Scoutmaster Podcast 318

I'm Jim Boggs and I'm the Scoutmaster with Troop 102 in Fort Myers, Florida. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by Packers Like Us.

And now for you, Scoutmaster, If you go on a backpacking trip, you want to know these two immutable laws of camping physics. And that is is that level ground diminishes in direct proportion to the amount of daylight left to find a campsite, And the distance to any campsite increases proportionate to the temperature. And in some isolated circumstances, the elevation of the trail also increases proportionate to the ambient air temperature.

How about that? A couple things you didn't know, But you've had it happen to you, haven't you?

This is podcast number 318.. Music. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Oh, let's take a look at the mailbag Heard from Andy McDonald about the mysterious pyramid, And if you haven't heard about the mysterious pyramid, you need to go back to podcast 316 and give it a listen. And Andy said: wow, that's probably your best podcast ever.

So many people need to hear this podcast. Well, thanks, Andy. I guess maybe it would be good for a lot of people to hear it. I wouldn't mind. Bob Lawrence got in touch with us. He's from Boy Scout Troop 77 in Redlands, California And he said my dad was a Scoutmaster in a camp cook and a Navy man And I made it to Eagle because he told me I would not, I would not be able to use the car until I did.

It was a good move on his. I owe a lot of the leadership and life skills I got and used extensively later in life to scouting.

Well, thanks for getting in touch, Bob, And thank you for your encouraging words. Now, this is well. This really isn't a special edition of the podcast, but it features the second half of a two-part discussion starting in our last podcast. But before I go any further, let me give you a quick reminder. There's something I need you to do for me. Go to scoutmastercgcom.

Right there on the homepage, up at the top in the right-hand corner, you're going to see two links. One of them says Support and one of them says Patreon- P-A-T-R-E-O-N. These are two ways you can help support the blog and the podcast. If you're a regular reader and listener, or if the resources we've created have helped you, this is how you can return the favor.

So if you click that Support link, you'll find a way to make a one-time kind of a subscription payment to be a backer for scoutmastercgcom and the Scoutmaster podcast, And I want to personally thank Stephen Cray, who's become a backer since our last podcast. If you follow that Patreon link, you're going to end up at something called Patreon. If you're not familiar with it, it's a way for you to make a monthly subscription payment of $5 or more in support of the blog and the podcast, And a number of people have chosen that as a way of helping me keep things up and running here.

And I want to personally thank Jim Meister, Mac and Catherine Barron and Jack Parks, who've all become patrons since last week's podcast. Mac and Catherine Barron have a podcast themselves- actually It's called Catholic in a Small Town- and I'm going to have a link so that you can check that out if that sounds like something you'd be interested in.

And I also want to make sure you know last week I did not give a link to Mark Ray's blog, which is called Thoughts About Writing, Scouting and Writing About Scouting. Mark has authored scouting books and he is the author of the two-volume troop leader guidebook. That's an official publication of Boy Scouts of America that we've talked about last week and we're going to finish that discussion up this week. And our friend Walter Underwood joined us and we had a great time. We planned on getting together for an hour and that turned into two and the edited version was about an hour.

I didn't want to put it all in one gigundus podcast, so we're going to hear the second part of our conversation this week and I really hope you enjoy it. And with that being said, let's get started, shall we?

One of the other larger pieces is the troop meeting program. We start looking at that in chapter 10 in extraordinary everyday programs. Mark, just outline what you would like to get across about that. A couple of things. We talk a lot in scouting about the summit, about the other high-adventure bases, about the national jamboree, and those are all really, really great things.

But the way I do the math, nine out of ten scouts will not do one of those this year or next year or the year after, And so for 90% of scouts there's nothing beyond troop meetings, troop outings and summer camps, And so this chapter is all about those really basic elements in the scouting program and how to make them extraordinary. We put a lot of energy and a lot of time into preparing ourselves for a high-adventure. We promote it.

It's a very special thing, but why isn't everything we do getting that same kind of attention and that same kind of emphasis on excellence? I'm making it something really, really great, Especially troop meetings- and I talk in here about the idea of a trap game in college basketball, which is that game that you're not supposed to lose but that you do lose because you don't give it the attention it deserves. And I really think that troop meetings are our trap games. We don't put a lot of attention into them. They're sort of haphazard, slap together, boring, They don't accomplish their goals and they don't keep kids involved and interested in the program. This is one of the chapters I would share with the SPL and with the patrol leaders.

