Three readers—Bob Reeder from the Grand Columbia Council in Washington State; Martha Parks from Circle 10 in Texas; and Greg Buliavac from the San Francisco Bay Area Council—all noticed in my August 30th column that I referred to the camping requirements for the foundational Boy Scout ranks as “adding up to six overnight campouts,” and […]

Dear Andy, I just read your column on the Scout program in Iraq. I can say officially that being in the same council as Captain John Green is both a pleasure and an honor. That our soldiers are attempting to re-establish the Scout program in Iraq is nothing more than phenomenal, and I especially hope […]

First, we must note the passing of a national icon… and a fine Scout and Scouter: Arthur Robert Hamilton.   Arthur Robert “Bob” Hamilton is best known as the steely-eyed saluting Scout in Norman Rockwell’s 1944 painting, “We, Too, Have a Job to Do.” This painting helped rally Scouts and their families nationwide to collect […]

This summer, I had the pleasure and honor to meet Captain John Green personally. Turned out that, quite by coincidence, we were both attending the International Scouting conference at Philmont Training Center… if you believe in “coincidence,” that is! Thanks to a huge response from readers like you, John was able to fulfill his financial […]

The main point Stanford University management professor Robert Sutton makes in his book, The No A**hole Rule, is that although some people are jerks all the time, all of us are capable of turning into insufferable martinets under the right (wrong!) conditions. One of the key initiators of what I’ll call The Jerk Syndrome is, […]

Boyoboy do I have a bunch of sharp-eyed readers! Remember that question in my last column, from a dad whose son was elected to the OA by his troop last spring but didn’t do his Ordeal and can’t do it in the fall, but there’s a bunch of Ordeal weekends running at the Scout camp […]

In my last column, Laurie Joyce, Group Adviser of the First Braidwood Scout Group in New South Wales, Australia, asked about a short movie about a patrol of Scouts who get transported back in time to B-P and the siege of Mafeking. I asked if anyone had ever heard of this and, Lo, a response! […]

Gadday from Down Under, Andy — I was a Scout Group Leader from 1989 to 1995 (I’m back at it again). Back then, I saw a movie about a patrol of Scouts (American, I think) on a hike that enters a cave and is taken back in time to Mafeking at the time of the […]

Hi Andy, I just read your July 18th column and enjoyed it as usual. About that Senior Patrol Leader who was looking for meeting ideas, the resource you referred him to—Troop Program Features—is available online at… http://www.scouting.org/BoyScouts/Resources/Troop%20Program%20Features%20Vol,-d-,%20I%20-%20III.aspx Of course, working with his Scoutmaster is the way to go, but many of our youth are so […]

Hey Andy, Is it possible to start working on my Eagle project before all of my merit badges are complete? I have all of the required ones complete except for Personal Management (I’m in the middle of the 13-week program). I’d like to get my project approved and started before summer’s over. (Scout’s Name Withheld, […]