Posts Tagged ‘Brian On Scouting’

When planning an Eagle Scout service project, you have to identify a goal, recruit a team, plan transportation, purchase materials, consider safety and plot each step. It’s a lot of work. So much, in fact, that in an ideal world the Eagle project wouldn’t be a Scout’s first experience with formal, documented project planning. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to…

Planning to teach them Traffic Safety? School them in Scholarship? Impart your insight about Inventing? Before you serve as a merit badge counselor, ask yourself three questions: 1. Am I using the latest pamphlet and requirements? You’ve heard the warning that anything posted online is there forever, right? That’s true of merit badge requirements, too. A Google search turns…

The question is tantalizing for fans of Scouting and sports: Is there a correlation between the number of Eagle Scouts in a team’s home city and that team’s odds of winning the Super Bowl? The short answer? Yes, the team with more Eagle Scouts in its hometown is more likely to win the Super Bowl than the team…

Jimmy Stewart had given acceptance speeches before — after winning an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, for example. But this one was different. This one was all about Scouting. In May 1980, inside a crowded ballroom in one of Los Angeles’ fanciest hotels, Stewart received the Los Angeles Area Council’s Distinguished Scouter Award. As a youngster, Stewart was a…

The boy who lived, come to … race? A Pinewood Derby car inspired by Harry Potter’s Nimbus 2000 broomstick has landed on a Cub Scout racetrack this season. The car is the handiwork of Henry, a Webelos from Pack 350 of the Fort Worth, Texas-based Longhorn Council. Henry will soon cross over into Boy Scouts, so this is his last…

What if just a fraction of the energy, money and attention devoted to the Super Bowl each year was channeled into a cause that helped others in need? You’d get the Souper Bowl of Caring, an annual event that mobilizes youth to fight hunger and poverty by collecting cash and food donations. If you think rallying young people…

It’s an event so popular it requires a waiting list. Once every year, Scouts get a chance to earn merit badges in classes taught by real midshipmen on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. At the STEM Merit Badge Jamboree earlier this month, midshipmen — many of whom are Eagle Scouts — led 700 Boy…

Some things just go together. Campfires and s’mores. Hiking and trail mix. The Boy Scouts of America and the outdoors. So is anyone shocked, really, to learn that a BSA member has — for the third year in a row — won the Youth category in the Outdoor Inspiration Awards? That in no way diminishes the tremendous work of Lillian…

  In real life, it takes weeks for a Pinewood Derby car kit to go from a sustainable lumber mill in Idaho to an assembly line in Indiana to your local Scout shop. But through the magic of movie editing, you can experience that whole process in just 73 seconds. Ready … set … go! Watch a Pinewood…

Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration used Scouts to provide first aid. Franklin D. Roosevelt requested Eagle Scouts for his personal honor guard. Ronald Reagan’s team invited two Boy Scouts inside on the coldest Inauguration Day ever, and Bill Clinton’s team picked an Eagle Scout to lead the Pledge of Allegiance. For more than 100 years, Boy Scouts and Explorers have performed a patriotic duty…