We know what it's supposed to do or supposed to be. We want that to happen, but they're running the meeting right, So it's pretty easy for it to fall short.

What we can do is both set the bar higher with the expectations and to give them a ladder. Sure, This is a great chapter. There's a lot of good, actionable, practical advice in it. I really love the idea of making everything as good as it can possibly be. Anytime you get together is a unique opportunity that's not coming back anytime And, to use another sports analogy, a lot of times when a football team goes to a really minor bowl game, the coaches will say: this is these players' Super Bowl.

And I think we should look at our day-to-day programming the same way. This is the Scouts jamboree, This is the Scouts film expedition. That's a great thought. I mean, it all really, really counts, especially when you're 10 or 12- earlier I'm fond of saying when you're 11,, 12,, 13,- you basically wake up in a new world every day. You don't necessarily remember what the last 10 scout meetings were like. You experience the one that you're in very intensely.

One of the differences between huge differences between scouting and things like soccer or sports is that it is run by the boys, And these are the things that has to happen over and over again. For And if that's not interesting, Scouts is not interesting. If it's not engaging, if it's not thrilling and wonderful and something that I really look forward to, I will probably end up finding something else to do. Years ago, BSA did some research and discovered that the number one reason Scouts left Boy Scouting was boring troop meetings. If you go back and you look at the big national survey tool, the voice of the scout. This is something that comes up perennially in just about every single one of them.

The nature of the activities that Scouts are doing on a weekly basis, how much you're really putting into that- it's just such a crucial thing. One of the things that I really like that I was able to include in here- starting on page 58, is a series of what I call meetings in a box or emergency meetings. These are troop meeting plans that a troop could put together pretty much on the spur of the moment when plan A falls through.

I think those are really good for the Scoutmaster to have in his back pocket- or, it seems, collated to have in his back pocket so that you don't default to well. Our plan didn't come together, so we'll just get everything out of the patrol boxes and wash dishes tonight, Which try nots. We had that dish washing meeting about a month ago. It's not that the dishes are not dirty. I'm sure I was quarter master. Those things are vile.

This reminds me of, geez, years ago, Cub Scout Palwell. Somebody had a bucket with a bunch of stuff and it's like: hey, den meeting, we can do it.

I think this should be shared with the PLC. They figure out these five and make two or three more, Like counts seven, Seven, okay, Yeah, They'll make it 10.. Sure, Moving on towards chapter 11, which is high adventure, which every troop should have a high adventure program. There I said it Definitely. And it doesn't have to be expensive. You don't have to travel halfway across the country.

Talk a little bit about the way that you've preached high adventure here, Mark. It starts by just defining high adventure and, like you said, emphasizing that high adventure doesn't have to be going to a national high adventure base or hiring an outfitter or something like that. It can be something that's done in the context of a regular weekend camp out, perhaps It can be something that happens as part of summer camp. But then it goes through a lot of the details of how do you put together a high adventure trip, Especially when you're doing it yourself and not going with a high adventure base or an outfitter.

How do you determine the activity, What is the planning schedule look like, and so forth. I can't really believe that anybody would read this chapter and not want to make this happen for their scouts. Like you said, Mark, earlier, what percentage of our scouts actually make it one of the high adventure bases. It's not a huge percentage. It really gets left up to us to make that experience happen for them. The next chapter is going beyond camping and talking about STEM, Nova and the fitness awards.

Why build that in Mark? Because I think a lot of people are not aware of those opportunities and I think there's another way to engage scouts who may not be interested in the advancement track. And also, as everybody knows from reading the news, STEM and fitness are major issues in our society and if we're emphasizing these within scouting, then we're maybe proving our value to families or to the community in a different way. Good overview of the program with some very specific resources called out here, too, How to build them into what you're doing now.

Yes, and I think that's very important- that we're not adding something that goes against what you're already doing in the troop, but supplementing it. And then we're into another section, right. Chapter 13 and 14 are about troop service projects and troop environmental stewardship projects, And this is a great outline for getting those into your yearly troop program. Up until this chapter was written, you would read: do three hours of service in a rank requirement. Or you would read in a merit badge requirement: do a service project for a park or something like that. You guys know what I'm talking about, but this really kind of dials in on that.

What was your goal in these couple of chapters, Mark? One of the big things I wanted to do is some stuff on page 83 that talks about transformational service projects.

