Quotes and Brief Reflections on ScoutmasterCG Archive

Oliver Wendell Holmes on Advice

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.

Oliver Wendell Holmes I take Justice Holme’s thought as a simple statement of fact rather than a derisive evaluation of the vicissitudes of youth. Note that he qualifies his statement with ‘apt’ – he is not ruling out that some young men will take advice. When we sew a leader’s patch on to our uniforms we accept a few things about working with young people. We accept that gaining any skill is more or less an exercise of trial and error.

Abraham Lincoln

Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Labor is prior to, and independent of, & capital.

Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.

Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?

The Scoutmaster by Edgar R. Guest

Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The Scoutmaster Edgar R.

Guest There isn’t any pay for you, you serve without reward, The boys who tramp the fields with you but little could afford. And yet your pay is richer far than those who toil for gold, For in a dozen different ways your service shall be told. You’ll read it in the faces of a Troop of growing boys, You’ll read it in the pleasure of a dozen manly joys, And down the distant future you will surely read it then, Emblazoned thru the service of a band of loyal men. Five years of willing labor and of brothering a Troop, Five years of trudging highways, with the Indian cry and whoop, Five years of campfires burning, not alone for pleasure’s sake, But the future generation which the boys are soon to make. They have no gold to give you, but when age comes on to you They’ll give you back the splendid things you taught them how to do They’ll give you rich contentment and a thrill of honest pride And you’ll see the nation prosper, and you’ll all be satisfied.

Worst Scout Pun Ever

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A scoutmaster and his wife were driving along a rural highway when they found the road blocked by a herd of cows that had escaped through a broken fence. The scoutmaster tried beeping his horn to scare the cattle from the pavement, but to no avail. For some reason, no sound was heard. He got out of the car, lifted the hood, and saw the problem, a loose wire, which he quickly fixed. As he got back into the car, his wife asked him if he’d had any luck. “Yep,” he replied, “beep repaired!”

Joseph Addison on Compassion, Benevolence and Humanity

Sun, 24 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief, and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

Every man’s natural weight of afflictions is still made more heavy by the envy, malice, treachery, or injustice of his neighbor. At the same time that the storm beats upon the whole species, we are falling foul upon one another. Half the misery of human life might be extinguished, would men alleviate the general curse they lie under, by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence and humanity.

The Value, The Rightness, The Truth of the Work Itself.

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. –Thomas Merton, in a letter to Jim Forest dated February 21, 1966, reproduced in The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters by Thomas Merton (W.

What's a Scout Hour?

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I posted this ‘study’ to Facebook earlier this week. The interest it created leads me to share news of research by hard-working yet little known Scouters who staff the Large Baden Collider at Philmont Scout Ranch. Some years ago Bernoulli (Harry Bernoulli, Pack 234) concluded Scout volunteers could fulfill their mission in an hour a week. This hypothesis has since been the subject of intensive study.

I was able to find the most current formula that accounts for the ages of the Scouts (younger Scouts require more time) and the influence of other volunteers. (Sc x AuN)/1000=SH Where ‘SH’ = Scout Hour, ‘Sc’=Scouts, ‘AuN’= Adjusted Unit Number The value for Sc is determined by (SoR x M) –Sa = Sc Where ‘SoR’ (Socuts on Roster) = the base number of Scouts the volunteer is directly charged with supervising, M is the multiplier determined by the type of unit (Cub Scout Packs use 10, all others use 15), ‘Sa’ is the sum of the Scouts ages. The value of AuN is determined by UN (if P then UNx2) – (1/3 AoR) =AuN Where ‘UN’ is the last two digits of the unit number (‘P’ = Pack), ‘AoR’ is adults on roster (1/3 AoR is the traditional calculation recognizing 1/3 of the available volunteers do all the work).

I'll keep this brief...

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

When someone starts with “I’ll keep this brief…” we all know what happens next. How few words can you use to get your message across? That’s the right amount. The length of what it said does not relate to the importance of what is being said. Most of the time Scouts stop listening before we are done speaking – they want the basic information and don’t really hear the rest.

Education