David CO

Not much. I see very little difference in selling grossly overpriced items (like popcorn) and soliciting for donations. It's really the same thing.

Any funds you solicit are the property of your Chartered Organization.

Of course not. It is very easy to win an appeal at council.

Just what we need. Another merit badge factory.

A lot of us are playing it pretty loose with the six month requirement during the epidemic and shutdown. What does it mean to be active during a shutdown? I don't know. This is new territory for all of us. I wouldn't complain about a SM who isn't doing conferences during a shutdown. Particularly if the SM has underlying health conditions that would make him a high risk for coronavirus.

I wish this wasn't a scout related subject. I wish BSA had not publicly supported BLM. But it did.

I would guess that a lot of people are going to be surprised/upset about the fee increases. BSA is testing out the market to find out how much scouts and scouters are willing to pay for its product. This is no different than what any other business might do. Every business wants to get the maximum price it can for its product. How much would you be willing to spend?

I would start off by registering your kids as Lone Scouts. This way, you can get the kids started right away while you are trying to organize a unit. It would also help demonstrate, to potential Chartered Organizations, the need for a scout unit in your area. Good luck.

I know. I was a scout back in 1973. The requirements were pretty easy. I didn't get eagle anyway. Yep. Dark Shadows.

If I understand this correctly, the report alleges that you were the victim of domestic abuse. Even if it were true, I can't imagine that it would disqualify you as a scout leader. We don't blame the victim.

The problem with your scenarios is that they all focus on the council big wigs, and they almost entirely ignore the wishes of the scouting community and the Chartered Organizations. Very much like the attitudes that have brought BSA into bankruptcy to begin with. Business as usual.

That is true. An appeal isn't what it sounds like. It is more like asking for a review. Region and national review the statements sent to them by the council. Then they make a decision. There is no hearing.

The least valuable part (to GSUSA) would be Boy's Life Magazine. Boy's Life could be sold separately to a publisher, much in the same way as the National Geographic Society sold off their iconic magazine in 2015.

No. The scouting community has enough liability problems already. It doesn't need to add another high liability project like a youth hostel. YMCA got out of the youth hostels years ago because they were having major problems with it. Nobody else seems to want them either.

Yes, it is possible for two non-profit organizations to merge.

The reason for having a council was to have a legal entity that could own the camp property. If the council will no longer own a camp, then it has no purpose. It becomes an entity without a purpose.

(continued) Big City Council sells its camp to the Big City River Band of the Miami Tribe. It gains federal recognition as a Indian reservation. This gives it significant liability protection from bottom-feeding lawyers. It not only survives, it doubles in size after buying the neighboring boy scout camp, the Gerard Bored Scout Reservation, named after the most boring president the country ever had, at trait that continued for decades at his namesake scout facility, which totally focused on advancement and merit badges. The new Indian Reservation/Scout Reservation restores all of the outrageously exciting and politically incorrect activities that BSA had outlawed years earlier. Mothers weep at the very thought of sending their precious little boys there. The boys badger their fathers into letting them go. The camp successfully fights off every new lawsuit claiming sovereign immunity. A few boys do get hurt, and some parents do complain about their sons coming home from camp with full-body sun tans, but the camp is wildly successful. Most boys feel that it is a small price to pay for having such a great, exciting, and authentic scouting experience.

LSA did not have an age limit. There was no separate registration for youth and adults. Total registrations peaked at about 450,000. There is no way to know exactly how many were active, or how many were boys. This explains the confusion over how many Lone Scouts there actually were. When BSA bought out the LSA, they insisted on separate adult and youth registrations. Almost all of the adults dropped out. Many of these adults formed and joined alumni organizations such as the Lone Scout Fellowship. Like the LSA, the alumni organizations did not have separate adult and youth registrations. Some of the Lone Scouts joined BSA. Some just joined the alumni organizations. Some joined both. The alumni organizations continued for another 70 years after LSA was merged into BSA. They didn't just have members from the original LSA. They also had new members who were the children and grandchildren of the original Lone Scouts. They attempted to keep Lone Scouting alive through these alumni organizations. BSA knew of their existence, but largely left them alone, figuring that they would eventually die out. My group, the Lone Scout Fellowship, faded out in the mid 1990's. The history and legacy of Lone Scouting has largely disappeared from BSA history. BSA likes to pretend it didn't exist. They would rather have people believe that Lone Scouting was just a rural form of the traditional boy scout program. This topic started because I stated my belief that the LSA structure was better than the BSA structure. I still believe that. This doesn't mean that I am hanging on to some delusion that Lone Scouting (as I knew it) will ever return. Maybe its story will return, to be include in the larger story of scouting in the USA, but I doubt even that. Once upon a time, there was a scouting organization that had 450,000 registered members, about 250,000 kids, who seriously challenged BSA's monopoly on scouting. It had a wonderful program, and wonderful people. Now its gone. That's really all there is to the story.

(continued) The conservative scout division comes out with a new uniform neckerchief. The loose ends of the new neckers reach all the way down to the beltline, somewhat reminiscent of Donald Trump's unusually lengthy neck ties. The liberal scout division totally abandons the neckerchief (after BLM decries them as a racist homage to lynching). The neckerchief becomes the symbolic focal point of the on-going battle between the conservative and liberal divisions of BSA. Eventually, the term "necker" comes to be used as a pejorative against all conservatives, with strong connotations of racism.

Are you starting to regret your suggestion that we have some fun with this?

(continued) Hollywood makes a movie about the bankruptcy and division of BSA. Director Roman Polanski labels it as the "greatest post-apocalyptic movie" in history. It is a huge hit, and becomes a movie "franchise" with sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and a TV series starring Wil Wheaton. WOSM gets the foreign market distribution rights and makes even more money. Newly elected president Joe Biden pardons Roman Polanski, so that he can return to the USA to accept his Academy Award for the movie. Roman Polanski becomes an icon for the liberal scouts, and receives a silver buffalo for his great service to scouting.

BSA is liquidated, and a group of 45 local councils attempt to purchase the rights to license the program to council. WOSM realizes that there are a lot of bucks to be made off of the licensing of program and materials. WOSM files suit claiming that with the liquidation of BSA, all rights to the scouting name, trademarks, history, and materials reverts to WOSM. While the lawsuit is going on, Puerto Rican nationalists apply to WOSM for its own scouting association, which is named the Boriken Scouting Association, allowing it to continue to use the BSA acronym. Following the model used in some other countries, WOSM decides that the USA need to have a scouting association with two divisions, one conservative and one liberal. WOSM wins the lawsuit and institutes its new partisan model of scouting in the USA. WOSM makes a ton of money, pitting one group against the other. Big City council joins the liberal scouts. The suburban councils join the conservative scouts. Each side is happy, but they constantly criticize each other in public. Fox News and Fake News have a field day reporting on the ongoing in-fighting between the two BSA divisions.

Well, I guess that's true enough. I didn't learn the way of the Lone Scout from a BSA handbook. I learned it from the guys who were there in the beginning.

Where did you ever get that idea? You certainly haven't heard anything like that from me.

Then we are doomed.