I've seen so many service projects that really were just busy work where you didn't feel like the scouts were learning anything. They might not have even been accomplishing anything meaningful. Service should be something that is part of who you are as a person.

I know that in the school district that our unit serves there's senior graduation project, so a lot of these things have become institutionalized. But, Mark, you give some great advice here on how to kind of make this well. I'll use your words: the transformational aspect of service. Yeah, and you can plan projects that are fun.

Sometimes people think service projects have to be drudgery, but the project can be fun and then that encourages the scouts to want to do more projects in the future. All of that leads into in this section, talking about the Eagle project. One of the real pinch points with a lot of scouts and four a lot of scouts is that Eagle project.

So what are we looking for in this chapter, Mark? Well, I hope this gives a good overview of what. First of all, what an Eagle project is and what it isn't, because people get confused about that.

And then it walks through the planning process. You mentioned the guide to advancement, which is a great tool.

I think the other is the latest version of the service project workbook, because they've taken a lot of the detail planning out of the front end of that. You don't have to have blueprints in order to get your project proposal approved. You just have to have enough information that it can be evaluated.

Well, it makes a proposal- actually a proposal rather than a plan- Exactly, and then, once it's approved, you can get into the nitty gritty of the details. One of my main things is being the district approval, the last signature for the proposal. The things I tell scouts is that you take the skills you've learned, learn how to organize your project health community- and say I did this. There's five tests of an Eagle project and one of the fifth one is that the scout is on the path for a positive experience. One of the things consistent through the 120 pages of advancement policy is the requirements are hard enough, the way they're written. Adults are here to help.

We are not here to be obstacles. All the stuff in here are things that I have. People have asked me about. This is a great chapter, and scouters, Scoutmasters, need to know about this stuff. After I was no longer a Scoutmaster, I finally found at the back of the Eagle project workbook, which had these this information on it, Right, And it was hidden away there where all the scouts saw it, Right, It was ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, one of the simple and brilliant things about both volumes of this guide is the fact that it harmonizes a lot of disparate resources that you had the hunt down or you wouldn't have looked at it always should be on your radar to understand these things, and it certainly helps to have an understanding of them before you encounter them, Because somebody is going to ask you out of the blue.

Right, The next section, keeping scouts involved and interested. When I was first looking at this work, I saw a keeping of scouts involved and interested, and then the first chapter in that section is advanced advancement advice, and I said, wait a minute, Maybe they made a mistake, Right, Because what is this doing in this chapter?

And then I read it if I had to have a top three chapters, this is one of them. One thing that's helping people better understand why we do what we do is the guide to advancement. You collected some of that thinking in here and you really expanded on it, and it's really an excellent read.

So tell us a little bit about what you were thinking as you were putting this chapter together. Well, the first thing was to pull content from the guide to advancement that is often confused, that people need to understand, like: what is the definition of active participation?

What does a scout have to do in a leadership position to get credit? Well, and I like throughout this volume, that advancement is not a goal. Right, Advancement is a method.

It can be a personal goal for the scout to be able to support that, but how do you have advancement as just part of what you do? It's kind of the greatest hits collection out of the guide to advancement It is. If the volunteers in the troop read this chapter, they will inoculate themselves against the things that just absolutely sapple the fun out of scouting.

They will just read and understand the why behind advancement and then the mechanics of some of it. It would lighten everybody's load a great deal, Because there are parents who are all worked out about advancement too and again, you need to be able to answer these questions.

I think this allows you to put it in context. In the program, That's the stuff that happens all the time. One really important way to keep scouts involved and interested is to get advancement right, Is to have a good attitude about it and to understand why it's part of the program. The next one- this would probably be in one of my top three chapters too: working with older scouts. A lot of times newer Scoutmasters and newer adult volunteers will be working with boys who are 15,, 16, 17.. It would be the first time they've ever dealt with them.

Yes, It's a specialized approach. I remember that I come in and it's like this SPL knows more than I do Really, Because he was really good, but I'm supposed to mentor him. It's a little daunting. This is not in a negative sense, but they have a street smart when they're that age and they've been around scouting for a while. If you're a callow or you're reticent about being honest and working with them, they will strip the skin off your bones in minutes. Or if you treat them like they're 11 or 12 years old Right.

That's kind of an advantage of being a personal advantage to being a Scoutmaster is that you have the tiniest bit of preparation for your own kids when they get older. Mark, in this chapter you go into this in depth, talking about development characteristics of older scouts, talking about middle adolescents from 14 to 15 and late adolescents from 16 to 18..

