle you want to take on because it also costs money but changing the way the SPL is selected might be the first thing out - next time the SPL term is up, just switch it to an election and use that as a base to launch a proper PLC. Follow the Nike code and Just Do It. Now, here's the thing that's going to make this work. You need to be ready, the moment - the exact moment - that the ex-SM's start complaining that it isn't the way things are done, to reach up to your sleeve, pull the SM patch off your shirt, hand it to them, and say "find someone else, I'm obviously not the person you want, no harm, no foul" and walk away. No discussions, no listening to their side, no giving them an inch on this battle in hopes you'll win future battles, no waffling - hand them the patch and walk away friends. One of two things will happen - they'll come running after you asking you to reconsider at which time you tell them it's on your terms or no go (and that's not "my way or the highway", that's following the books and program and collaborating with them on things that need collaboration) or 2) they'll find a replacement which is a sign they weren't prepared to let go and you're better off anyway.

Hmmm - let's look at it from a different angle. The question seems to be about fairness (is it fair for the adults to get use out of something they didn't help set up) but I think it's really a question about the division of labor. Now there there should be no doubt that adults shouldn't expect the lads to set up the adults tents but can a reasonable case be made that the boys should set up the dining fly and kitchen areas on their own without adults helping out? I think, if you take into account that the adults have just spent however long it took to drive to the campsite while the Scouts were playing with game boys, or reading books, or whatever they do on drives, then, yes, I think it's reasonable to suggest that the boys setting up the kitchen area on their own is equalizing the division of labor. Just a thought. Now about set-up - I wonder if it would be better to either reverse the order, or think of a way to be more efficient. Instead of setting up the fly first (unless it's raining or threatening to rain imminently), then set up all the tents first, then set up the fly and kitchen area. Alternatively, if you have a fairly good size Troop, would there be anything wrong with each Patrol supplying a couple of Scouts each for kitchen set-up duty, while the Patrols set the tents up?

I'm not sure how many people know the BSA handbook is available on Kindle. I'm not sure what other platforms it's available on. CNET says it's available for the i-Phone. It wouldn't surprise me if folks start seeing Scouts bringing older kindles and e-books to outings - as folks start to replace perfectly good otherwise e-books with either the latest and greatest e-books or with i-Pads or Android tablets, which include e-book functionality as well. Every time I walk into a Barnes & Noble, the first thing I see is the big display for their Nook. Everytime someone asks me if I'd be interested in a Nook, I tell them if I wanted electronics, I'd go to a Best Buy. There is more to reading than just the words - at least for me. I get a sense of satisifaction as I watch my book mark travel through a books pages, as I get to the last page and shut the book cover, and as I watch the stack of unread books get shorter as I read through them.

I want the video of the look on Twocubdad's face as he trys to figure out how to sign a Kindle edition of the Boy Scout Handbook (and yes, the Boy Scout Handbook is available on Kindle) (extra wide grin!)