Scoutmaster Podcast 290

I'm Tony Chi and I am Scoutmaster with Group 150 in New York, New York. This edition of Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by factors like me. Clark, great show, I'm a new listener and you've got the great work.

And now to you, Scoutmaster. Two Scouts go out on a hike to practice their GPS skills And Tom looks around and he says: you know what?

I think we're lost. And Andy looks at his GPS and says no, no, we're not lost. There should be a gorilla holding a barrel straight ahead.

And Tom sighs and says: oh man, now I know we're lost. That's not a GPS, That's your Game Boy.

Hey, this is podcast number 290.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look at the mailbag. Hey, we heard from our buddy, Ken Anderson, with the 5th Brooklyn Group of the Baden Powell Service Organization, or the BPSA. Things are going well.

We're bursting at the seams. We have about 40 otters, 40 timber wolves and a dozen pathfinders. It's a challenge, to be sure, but we're trying to make it work Well. Growth is always a challenge, but, man, it's the best one to have. Thanks for checking in, Ken. Chuck Thornton wrote in to say your blogging insights are some of the best I've ever heard.

Thanks for including me on your email. You can get on the email too, folks. You can go to scoutmastercgcom. You can subscribe to receive updates to the blog and the podcast by email. Heard from Fred Paloso, who is with Cub Scout Pack 66 in New Milford, Connecticut. He says it looks like your favorite external frame pack is back again.

I found it on Amazon And Fred's talking about the Outdoor Products Dragonfly External Frame Backpack, which is my favorite external frame backpack for scouts. It's reasonably priced. It can grow along with a scout. The only problem is is that it's slightly ephemeral. I bought dozens of them over the past 15 or 20 years for our scouts and they work great, but sometimes they can be hard to find.

So in the post that contains this podcast, I'll share the link that Fred shared with me, And Fred said he's buying one for his son tonight based on my review. Well, Fred, I think you'll really like it. It's one of the best deals that you're going to find for an external frame backpack for scouts.

Well, every week, almost without fail, we try and have a couple of live chat sessions. These usually happen Tuesday mornings and Wednesday mornings And if you keep an eye on our Facebook feed and our Twitter feeds. I alert everybody to when we're going to be on for a live chat. A lot of our frequent flyers showed up this week, but Scouter Irv, who is a Scoutmaster of Troop 206 in Oakland, California. David McGee, who is in New Haven, Minnesota, where he's the chartered organization rep and an assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 911. And Drew Sterling, who's the Scoutmaster for Troop 11 in Albany, Georgia.

All checked in on the chat for the first time this past week. Like I said, keep an eye on the Facebook and Twitter feeds. Come and join us for a live chat.

Well, before we proceed with this 290th edition of the podcast, I want to ask a favor of you. I hear from a lot of folks every week And what I'm asking for in return is your support by becoming a scoutmastercgcom backer.

It's very, very simple to do: Go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page And there are a number of options where you can make kind of a voluntary one time subscription payment to help me keep things up and running. And this week I want to personally thank Tony Chi and Eric Conley, who've become backers since our last podcast. Once again go to scoutmastercgcom, become a backer this week, and I will make sure to thank you during our next podcast.

Well, in this week's podcast I have some email questions to answer, And in answering one I'm going to spend a little bit more time than usual talking about what I think is a pretty pivotal thing for us in scouting, And that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast. So let's get started.

Shall we Send it by name Email? That is, folks,

And here's an answer to one of your emails. Frank Rodriguez is with Troop 436 in Long Valley, New Jersey, And he wrote to say: some of the volunteers in my council seem to believe that failure to have the Boy Scout handbook with all the requirements initialed and approved is a reason to deny an eagle at a border review. I check the requirements and the guide to advancement and I can't find anything that would support that position. Am I wrong about this, Because it doesn't seem right to me. Thanks for your help.

Well, Frank, it's really kind of simple, isn't it? If it was a requirement that a scout had their handbook initialed and approved to present at an eagle border review, it would be written in the requirements, right? If you look at the eagle requirements. It does refer to the project workbook in requirement five and the application in requirement seven, but there's zero about the handbook.

Why would the requirements be so specific about a couple of other documents, but it doesn't mention the handbook anywhere. So requiring such a thing is adding to the requirements right, And we're not allowed to do that. There is a very simple statement in the guide to advancement 2015.. It says: no council, committee, district, unit or individual has the authority to add to or subtract from the advancement requirements.

So that's an easy question to answer. How does this kind of thing happen?

I mean, really, you know how does it keep happening? I'm a little floored by this.

It's really kind of aggravating, isn't it? How can, like reasonable people sit on an eagle border review and think that they can deny a scout their eagle based on the fact that he doesn't have his handbook and it's not all signed and initialed? I've run into things like this. There's two basic solutions to things like this. First of all, if it's not written in the requirement, it's not a requirement. Don't try and read between the lines.

