Bear Requirements for Tall Tales

[jteamnmj]

Greetings,

My son is working on his Tall Tales requirement He completed A. and still needs to do B. and C. For B. we are trying to get American ones that were not mentioned in the book. So that will take him a little while.

 

My Question,

For C. he has to read 2 folklore stories and tell his den which one he liked best. Well we lived in England for 3 years and have just recently moved back to the states. Before we left we visited Inverness and of course Loch Ness. He has asked me if the Loch Ness monster is a folklore. Was wondering if the Loch Ness Monster would be considered a myth or a folklore. He is very interested in the Loch Ness monster and was wondering if he could do that as 1 of his folk lore stories. What are your thoughts?

 

Thanks Julie

[Lisabob]

Gee, I'd say use it! As an added bonus maybe it will help your son share something neat from another culture with the boys in his den. I know when my son was that age, all the boys thought the idea of there really being a Loch Ness monster was pretty intriguing and this was a hot topic for conversation (heck, he still thinks about it - it comes up out of the blue on long car rides sometimes).

 

Lisa'bob

[jteamnmj]

Thats what I was thinking. He has also asked his den leader if he can plan a den meeting and tell about how it was like in England just living there and the neat things he got to do in Scouts. (He had the opputunity to go to Normandy France, and the camped at Chalfont, Gilwell and in Nottingham). When we were talking about all the different folklores he was the one who suggested finding different ones that weren't listed in the book. He really got into it last night and thats when Nessie came up. He wants to go to the library today to see what he can find on other folklores. He already knows of 1 for NJ. I hope they are open today with it being a holiday weekend and all. If not I guess we can start by doing internet searches.

 

Julie

[Lisabob]

Julie, that's really cool. Just a suggestion - maybe you and the den leader would like to work on the language & cultures beltloop and pin with all of the boys in the den this year. It would give your son an opportunity to share some of his experiences within a structure, and give the other boys & their families a chance to share their backgrounds too. You know, boys that age love to feel that they have input into the conversation too. It may also be a nice way to draw in extended family members, who may have lived abroad or who might be immigrants, themselves. And I know when we did this with our pack, I was amazed at how much international experience our quiet little midwestern group had!

 

Lisa'bob

 

 

[ScoutNut]

There are many different kinds of folklore.

 

Tall Tales

Songs

Ghost Stories

Myths

Legends (including Urban)

Fairy Tales

Poetry

Superstitions

 

To name just a few. The story of Nessie would fit right in.

 

Personally, I always liked the work of the Brothers Grimm, Greek Mythology and the folk songs of Steve Goodman. There are some pretty cool American Indian stories out there too!

 

[jteamnmj]

Lisabob: That's a good idea about the Language and Culture pin. Don't know why I didn't think of it myself. I guess since I'm not a den leader this year I'm not in den leader mode. That and all of our scout stuff is still in storage. Last year as the Wolf Leader we did the Language and Culture belt loop with our boys and they had such a great time and the boys really enjoyed sampling dishes that their den mates made to represent some of the foods in the different heritages as well as listening to the reports that the boys did. I'll have to see if the Den leader is interested in doing that. I know my son would love it.

 

Scoutnut: Thanks for opening the door on other things that are considered Folklore. The boys will be camping soon. I'm sure some of the suggestions you brought up will work good around the campfire. This can help some of the other boys looking to do this achievement. Thanks so much.

 

Julie

[WVCubDad]

ScoutNut has some great suggestions and it wasn't until I saw poetry that I recalled some of my favorite yarns as a boy were from "The Collected Poems of Robert Service."

 

"There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who toil for gold;..."

 

A good online source for the poems is http://www.artdamage.com/service.htm

 

Follow the links at the bottom to get to the poems.

 

John

[OneHour]

One thing that I did when my sons went through their Bear Year, for Tall Tales, we had a Den night at the movie. I showed them Disney's American Legends that has Paul Bunyans, John Henry, Johny Appleseed, and Brave Engineer. With a boatload of scout popcorn, we had a blast! It was about 1 hour long which was perfect for a Den meeting! We discussed it at the following meeting.

 

1Hour

[Fuzzy Bear]

Thanks to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, material culture, common to a particular population or the traditions of a culture.

 

A legend (Latin, legenda, "things to be read") is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale a basis of truth or possibility. They may include miracles that are perceived as actually having happened and within which it may be transformed over time, in order to keep it fresh and vital, and realistic.

 

Cryptozoology is the study of animals that are rumored or suspected to exist, but for which conclusive proof is still missing; the term also includes the study of animals generally considered extinct, but which are still occasionally reported. Those who study or search for such animals are called cryptozoologists, while the hypothetical creatures involved are referred to by some as "cryptids", a term coined by John Wall in 1983.