What's the key takeaways here? One of the key takeaways is to remember that you're going to lose your older scouts no matter what you do, if for no other reason, because they're going to turn 18.. Your challenge or opportunity is to lose them as late as possible.

The things that we talk about under working with scouts and late adolescents are so important. You need to acknowledge the young adults they're becoming. You need to celebrate everything that they're involved in, whether it's academics or sports or dating or going to the Friday night football games. If you act like, all of those things are unimportant or less important than scouting, those kids are going to vote with their feet. I've never had an older scout- 14,, 15,, 16,, 17, 18 years old- who didn't want to continue on in scouts. Other things were happening in their life that changed the terms of what it meant to continue on in scouts.

I tried to do battle with those things at one point. You know what Those things always went When I learned to cooperate with them and to realize this person is trying to become an adult and they have lots and lots of things that they're calling on their attention and their interest. The thing that I realized at some point was none of them want to just walk away from scouts because they're not interested in it or they don't want to do it anymore. Sure, When I was scoutmaster we had three or four guys who were in our church's high school choir. If they didn't show up to sing on Sunday morning, the choir would be decimated.

So we made arrangements that a car would come back from the camp out Saturday night if they needed to sing the next morning. By making that simple adjustment, those guys stayed in. They all became Eagle Scouts.

They left the program proud of their involvement, Whereas if we had told them, well, sorry, it's my way of the highway, they wouldn't have made Eagle. They would have had a negative view of scouting for the rest of their lives. Those very practical things come out of an understanding of what's going on, what's happening in their lives and how important it is to them. Look at this chapter and you start really thinking you understand better than they do, because they really don't know. You should have a lot more experience and a lot more understanding than a 14 to 18 year old scout. We live through it, Mostly without scars.

Well, okay, scars, Scars. I talked about true personalities and one of the things about our troop is that you're never going to be the source of pressure in your life. We just don't do that. What a good thought. You're here because you want to be here, because it's fun. Nearly everybody who gets life rank gets Eagle.

There's like a handful of people in 10 years who haven't done that. So we just say, man, there's so much going on in your life And you may be the only person in those scouts lives who's not putting pressure on them. That's why it's a whole total laissez-faire approach to advancement.

So here it is, man, You can walk around it, You can jump over it. You know plenty of opportunities. Let's go camping.

The rest of your life is a little crazy right now and I understand that We will try to be the non-crazy place for you. Let's have scouting. Be the non-crazy place, That's another motto. I like it. Moving on to chapter 18. Here's another really fantastic thing that nobody knows anything about.

In a lot of ways that has been, you know, squirreled away in different resources and other parts of scouting literature. But now here it is. It's right here, working with the order of the arrow, venturing and sea scouts.

So tell us about this chapter, Mark. Many, many troop leaders think that these other groups are the enemy, That their intent on coming and sucking away all their older scouts just when they get them trained up to be youth leaders.

So what I wanted to do in this chapter was dispel that notion and talk about, as the title says, how we can work with them. For each of those programs, first of all, we go through a really detailed introduction to what they actually are.

What's the purpose of the order of the arrow, What's the history, How is it structured, What are the membership levels, How do elections work, How do governments get nominated And so forth. We talk about the OA troop representative and troop representative advisor and the OA unit of excellence award, which most Scoutmasters probably have not heard about. All of that really builds up to harnessing the power of the OA for your troop.

Now that you understand the OA, how can you leverage what the lodge is doing to benefit your troop? And then we do the same thing with venturing to the Boy Scout troop. Reading this is like the FAQ for these programs. It used to be really difficult to find answers to those questions.

But now here they are. And why are these good things rather than things to be batted away? They're a way of expanding the experience for your scouts. I really appreciate the spirit in which they're presented. Oh, this is great, because I don't know how long I spent on all this information. I'm really good at finding things on the web.

I've been doing this for 20 years professionally And it was a lot of work. So this just saved thousands of people. Day of swearing at the computer and giving up and not doing OA.

You don't swear at your computer, do you? I do, but it's for advanced visits. Yeah, The next section. I really like this section responding to special challenges. Mark, tell us a little bit about it.

