Hats and Handbags

[Eamonn]

There is a lot of things that I don't understand.

In one of the high end department stores I looked at mens wallets. I don't understand how a wallet can cost over $75.00?

A female friend of mine has got into collecting womens purses.

I know nothing about purses.

I am glad that HWMBO isn't into these things as my friend spends $600 or more on a purse.

I don't see that many woman carrying a purse any more.

I think that maybe they just leave it in the car?

Back when I was a Lad, it seemed that every woman carried one. They seemed to clutch on to them for dear life.

Of course maybe back then woman wore dresses and didn't have any pockets? I don't know.

Back when I was very young men wore hats.

My dad was about the last of the hat wearers. But he very rarely left the house without his hat.

I love the old movies from the 1940's. Looking at them it seems that just about every adult male wore a hat.

I can't imagine Humphrey Bogart without a hat and Jimmy Cagney seemed able to look good in his hat.

I don't see that many men wearing hats today. Those that do wear ball caps, which are almost a disposable item. After about a year or so their old ball cap is gone and replaced with another.

Strikes me as strange that purses have become a collectible item and mens hats are almost gone replaced with a ball cap that can be bought for under $20.00

The last hat I bought for my Dad over 30 years ago I think cost me about $70.00 when I change it from English pounds.

How is it that somehow purses have managed to reinvent themselves while mens hats haven't?

Robert Mazzuca the Chief Scout Executive. Seems to have came into office wanting to make changes to the BSA.

I'm not sure if he was trying to reinvent it all? Or just make changes?

Right now, from where I sit other than a lot of new uniforms, more use of the Internet for on line training and some changes to how the Regions are served there doesn't seem to be a lot happening.

Maybe "Not a lot happening" Is a good thing?

A fair number of volunteers seem to think that we might better serve the kids we are trying to reach by turning the clock back and returning to more traditional ways of going about things?

Some people, me included worry that we will become something that only middle class white kids will be able to afford. Kinda like womens purses and just like the purse that gets left in the car the kids who do join will not have the same enthusiasms and kids in the past might have had, it will become all about adding Eagle Scout to some application or another?

I'm glad I don't have the Chief Scout Executive job.

All of us know that membership isn't what it once was.

Everyone seems to have different opinions as to why this is.

Some blame parents, video games, school sports the list seems endless.

Do we need to change?

If so what changes are needed?

Is Cub Scouting harming Boy Scouting?

There are a lot of things that I just don't understand.

[qwazse]

Bought my leather hat in for $30 a few years ago. Made in China (which explains the price), but the best piece of headgear I've ever had. Suitable for backpacking. Wore it skiing once (before the helmet regs). Looks good on the street. (I get compliments from everyone -- working stiffs to village people.) Give's me something to tip as the ladies pass by. The cloth band on the inside is starting to fray, may cost more to get a new one sewn in than what I payed for the thing in the first place.

 

Best wallets I get are from an Indian merchant. He sells them for about $5, and the last almost as long as the "men's store" wallet.

 

THE SUPERACTIVITY that my youth ask to do year after year is a $50/person mid-week campout at a beach on Lake Erie. Just a couple of days. One boy specifically requested we schedule it before he has to report to boot camp. I feel bad because it looks like we won't be able to because my vacation days and my dimes our gonna be blown getting 1/3 of the crew on a sailboat in The Abacos Bahamas for a week.

 

The kids who picked this sailing trip literally priced their friends out and -- thanks to college and family needs -- now they themselves can't go. Negative synergism and hard times are like that.

 

I'm feeling a little like we bought that $600 purse when all we really needed was a bunch of $30 hats.

[desertrat77]

I get no sense National understands how painful the cost of scouting is to the average family.

 

When I was deployed last year, I found a Boys Life magazine someone had slipped into a care package. There was an article on light camping--great, I thought...less weight to tote around the woods, and it can be done cheaply. I was only half right. The whole article was nothing but an ad for by-name brand expensive gear...two hundred dollar sleeping bag, pricey tarp and ground cloth, etc.

 

What was wrong with a sleeping bag from a troop equipment locker? Or a couple of shower curtains from the dollar store to serve as tarp and ground cloth?

 

Yes, thankfully, the troop/pack/crew/ship can tackle and reduce costs. But as long as National continues with its present image, it takes a bit of tarnish each time a new high-dollar item is touted on the webpage, or a parent reads the article like the one I did in Boys Life.

 

Scouting's best seller--camping, the great outdoors--can be had for alot less money, and is a historic, proven draw. Why National would ignore this, and portray the movement as an upper middle class effort, is beyond me.