Don't try and add things to the requirements. Okay, If it's not in there, it's not a requirement. The second solution to this sort of thing is going to be the solution to just about every problem I ever hear about in scouting, And that is simply being a champion of goodwill. Goodwill is incredibly powerful.

How do you get scouting right? Well, you be a champion of goodwill. You assume everybody's acting in goodwill. Goodwill is a powerful antidote to a lot of things. A lot of goodwill at an eagle border review or any border review. A lot of goodwill at a scoutmaster conference.

A lot of goodwill when we're sitting and talking to our fellow scouters, when we're working with our youth leaders, when we're working with any of our scouts. We have to assume goodwill on everybody's part, And I talk about this on a regular basis. But, come on, I mean, this is what really makes life fun. This is what makes being a scouter easy and makes being a scouter positive and wonderful and enriching for everybody involved, including yourself. You assume goodwill.

Now, your assumption of goodwill may be wrong every so often, but it's much less than you would imagine. If you assume goodwill on everybody's part and you work along beside them in that spirit, you're going to get you.

Every once in a while you're going to get burned, But isn't that so much better than just burning everybody else by assuming that they're trying to pull something off, Right, You know? Here's something Baden Powell wrote. He said: Brothers we are to our scouts, brothers to each other we must be if we're going to do any good. A luftness or jealousy could not exist where there is the true ideal of brotherhood.

What we need, and what, thank God, we have in most places in our movement, is not merely the spirit of good nature, tolerance, but of watchful sympathy and readiness to help one another. We not only need this, but we've got to have it If we're going to teach our boys by the only sound way, and that is through our own example, the greatest of principles, which is goodwill and cooperation.

This next email- well, this podcast- is being published around the time of Halloween and this is a scary, scary scouting story. It's okay, It's all right, It all comes out fine, but it's a little scary in the beginning, And I'm obviously not going to share any names or identifiers with this email.

But here's the scary, scary story. I'm the advancement chair for my troop. A scout gave me his blue card And somehow I lost them Before I could record the information. The scout had earned several merit badges at camp.

The counselors do not retain their part of the card, So I had all three sections of the blue card in my possession and lost them. You can imagine my dilemma: to record or not to record these badges. I don't have blue cards.

I remember that you've advised in the past that we don't penalize a scout for a scouter's mistake, but I'm not sure it applies in this case. I'm miserable about this whole thing.

What do I do now? Oh my well, I had a little bit of fun with that and I hope you don't mind. Listen, it's not a big deal.

Okay, Just record the merit badges, make new blue cards. Note that they're replacements for the ones that you lost on the troop copy, Initial the scout section. Do what you usually do: Give the scout their section along with the badge.

At the next court of honor, And if anybody ever challenges how this happened or what happened- and listen, that is basically not going to happen- Just tell them you had the originals but you lost them before they were recorded, so you recreated them. You initialed them to show that you had seen that these badges were complete and they had the counselor's signature and crisis averted. Happy ending to a very scary story. I mean, there's nothing magical about that original blue card. There's no reason that if a blue card gets lost, that a scout has to go back and start the merit badge all over again, or something like that. In this specific case, right, the advancement chair had the blue card, had looked at them, saw that they were complete, saw that they were signed, but just ended up losing them.

And that happens from time to time. You're not alone, It happens.

And because they had seen that these were completed merit badges with a proper counselor's signature and they came from summer camp, so I wouldn't have any problem of doing exactly what I described: Just create one, note it on the card, lost the original but saw the counselor's signature, initial it yourself and do exactly what I described. Now, if a scout loses a blue card, he's going to need to go back to the counselor, and if it's happening at summer camp and they're not keeping records, oh, now we're in a bit of a problem. That's a really scary story But, like I said, I wouldn't have any problem doing what I described.

And remember, this is just me, but I think it's in the spirit of what we're supposed to be doing as scouters And, as you said, we don't ever make a scout accountable for a mistake that an adult makes. And if you think that there's any possibility that there's a record somewhere that the camp has kept, well, you can follow up with that. But let's not wait. Get the scout the merit badge right away. That's what's really important And let's see. The third and last email question was a pretty simple one.

Do scouts still retire American flags? Yes, that it still happens.

Some scout troops have regular flag retirement ceremonies, but this is something that anybody can do, really, because if you look at the US flag code, it doesn't really specify much about this, other than when a flag is so tattered that it is no longer fit to serve as a symbol of the United States, it should be destroyed in a dignified manner, preferably by burning. So it doesn't have to be destroyed in some big authorized ceremony of some kind, because the flag code doesn't talk about an authorized ceremony and it doesn't talk about particular people being authorized to do this. The controlling thing there is dignified manner and preferably by burning.

So if we have a flag that is no longer fit to display, we don't just ball it up and throw it in the trash. We destroy it in a dignified manner And, like I said, check the flag code and tell me if I'm wrong. But I don't see anything. I'm sure you can find a local scout troop who'd be willing to do that for you. I know the veterans associations are usually willing to take flags and dispose of them in a dignified manner. But there you go.

I hope that helps.