Well, let me read the first paragraph of this first page, because I think this really encapsulates a frustration that I have long had with training videos and the Preview Scoutmaster Handbook. Here's what it says. Somewhere there may be a troop that looks like a Norman Rockwell painting, come to life with photogenic and perfectly uniform scouts flawlessly carrying out the Boy Scout program as Robert Ben Powell envisioned. Chances are it's not your troop.

Yes, If that troop exists, get in touch with me and I'll put you in touch with Mark so he can come and study what you're doing. It's good to know that if your troop looks like a hot mess rather than a Norman Rockwell painting, you're probably doing just fine.

We have a Boy Scout museum. Let's put that troop in. We could. It's in Irving, Texas. I've been there, Medically sealed under glass.

That is the only way it would exist, I believe. Yes, And so we talk about discipline, conflict resolution, counseling, special needs, scouts, underserved populations and then what I call special troop situations, which is the very small troop and the very new troop. The idea of discipline and conflict resolution is one that we don't have enough discussion about, and you kind of stumble into some things as you move along if you hang around long enough. But this is just a really good starting point.

Well, this is the stuff that you hope you don't need to know, and even after it happens, you hope you don't need to be good at it. Right, You actually need to be good at it before it happens. Welcome to Scoutmastership. Discipline problems or conflicts or things like that are relatively uncommon. When you encounter one, you think that, A- you're the only person who's ever encountered this particular thing before and, B, that it is some failing on your part personally, or the part of your unit or the part of the scouts.

And there really are pretty garden variety things. And understanding that first step, which I think is kind of implicit in what you read.

Mark, you know you're going to run into problems. So here's how these problems get resolved.

Hold your breath for a moment, count to 10, go through the steps here and you'll be able to resolve these things without causing any more suffering than you absolutely have to, for yourself as well as for your scouts and everyone else involved. Scouter from another troop gave me an award after just one week of summer camp for the list of things that went wrong, some of them between his and our troop. That was capped off by our commissioner puncturing a lung. Oh man, Ouch, Ouch, yeah.

Well, they're like heart attack. Luckily we had a wilderness EMT on staff, so You win the prize on that one, Walter.

Well, yeah, you know I not a prize you want, but I wish I'd had this chapter, these chapters Within the top 10 of questions that I get- are dealing with very large troops, very small troops and brand new troops, and this is very, very helpful stuff. Okay, World troops, I mean, yeah, this is- I'm sure you've picked this up from sessions of film on and just listening, because this is the stuff you can't get from somebody else because there's not a small troop around.

Or if you're rural, 500 miles to the next rural troop, Sure, We have this image in our mind- at least I do that the ideal troop is 20, 24 scouts, 3, 4 patrols, whatever the case may be. But that model is not the only model that's out there. There are lots of troops that are one patrol size. There are lots of troops that are 220 kids.

Those operate very differently and we need to understand that And there is not one acceptable model or perfect model. One of the real genius things about scouting is how adaptable it is to these different situations and just about any circumstance. But the big thing that changes is the job of the committee and the Scoutmaster. Right, For the scouts it doesn't change that much, but the Scoutmaster needs different strategies And that's one of the problems that occurs when that 10 scout troop becomes a 40 scout troop. If the adults haven't changed how they operate Right, It's going to fail. It's going to go back to the 10 scouts.

The sudden growth scenario: Yeah, I was Scoutmaster. When the large group of Weeblers joined, the scout troop had been 23 scouts. We made it 6..

So a lot of what I did as a Scoutmaster had to change for a bigger troop. The chapter on underserved populations- and it's not just what you think it might be- Talk a little bit about that, Mark.

So this starts with multicultural markets, which is what people often think, and there's a lot of good stuff in there. But it also talks about rural scouting. Once again, the essay had some really good materials out there that we never heard of.

That we were able to adapt Right. And then there's even a section on on Lone Scouts, which is still a viable program. I do hear from people who are working with Lone Scouts every once in a while. It's important to know that that exists. It certainly is a great way to serve boys and rural communities. Sons of migratory farm workers, exchange students away from the United States for a year or more.

Everybody should get the chance to have a scouting experience, and that's the way it's going to work. That's the way it's going to work. The next chapter is working with Scouts with special needs and disabilities. Yeah, most of this comes from the book that Tony made together.

Working with Scouts with special needs and disabilities, I think, is the title of that. Our oldest son has developmentally disabled. Obviously, I'm very aware of these things and the Scouts really had scattered resources about ten years ago and this has really been pulled together. This is a great chapter. We're seeing a lot more awareness of Scouts with learning disabilities, offices of spectrum, those kinds of things. You're going to see this as a Scoutmaster.