[BadenP]

Eamonn

 

Even when we were kids there was talk of Boy Scouts being an organization primarily for middle class white Protestant boys. Catholics and Jews were actually discouraged from joining by their clergy because scouts went camping on the Sabbath/Sunday. Nowadays it is the high cost of belonging outrageously priced multiple uniforms, camping equipment, activity fees, scoutbooks, etc, all of which continue to skyrocket in price. Then there was, and still is, the argument about Sports taking kids away from scouting.

 

Today there is the current trend to "modernize" scouting and to make it more "relevant" to todays youth by moving more and more away from the traditional outdoor program and adding new High Tech things like the Robotics MB, etc. Will this make scouting better or stronger or grow larger, only time will tell. Personally I think scouting will radically change over the next decade or two and most of us long time scouters, who will be in our retirement years, will barely be able to even recognize it. If this change is postive or negative will be left to the historians to decide.

[Basementdweller]

We run a very frugal program....our last camp out cost $5.

 

The middle class is being priced out.....but it is thru their inability to manage money and priorities.

 

I retell the story of the mom filling out a campership app while sitting in her Ford Expedition, freshly manicured nails and a then very expensive blackberry, txting.

 

[Tampa Turtle]

Boys Life really bugs me. The stuff in it is always way too expensive. The recent issue had bikes. Started with a $100 walmart one, then $500, $1300, $6000. What ever happened to a scout is thrifty? I am all for getting good quality gear but the way National and Boys Life presents it you better be a rich kid (I am middle class and with myself and 2 boys I cannot really afford it)

[CalicoPenn]

My grandfather wore a fedora. The only hats my father wore were Scouting hats.

 

I wear a baseball cap from spring to fall (I have about 40 of them - from various national parks, refuges, forests and state parks). I wear them because I'm bald and it prevents my scalp from being sunburned. Ball caps are more informal, and when I wear them I'm generally wearing informal clothes (jeans, etc.).

 

My grandfather never wore jeans. My father rarely wore jeans. Unless I'm wearing my work clothes, I always wear jeans. A fedora just doesn't go well with jeans.

 

In the winter, I wear a wool cap to keep warm. Nothing I own would look good with a fedora. Not even GAP khakis (or Dockers - brand isn't important).

 

As jeans ascended, hats fluttered away. I rarely see a boomer wearing a hat (ball caps excluded)- not even 65 year old boomers. Heck, I rarely see folks of my father's generation wearing a hat. The only folks I see wearing fedora's these days are young urban/suburban hipsters and frankly it's just doesn't look right unless the hipster has a roundish face and is wearing rectangular glasses.

 

My wallet? $4 at office max. I use those business card wallets - they fit into my front pocket - and holds everything I need. Had a boss around my age who had the grandfather wallet - everytime we went to lunch, the wallet came out of the back pocket and onto the table - I imagine it's like sitting on a brick.

 

What's the difference between a men's wallet and a women's handbag? The wallet is in a pocket - we don't have to match an outfit. A women's handbag is usually carefully chosen to match an outfit, or to show off a brand name. When a women carries a Coach handbag, she's making a statement to everyone she meets. At least I think that's what's going on. I could be wrong. A man can have a Coach wallet but what's the status in that? We're not going to see it, and a man flashing it around is just pretentious.

 

More to the point - if a woman want's to spend $600 on a purse, it's ok by me - it means she's not going to be competing with me for the $600 mountain dulcimer I've got my eye on. I'm sure if I were married, my wife would be wondering why I need another dulcimer, isn't the 9 I own enough?

[JMHawkins]

Today there is the current trend to "modernize" scouting and to make it more "relevant" to todays youth by moving more and more away from the traditional outdoor program and adding new High Tech things like the Robotics MB, etc.

 

Y'know, the more I think about it, the more I realize that scouting was never "relevant" to the day-to-day world. The Lewis and Clark expedition was a century in the dust when scouting started. Horseless-carriages roamed the land and airplanes roamed the sky. People bought stuff from the Sears catalog, they didn't lash sticks together. B-P's program was no more relevant to the "modern" world of 1910 than it is to the modern world of 2010.

 

What it was relevant to though was the needs of boys, to the adventures and experiences that they craved and that helped them grow into decent young men. In fact, B-P started scouting specifically to make up for what had been lost as the world modernized. Boys were stuck in urban settings, cut off from the outdoors, missing out on opportunities to do simple but useful things with their hands and to test and prove themselves, and they were isolated from male influences for large stretches of the day, only seeing their fathers when they were worn out after a long day at the factory, not having the chance to learn things from them and to demonstrate their growth and maturity to their elders. B-P realized all of that missing stuff was important and needed to be reintroduced to the "modern" youth.

 

People who think scouting has to change to "keep up with the times" are completely misunderstanding what it's about in the first place.

