The story of the Santa hat.

This year  Iwas in the mood to have more Christmas spirit. So how do I get and show more Christmas spirit? I thought to myself. I finally decided aftera trip to Party City, I must get a Santa hat.  I have seen 100 different regular red and white  Santa hats, verying from a 1.50  to propbablly $40. I saw christmass hats with springy trees, ones with antlers and lights, even  pimp styled hats.

I decide on a moderately priced hat with real faux mink trim and ball. It cost $8.00, and it was a bit different. I was happy with my purchase.  My first trip in to the real world was two weeks before Christmas.  One of the first reactions I got was you need to retire that hat, it's dirty. I politely explained that my hat was not dirty it was just trimmed with real mink cloth.  

The next  outing was to a cub adventure camp where I helped in the kitchen. While talking with another leader he asked whether I had killed the faux mink myself. I explained that no I had acquired the cloth from a real mink who knitted for a hobby.  He decided he liked his version of the story better.  I now knew I must get a better story  for my Santa Hat.  As I am a boring ole committee chair and not an exciting cubmaster   I may have to work on this more, but here it goes the  story of my christmas hat.

I was out with my son's webelos den in the East Texas Piney Woods,  the Den leader was teaching the scouts how to identified and follow animals by their tracks and scat.  One of the boy saw some tiny little tracks that no one could identify. So we looked up  the track in one of the books we took along with us. We discovered it was a semi-rare Texas Mink.  Having read how crafty these were  I started following the tracks.  Like other mink, I knew I would have to be very careful and quiet as mink are easily spooked. After what seemed like two forever's of slowly moving  down the trail and tip toeing in between twigs setup like alarms, I came upon a river bank.  Then there I saw it, the mink was leaned back against a tree knitting  what looked to be faux mink cloth.  Being careful  to stay three quarters hidden. I moved closer  until I  thought I could grab the mink.  Taking extra time  to prepare, I swiped my hand out to grab the mink but before  I could get ahold of him he slipped out of his knitted mink coat  and used my hand as a spring board to dive into the river.  I waited and waited but I never saw it come out of the river.  So I took his little knitting and the ball of mink yarn. I made the mink's knittingt into the brim of my santa hat and used the ball of yarn for  the ball on the santa hat. Unfortunately for me I tracked a brown mink instead of a white mink, so that's why my santa hat has  brown real mink cloth  trim instead of white.

The morale of this story is if your going to be different you better have a good story to go with it.

Then again maybe I should have gone with the santa pimp hat instead.

Recharter part 2

Ok so I have gone over the roster. I know where everyone is. I have talked to the current leaders and know who wants to keep on, who is going to try something new, and who is just moving on. I have talked to the pack as a whole about  recharter approaching and what the fee's are.  We have identified a person that may fill a hole we have. 

We are moving from a for profit Charter org to a non profit charter org. I talked to the DE and I think we have covered all the bases for the Charter Org swap.

We've had one scout pay his recharter already. 

I can't get into the Recharter system until after January 1, 2009. I hope everyone out there working through recharter is doing this well. 

Life Enhanced

Last spring I went to Woodbadge, I thought about my ticket items for nearly a month between weekends.  I have items that enhance me and ones that enhance the program. I'm not struggling with  my ticket items but i'm not progressing really well either.

I recently read a post from Lonestar scouter  about Scouting being Life Enhanced.  What a great  thought!  It makes a great elevator pitch,  When some asks you what is Scouting? you turn around and say scouting is life enhanced. That gets you in the door.  You now have time to talk about what you mean by Life Enhanced.  Life enhancedto me means doing things I would do anyway but with more purpose. 

When you go to the grocery store do you as the scouter or your scout really pay attention to what is going on.  Probablly not.  I know  when my wife sends me after hamburger, buns,  and milk. I go right to those items and just grab  them. But when my wife tells me figure out a dinner for tonight, My mind kicks in. First I go to the fresh foods, Vegetables and meats, to find an inspiration. If I find an inspirational meat, I head to veggies next.  Then wrap up the meal  in picking up any remaining items. That's what scouting is supposed to do for all of the scouts.  Take life from a checklist of do this , to an adventure. 

So what does this have to do with my wood badge ticket, I should have kept my ticket items to life enhancing items. So when you finally get off to the Wood badge think about  things that you do because they are your scouting job.  Then think about how you make them life enhancing. If you need to attend roundtable, be part of roundtable.  If you need to put on a pack meeting, then Put on a packmeeting that is original. Original songs, orginal skits, original cheers, etc.  If you need to do this anyway why not do it in a way that helps you grow as a scout. 

A scouter is a scout with experience. If scouting is life enhanced, then it should enhance scouters as well.

Working in IT Versus being a Scouter.

Working in IT, MIS, Network Administration  or whatever you want to call it is very often the job of an unsung hero.  You work in a room that's loud as all get out. Alot of times in some dark closet of an office or cubicle. After years of doing this work you tend to develop some phobia of recognition. To some extent, this is a phobia of praise.  After all no one asks the IT guy to lunch, says you did a good job on making sure all our backups were done last week.  

Your asking, What does this have to do with scouting? When was the last time you told your comissioner, committee chair, advancement chair, etc. good job. These "books" positions are  the IT types of jobs of the scouting world. After a particularly good  pack meeting the  Cubmaster will get a good job at on the back.  So give them a pat on their back before they  develop a phobia of praise. 

I have noticed this phobia of recognition and praise more often in the past year.  Late last spring,  is when I first noticed it.  I was being told by several people that my DE  knew who I was.  I kept thinking how could this be. I haven't met him but 3 or 4 times.  I thought I had kept my head down and  out of site.  This really couldn't be, I was 1 volunteer out of 140 units.  

Well over time I keep putting my head up there a bit more each time.  I went to Wood Badge.  Nothing really remarkable, but It was the beginning of my search for scouting knowledge.  So wood badge made me volunteer  for roundtable staff.   Helping out here, I was invited to the meeting after the meeting. Our roundtable staff  goes  to Taco Cabana after the meeting.  This  eventually  gave me a temporary invitation  to cook at council events.  After the first cooking session I was added to the permanent list. Along the lines of the roundtable staff ticket item,I thought TDC  would be a good class to take. Well that landed me on District Training Staff.  I attended a training staff meeting, and realized I should be going to District Committee at least occasionally.  Then word leaked out that we would be redistricted.  Even more incentive to  go to District Committee.  

Each time my head  kept creeping higher, more recognizable, more chances to get praise.    This past Saturday I finally realized what I've done.  The new DE for my new district was in the training audience and introduced themselves after one of the sessions. It caught me off guard and I was quite... embarrassed. I guess that's the right word.  I think she heard my name mentioned in the training, but they also knew I was going to be in their district.  Not very long ago, I would have taken this as a sign I was a trouble maker. This time I felt praised.  The network manager in me, thought that was an unusual and awful feeling.  To the scouter it felt good, my good work and effort had been rewarded simply by  someone knowing my name. 

Take the time to praise your  IT person before they get cynical and over cautious about praise. It'll be part of doing a good turn daily, and make them warm inside.