Information just out from the Top Hands meeting, the Scouts are on track for a record number of Scouts to earn their Eagle rank award. Fantastic!

The recent issue of Scouting reported that in 2008 Scouts earned 2.3 million merit badges. The top 10 were all Eagle required, no surprise there. The top one was First Aid (103,503) then Swimming (89,580) and Environmental Science (83,845). Think about how much better a country we are for having this many youth learning these valuable skills! Think how much better we would be if more were learning these skills. Where do the youth of our country get such opportunities? How many men got exposed to their eventual avocation through work on a merit badge? When do we open this up to females too? One of the strengths of this country is that we try to empower everyone. Scouting is part of the solution.

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The Scouts now have the Handbook available for download from the Apple iTunes app store. Talk about getting with it. Kudo’s to the Scouts. I just was on the phone with my staff adviser and I could hear the excitement in his voice about some of the technology initiatives coming out of Irving, TX. Still, there’s much more that the Scouts can do. I was asking my Exec, “Can we get cell phone reception at our camps?”. He knew – yes, but spotty but we know where those spots are. It is the future. Scouting was created by responding to what kids were doing, using B-P’s “Aids to Scouting” – a book for adults, and then shaping it. Well, that “customer focus” worked then and will work know. If we, Scouts, do not change then shame on us for membership losses.

I can’t link directly from here to the Scout handbook app. I just had my 13 year-old nephew show me that I first have to download Apple’s iTune computer application and then can get into the store. See… they know. Its us old guys that have to learn.

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Scouting Magazine has started a new column called “This Old Patch”, sort of a take off on the PBS series “This old house.” Collector Kelly Williams of Krelman Co. provided them with an interesting patch, the JSP for the 1960 contingent from Yosemite Area Council, CA. Kelly just sent me an e-mail that was sent to him with the pictures below asking, tongue in cheek, if I’d seen them. Its amazing what Photoshop can do.

This is for the part of the story that shortly after this patch came out, the tree had fallen over (actually as I understand it the top came down, the tunnel remained.)

The article made mention that the tree was in Yellowstone Park which it was not.

These did cause a bit of a double-take for me but they were doctored images. Cute. 🙂

It looks like it will be an interesting column. They contacted me about some ideas and material for future columns and we’ll be helping them out. I see it as being good for the hobby as Scouting Magazine goes out to nearly a million registered Scouters. If you have some ideas for what you’d like to see, pass them on to me.

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Its now official, Detroit Area Council and Clinton Valley Council (Pontiac, MI) have now merged. The new Scout Executive is John LaRoush(sp?) the former Assistant Regional Executive from the Western Region. As I hear more, I’ll be sure to post. The council has not chosen a name yet but I’ve heard mention of “Southeast Michigan Council”, similar to there being a Southwest Michigan Council.

On a somewhat related note, our Area Director just took the position of Scout Executive for Portland, OR. We wish him well. Its been a turbulent year here.

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Robert just passed this on. From National Capital Area Council’s web-site:

National Scout Jamboree Site Selection Withdrawn

We regret to inform you that the Boy Scouts of America has decided to withdraw its interest in Goshen Scout Reservation as the permanent site for the National Scout Jamboree. The BSA identified too many potential obstacles in developing the Goshen site to its fullest and is pursuing other venues.

The National Capital Area Council will continue to support the outstanding outdoor programs offered at Goshen Scout Reservation. This process has identified many areas that offer great potential in strengthening our service to youth. Goshen Scout Reservation will continue to serve as our council’s classroom for character far into the future.

We appreciate your support during this long and interesting process.

While at pre-NOAC I heard from several of my contacts about the problems the Scouts were having getting local zoning approval for the development of Goshen. The numbered varied from different folks but what I was hearing was that about 100 community members were against the development. They like their rustic area and felt the influx of that many Scouts would disrupt their community. Actually, they may have been right in that some were saying this would be every four years but others were pointing out that once we have the camp, it would make sense to use it every year. Others have pointed out that it is not a flat area. Thus our traditional vision of a jamboree being fields of sub-camps with tent cities would need to change (and it well could IMHO.)