 

The Loch Ness Monster, sometimes called Nessie or Ness (Scottish Gaelic: Niseag) is a mysterious and unidentified animal or group of creatures said to inhabit Loch Ness, a large deep freshwater loch near the city of Inverness in northern Scotland. Nessie is usually categorized as a type of lake monster. Its disputed "scientific" name, as chosen by the late Sir Peter Scott, is Nessiteras rhombopteryx (which, coincidentally or not, is an anagram of "Monster Hoax by Sir Peter S.") Although no evidence exists to suggest the alleged creature's sex, the nickname "Nessie" sounds feminine, so the creature is often referred to as female.

 

Rumours of a monster or animal living in the loch are claimed by believers to have been known for several centuries, though others have questioned the accuracy or relevance of such tales, which were generally unheard of before the early 1960s when a strong "wave of interest" in legitimizing Nessie's 1930s-based history began.

 

Some have argued a history of "monster" sightings in the loch provides circumstantial evidence supporting the creature's existence. Note that the validity and origins of these stories have been challenged, along with any "history" predating the early 1930s. There have been around 10,000 such sightings, a third of which were reported in one form of media or another.

A brief press release by LNPIB and associates touched on the sonar data and drew to a close the 1968 effort:

The solution to the question of whether or not unusual phenomena exist in Loch Ness, Scotland, and if so, what their nature might be, was advanced a step forward during 1968, as a result of sonar experiments conducted by a team of scientists under the direction of D. Gordon Tucker... Professor Tucker reported that his fixed beam sonar made contact with large moving objects sometimes reaching speeds of at least 10 knots. He concluded that the objects are clearly animals and ruled out the possibility that they could be ordinary fish. He stated: "The high rate of ascent and descent makes it seem very unlikely [that they could be fish], and fishery biologists we have consulted cannot suggest what fish they might be. It is a temptation to suppose they might be the fabulous Loch Ness monsters, now observed for the first time in their underwater activities!"

Several of the resulting photographs, despite their obviously murky quality, did indeed seem to show an animal quite resembling a plesiosaur in various positions and lightings. There was one of what looked like the head, neck and upper torso of a plesiosaur. Close examination would show a head shape and even an eye. Another showed a "gargoyle head". This was found to be a tree stump during Operation Deepscan. There has also been a little published photograph of 2 bodies. A few close-ups of what is alleged to be the creature's diamond-shaped fin were also taken, in different positions, indicating movement. The Dinsdale 16 mm film of 1960, which has also been criticized as having an interpretation that has been greatly expanded from the original

In 1993 Discovery Communications made a documentary called Loch Ness Discovered. A computer expert the enhanced the 1960 Dinsdale film when he had noticed a shadow in the negative that wasn't very obvious in the positive. By enhancing and overlaying frames, he found what looked like the rear body, the rear flippers, and 2 additional humps of a plesiosaur. Even stranger is that it could look like two plesiosaurs with one behind another. The computer expert even said "Before I saw the film, I thought the Loch Ness Monster was a load of rubbish. Having done the enhancement, I'm not so sure".

The documentary also pointed out that the number of fish in the loch is at least nine times more than originally thought and that the fish were feeding extensively on uncommon prey (not revealed) in the very deep waters of the loch.

According to the Swedish naturalist and author Bengt Sjgren (1980), the present day belief in lake monsters in for example Loch Ness, is associated with the old legends of kelpies. Sjgren claims that the accounts of lake-monsters have changed during history. Older reports often talk about horse-like appearances, but more modern reports often have more reptile and dinosaur-like-appearances, and Bengt Sjgren concludes that the legends of kelpies evolved into the present day legends of lake-monsters where the monsters "changed the appearance" to a more "realistic" and "modern" version since the discovery of dinosaurs and giant aquatic reptiles from the horse-like water-kelpie to a dinosaur-like reptile, often a plesiosaur.

 

So, it is both Folklore and a Legend.

 

How about a skit with sitings that only the Actors can see. Include costumes, strange music, a sheet/curtain with a strong light source to make shadows. Each actor makes a siting using historical evidence. What fun!

 

[jteamnmj]

Fuzzy Bear: What a neat idea. We had an awesome tour guide when we went out on the Loch. Not only did he tell us a lot of history but there were 2 girls as well as my son on the boat and he let the girls steer the boat out onto the loch and my son got to drive the boat all the way back to the dock as well as port it. My husband(Navy man) was just brimming from ear to ear when our son took control of the boat. So was I of course. We have great pictures of our trip and my son swears he heard Nessie hit the botom of the boat and he thinks that one of thepic we took just could be Nessie. It was definitely a very memorable trip.

 

Thanks for that info too. We don't get our household goods for another couple of weeks so this will give my son something else to read. Can't wait till we get our stuff so I can get our pictures and books back out for him.

 

Thanks Again

Julie

 

[SSScout]

Don't leave out "Champ" in Lake Champlain, "Chessie", spoken of respectfully around the Chesapeake Bay, and there is one mentioned in Lake Baikal in Russia...

 

(We won't mention the Pine Barrens Walker in NJ, or Big foot in Washington state)

 

 

BoogeyBoogeyBoogey...

 

YiS