Is it going to happen? Yes, you should make sure that it happens.

Well, yes, absolutely, individual scouting plan, those kinds of things. This is a great chapter and it's again one of those things you just need to need to have a basic understanding of.

And also there's a newsletter- any free e-newsletter that you can sign up for- that we mentioned in the chapter, and there's other online resources. So this is a good starting point, but I would definitely encourage people to learn more. The last few words of this chapter are: integrating Scouts with disabilities into your troop can create challenges that require extra effort on your part. The benefits are worth it, however, for anyone involved, especially the Scouts themselves. There's never true words spoken. Having the knowledge that this will work, you can actually do it.

You're cutting yourself short if don't have a couple of differently abled Scouts involved with your troop. It's not just about serving them, it's about all the families in your troop and all of the- oh- you never want to say normal Scouts, because I've never seen one, but it's a very, very important part of the program in my book.

Well, and it's a huge thing for the other Scouts that they've learned this at a stage where they're just learning everything, that they have good models for this. You interact with them. Again, this is adult association. This is modeling. Scoutmasters need to be prepared. Scoutmaster Corps needs to be prepared to do this gracefully And to welcome.

It is, I guess, what I'm. It's not something to look at in the go.

Oh my gosh, how are we going to do this? Now you're going to do fine, uh-oh. No, it's not. No, it's a let's go.

Yeah, well, we're at the end of the chapters and then there is a really useful appendix. What's in there that we haven't seen before. Most everything that you see in there is pull from the body of the book.

So if there was a worksheet or a planner or something like that early in the book, you'll find it here. But then the other thing that's really useful is a lot of links to some other documents that are not reproduced here, as well as links to a lot of websites. We talked about Scouts with special needs and disabilities. There's a link here to the section on scoutingorg that focuses on Scouts with Disabilities- Any number of resources that will save you looking around trying to find things.

So it's great to see it all collected there. And there's a glossary, because we have Scoutspeak, so we have to understand who is a district executive anyway.

Yes, Well, Scoutmaster Corps- it's a whole new term, not the glossary, but that's okay, I didn't know. There was a special newsletter for Meribatch counselors. There you go, Counselors Compass. I signed up for everything. You learn something new every day. Yeah, All in all, my assessment of the second volume is even more positive than the first volume, if that's possible, and this is really, really key.

This is great and people are really going to appreciate this mark. Thank you for all the work that you put into it. Oh, you're welcome. I'm glad you like it. It's that good. It's good enough that it should be part of all of our training in the BSA.

Well, this is one of those things that when you see it, you go: okay, why haven't we had this before? This is great, So much like the Guide to Advancement was when it came out. Oh, this is going to solve a lot of problems. Everybody get a copy, Absolutely Now.

Well, no, In July, June, June, Late June. I have one complaint with these two volumes, and that is that they're not available digitally. Whatever pool you have with the powers that be, they could recover all the costs that they put into producing these in a couple of hours if they made them available digitally. I would gladly pay the same price for a digital version that I would for the printed article. Yeah, I'll pass that on. I'm not sure where things stand because I know that it was discussed at one point.

Yeah, Yeah, I tried the way to go. I tried the PDF on on my Kindle and it was very tiny type.

Well, it could use. Was it working? It could be very simply reformatted to take advantage of some things that are available in digital format that you can't get in, You can do that, But even just as a PDF, the one thing that I really count on with PDFs is you can search Right, Right.

I really appreciate the time you spent with us this evening, Mark, and I'm looking forward to seeing the general release of this so everybody can get a copy. Good deal, Me too. Thanks again, Walter. Oh, I know you'll make me sound smarter. That may be smart, but smarter.

Well, I hire out by the hour for that, should you need it in other areas. That sounds like a plan. Thanks very much, guys. Thank you, Good talk with you. That's the second of a two part conversation. Go back to scoutmastercgcom.

Look up podcast 317 to listen to the first half. One thing I want to make sure to mention again is that, according to Mark, the second volume of the troop leader guidebook should be in Scout shops by the end of June, And I want to highly recommend anybody involved with a scout troop, any adult volunteer involved with a scout troop- get both volumes and look at them and keep them close to him. They're excellent resources for you and your service to your scouts. I'd love to have you get in touch with me and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.