So, it must be back to the drawing board. I heard that everything with the West Virginia selection was proceeding and the state was/is wide-open to the development. Actually, the WV site is likely to become an eastern high adventure base.

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A seldom seen pair of patches, the first jacket patches from Chicksa Lodge 202, changed hands at the pre-NOAC TOR. As Bruce and Dave discussed in their recent ISCA article, a lot of the high-end patches are privately placed thus most in the hobby do not see them offered or know if they sold. The asking price on the pair was $10,250. They sold for a little less than this before the TOR was over.

Here’s the 202 J2 – the harder of the two. As the original owner said, “Locally these are referred to as the Prince Watkins issues.” He believes there are only six (6) of the J2’s. They are Asian embroidered and came out in the early 1970s (approximately 1972 for the J2).

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Bob Sherman, ISCA and camp patch book author, just sent us a picture of a 1936 Camp Mills patch and asked what we knew about it. We went into our archives and pulled together the following. Frankly, we had more than I remembered.

Here’s what I know.

Camp Mills was a camp of the Detroit Council, later Detroit Area Council. I don’t know if it was at a separate location or was held at Camp Brady.

By the late 1930s or early 1940s, the camp was at Charles Howell Scout Reservation. Area collectors, some of whom attended or staffed Howell Reservation remember Mills as being  the provisional camp. That is, each camp site ‘troop’ contained Scouts from several troops. The camp provided the Scoutmaster.

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I don’t know what the record is for the number of lodge items issued for a NOAC but we could shatter it. I polled many senior collectors and the consensus number is 1,500 new items or about 5 per lodge (this is counting 2-piece sets as two). Even folks who thought their lodge was not a patch whore started counting the number of pieces and came up with 5 or 7 items. The typical mass-producers were at 10 or more items. Take that against approximately 300 lodges, with some lodges not being represented, and 1,500 seems to be the target.

We’ve taken over the management and publication of the OA Blue Book so we’re heading home from pre-NOAC to see that the system can handle all of these new additions. What an undertaking.

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Late Update 8/5/09: The OA Committee confirmed at the end of NOAC that the next NOAC is 2012 at MSU. MSU could provide up to 17,000 dorm rooms. The Committee is looking for an attendance of around 9,000 for this NOAC. MSU is also a candidate for the 2015 100th anniverasary NOAC where attendance could be 15,000.

Looks like Michigan State (MSU) is the likely site for the next National Order of the Arrow Conference. The original plans had been to go back to Iowa State but ISU is re-doing a number of dorms, including demolition of existing dorms, such that they could only host 4,200 participants. Clearly not enough.

In re-opening the site selection we heard that Penn State also has a proposal in for consideration. Some of the problems though with PSU is getting there is not easy. It would be a different venue which can be interesting but, having been on the staff side of these events, ease of logistics trumps a LOT of other considerations.

MSU appears to be getting quite aggressive in their bidding. They have a team visiting this conference. They toured the pre-NOAC TOR. The TOR was such a success that they are looking at central facilities on campus. The original thought had been a field house that was two miles away from the main residential halls but now they are trying to find alternatives, and have some, that are right in the heart of where we would have the NOAC.

It appears that MSU, which were ambivalent hosts for the 2006 NOAC, got a strong message from the local community of how great it was to have the Scouts in town. Also, there is new leadership at the university that has gotten more entreprenurial and inviting. Basically they are bending over backwards from what I hear to try and get the conference.

Some might wonder why these mid-west universities. Its because of their size. These campuses typically have 35,000 – 45,000 students and were built on wide open spaces. While I am located near the University of MIchigan it just does not have the extra dorm space nor the required facilities close in to the dorms to make it an easy site.

Unfortunately we’ll be back to a 3 year gap in conferences so as to not land on a jamboree year. There’s talk of another National Indian Seminar to be held in Asheville, NC for one of the intervening years.

The decision on MSU is not final. It probably won’t be made until the December planning conference given that there’s still plenty of lead time. We shall see.

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