 

(though honestly I think a Robotics MB is a great addition and very much in tune with "traditional" scouting. Design and build a robot? Oh yeah. That fills the bill, giving the boy an opportunity to build something cool with his own hands and show it off. It doesn't replace the need to get outdoors and go camping, but it's a great addition to it).(This message has been edited by JMHawkins)

[Tampa Turtle]

I agree with Mr Hawkins on the Robotics badge, it is just an updated high-tech version version of an earlier analog --say a Soap Box derby car...actually much more demanding. My boys love to build and tinker at home...it can be bamboo and lashings at home or work on a robotics kit. Of course BSA seems to be moving away from emphasizing Scoutcraft. I think Scoutcraft still appeals to a lot of boys.

 

I am seeing more boys struggle with 7b - "the useful camp gadget". They seem to have no imagination or have fun with it. They just want the solution --if I see one more weather rock on a tripod I will scream. I should just hold a campout off the Florida coast and make em all build a raft to get there. Actually, that sounds like fun...

[Spiney Norman]

I read this and it gave me the chills. You hit the nail right on the head here, and what you said is still relevant!

 

"What it was relevant to though was the needs of boys, to the adventures and experiences that they craved and that helped them grow into decent young men. In fact, B-P started scouting specifically to make up for what had been lost as the world modernized. Boys were stuck in urban settings, cut off from the outdoors, missing out on opportunities to do simple but useful things with their hands and to test and prove themselves, and they were isolated from male influences for large stretches of the day, only seeing their fathers when they were worn out after a long day at the factory, not having the chance to learn things from them and to demonstrate their growth and maturity to their elders. B-P realized all of that missing stuff was important and needed to be reintroduced to the "modern" youth."

 

Thanks JMHawkins.

[Old_OX_Eagle83]

Maybe the program has changed too much. Yes, we could strive to become in sync with the current generation, and clearly are, media pocket on the uniform? My point is offering the youth more of what they have doesnt make sense. To succeed you have to identify, and fill, a need, or want, that is not being addressed. This was true with BP wrote Scouting for Boys, and its true today. Whats also true is the void that we filled in 1910 is the same void that exists today, because we have stopped filling it.

 

Pick up Scouting for Boys, read it, remove the non-PC content, and restate it in a way that boys of the 21st century can understand. Put that program on. Does this sound too easy, that because it is, we just cant see the forest for the trees.

 

Ever notice how the councils and districts keep coming back to us old school leaders, and pulling us back in, theres a reason. Im a District Roundtable Commissioner, and see lots of new leaders come and go, mostly go. We keep getting brought back in to run units, because we understand scouting, and that si to say we understand the patrol method. As admirable as this is, its bad. What we need to be doing is training the new adult leaders. One way of doing this is providing the correct program to the scouts, knowing if they get it, they will fill our shoes one day. However, there arent enough of us, we need to train he newer adult leaders as well.

 

Whats more satisfying then seeing some soccer mom, with dirt under her manicured nails, in her now ripped and dirty Kalvin Klein jeans, with that expression that says I get it? The problem is too few do get it, because the training is bunk. This isnt just about the ladies. Believe me, there are plenty of ipad carring, Starbuck addicted, desk jockeys, who cluelessly pull up in their Lincoln Navigators. This is what we have to work with, and is quite possibly a statement that our program has too high of a price tag. None the less, we need to pry this group away from watching the sport of the moment on their 50 inch plasma TVs, and give them what they missed in their youth, so they can pass it on.

(This message has been edited by Old_OX_Eagle83)

[Tampa Turtle]

Old Ox,

 

For me you hit on a key point!I am now able to do many things I was never able to do as a youth. To share those things with my sons is priceless. I would have been in Boy Scouts in the mid '70's and it did not look that appealing (I did like the belt loops and berets), not much the adventure I assumed would be there.

 

I have been very fortunate to have boys who are "throwbacks" who like playing outside and building stuff themselves, it just seemed to me that traditional scouting was a good fit for them. Somehow I got hooked along the way.

[Old_OX_Eagle83]

Thank you Tampa. the problem with getting hooked, is getting off the hook, lol.

 

I was a scout as a youth, 8 to 21. I volunteered as a Commissioner and OA Chap Adviser before my children were scout age. After that, 13 years of Girl Scouts with my oldest. 3 years of cubs with the middle child, wh did not stay in the program. a return to commissioner service and District service, until my youngest gotm involcd. My youndest is fifteen years younger than my oldest.

 

Now I'm juggeling several hats, looking my heads to drop them on, and have spent 33 of my 43 years on the scouting trail. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but get a bit worn out from time to time. To contract that, once I get rid of some of these hats, I may try being a Scoutmaster, something I've never done.