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KNOTS or Not Scouting Cartoon for November
This months KNOTS cartoon takes a look and the adventures of cooking in camp! Enjoy!
Hearth and home will soon be miles behind me... Traveling again, for about two weeks. But keep on reading, and keep on writing, and I promise that when I return you'll get a direct answer from me, as always, and a column will be marching toward the USSSP website in short order! Happy trails -- Andy
By now, you've probably seen or read about the Scout who escaped a too-nosy bear while on a camp-out in Pennsylvania. He'd been trained, he said, to "play dead" when he was in New Mexico, and I'll bet he was alluding to Philmont. The adult leaders wisely made a ruckus by banging pots and pans and flashing car headlights, and good for them! The bear departed the area having seriously harmed no one. So far, so good. But then the news-media attributed this to our fortunate Scout: " In the future, though, he intends to make sure he has a pepper spray for bears, and perhaps a gun...'I know how to shoot,' he said." Now before we all go running off to use this as justification for carting along every firearm we can find--from Grandpa's plinker to some soldier-of-fortune's AR--CHECK WITH AN AUTHORITY and remember that THE BSA HAS A STANDING POLICY PROHIBITING FIREARMS at camp-outs and such. I'm told on very strong authority that the adults who created the ruckus did just the right thing, and that anything but a large caliber will have the effect of a pop-gun or, worse, merely annoy the bear (annoyed bears, I'm told, are a lot more problematic than curious bears). So, CHECK WITH AN AUTHORITY (which doesn't include me) and OBSERVE BSA POLICY. The very last thing we ever want to see as a headline is "I THOUGHT IT WAS A BEAR"!
Check out the new October 12th Column!
Happy Trails --
Andy
As of this month I've now heard from folks in 277 councils -- That's more than 90% of all councils in the BSA! I continue to be astounded by this. Here's the really scary part... It means that, at home, some folks either don't have anyone to turn to, or their home resources are non-responsive or perhaps questionable. Commissioners: GET OUT THERE! Folks need you, perhaps more than ever before. We're still dealing with myths and legends and some misguided leaders and confusion about what BSA policies really mean, but the biggest problem we see here is internal discord amongst the adult volunteers in units. This discord can be the one thing that damages the Scouting experience of the youth we're supposed to be serving perhaps more than anything else. It can rain or snow, we can get hit by tornadoes and blizzards and hurricanes and earthquakes and fires, and odds are we'll survive. But when a bunch of otherwise well-meaning adults start squabbling among themselves about who's got the power and who better knuckle under, that unit's doomed! Refocus, folks! We're here for the youth we serve; it's not the other way around! Andy
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