Troop 160 Lexington

To all troop 160 adults,
Typically one of the parents per family “deals” with the boy scout stuff their son is doing.

If you are the one,  pls come to the youth protection training that will be given to adults during the 5/15 troop  meeting.,  7:30

It is essential that all adult members who interact with scouts for meetings, trips, merit badges,etc,,,,   have this training and are aware of the expected behaviors of scouts and adults who are a part of the Boy Scout Program

Your sons will receive similiar training at the 5/22/ meeting

Thx
John Woodhouse

If you are still wavering about whether to send your son to Camp Bell or Hidden Valley, I would say BOTH. But if you can go to only one, I would seriously think about Bell over Hidden Valley.

First, while the food at Hidden Valley is fine, the food at Bell is better. The move last year to non-prepackaged lunches was a fine move. Yes, you do have to cook it, but you will end up taking less time to make it yourself than you will trucking down to the dining hall for every meal as we do at Hidden Valley.

Second, you get to spend more time on each activity.

Third, you work as a patrol.

Last year it became clear to me that the First Year Program at Bell needs a tuneup. While still a good program, it is not as good as the one at Hidden Valley. Two years in a row we have hit a crowded week which caused some problems in the Brownsea area. That didn’t help matters so this year we are going to roll our own program. We are going to construct a program for Bell which gives all New Scouts who attend from Troop 160 a thorough grounding in patrol fundamentals, swimming, and first aid. We expect all New Scouts from Troop 160 who attend Bell to finish many of the requirements for Second and First Class and they will have earned Swimming merit badge to boot. In addition they will be at least well on their way to earning First Aid.

For those who attended Bell last year for the first time, the first year at camp is always tough. If you attend this year, though, you will have already solved the problems which seemed so difficult last year, leaving you plenty of time for full concentration on half and full-day programs. Where else can you learn about horses, participate in a logging camp, live like a Mountain Man, or learn basic blacksmithing? The answer is only at Camp Bell.

So if you are wavering at all, and if you can go to camp for just one week, think hard about going to Camp Bell.

One last thing–if money is an issue, it shouldn’t be. Get in touch with the financial aid person and let us help out. That’s a major reason we run the Pancake Breakfast–so finances won’t be a problem where Scouting is concerned. You can e-mail financial aid at 160financialaid -at- troop160 -dot- com. Use the standard address form, replacing the “-dot-” with “.” and the “-at-” with “@”. We list it the way we do to fool SPAMmers. All correspondence is absolutely confidential. There is no huge committee. There are no lists passed around. No long forms to fill out. Just let the financial aid person know.

-Hank

Quick Calendar — see the complete calendar on the Web site

Date Event Location Time
==============================================
April 25-26 In-House JLT RFK Refer to SPL e-mail
Sleepover for those who can

May 1 FOCL Book Sale help Library 4:45 PM

May 1 Troop 160 PLC Library 6:15 PM (note place!!!)

Quick Look at Adult Help Needed

April 25-26 Need at least one adult to sleep over at RFK. I will be there as well.

May 1 Need a couple of adults to walk back to RFK from Library with Scouts.

Friends of Cary Library Book Sale

FOCL helps the Library in many ways. One of them is their twice-yearly gently used book sale. Our part is to help move the books from storage to the sale area.

FOCL loves Scouts because the work you do makes it possible for them to donate roughly $8,000 for new materials. Those new Manga books for teenagers? Those came from the sale money. Additions to the Children’s Library? Sale money.

Of course everybody gets service hours, but you also get the satisfaction of knowing you are directly helping Cary Library maintain services in a time of very tight budgets.

The next opportunity will be on Thursday, May 1st–the first meeting after school vacation and the same night as the Troop 160 PLC. We will start at 4:45 PM for those who can make it that early, but come whenever you can. There will be the usual free pizza and soft drinks which you can (gasp) eat in the Library. Starting at 6:15 PM some of us will break for the PLC while those not in the PLC will finish the move. That means that the Troop 160 PLC will be at the Library this month, not at RFK Hall.

Once we are finished we will all walk to the Scout meeting.

Troop 119 is invited to share the work and the pizza. Adults can help as well and we will need at least a couple of adults to help with the walk back to the meeting.

In-House JLT

This coming weekend. The SPL has sent out an e-mail about it. Note that it starts on Friday and concludes Saturday morning. The SPL’s note will outline who should be there. For those who attend, you get to wear the TRAINED patch.

This is an overnight event.

We need JASM help as always and I need at least one adult willing to sleep over at RFK.

A light breakfast will be provided.

An Update On Water Bottles

A few months ago I sent an e-mail about plastic water bottles, including the very popular Nalgene hard plastic type which is available in many bright colors. My earlier e-mail is on the troop Web site should you care to re-read it. That e-mail contains a few links to other material on the issue.

Basically, there are questions about certain types of plastic. While my age group appears to be relatively safe, younger users may be at risk. As I said in my earlier communication, the data which currently exists is open to some interpretation. The report can be read at:
http://cerhr.niehs.nih.gov/chemicals/bisphenol/BPADraftBriefVF_04_14_08.pdf

It should be noted that this is a draft report which has not yet been subjected to public comment and peer review. When reading the report, you will come across some measurements which may need some explaining. I quote from an e-mail on the subject I got from Mike Ames:

Toxicologists express doses as an intake rate normalized to body weight. The standard unit (seen in Tables 1 and 2) is micrograms of chemical intake per kilogram body weight per day (ug/kg-d). By normalizing the doses to body weights makes it is easier to use results from animal studies to predict potential human effects.

The concentrations of BPA shown in Tables 2 and 3 are in units of micrograms per liter, which, on a rough weight basis, may be expressed as the unitless term parts per billion parts (ppb). A frequent analogy for a ppb is that 1 ppb is equivalent to one half-teaspoon of
contaminant (2.5 mL) in an Olympic size pool of water (2×25x50 meters).
The fact that many compounds can now commonly be found in human or other environmental samples is partly related to the really low detection limits that can be achieved with modern analytical chemistry. Zero just keeps getting smaller.

However, concern has risen to the point that several chains are pulling hard Nalges from their shelves and there is at least a hint that Nalge Nunc, the manufacturer, will phase out the bottles. The questions about hard plastic bottles has now bubbled over into other areas such as baby bottles and the linings of food and drink cans.

All is not lost. Nalge Nunc has recently released a very similar bottle which is bisphenol-A (BPA) and phthalate-free. It is called the Everyday bottle. It should be hitting stores soon. Camelback already has such a bottle. You can find a comparison of Nalgene bottles at http://www.nalgenechoice.com/compare.html.

Complicating matters is the fact that a #7 designation does not automatically mean that the material used contains BPA pr phthalates. #7 is something of a catchall designation so you have to do a little research when looking at bottles. Most of the new one will say that they are BPA-free right on the bottle.

The warnings about polycarbonate bottles and BPA are not new, by the way. Sierra Club publications first published articles about potential problems in 2003.

For my own part, I have returned to the soft Nalges I used to use before I fell in love with hard Nalges. The soft models are considered to be safer than the current polycarbonate models.

Pancake Breakfast

Great effort all around. As I said in an earlier note, I realized that we have become so much a part of the day that we were listed in the official program. Pancake Breakfast with Troop 160 at St. Brigid’s. Fantastic!

I wanted to make sure that the efforts of the SPL and his Scouts were recognized. As a Scout-led troop, we expect the SPL to handle all of the Scouts. Wilson did an excellent job in getting the work assigned and done. The Scouts are really important because they are the reason we are having the breakfast to begin with and seeing them out front is a reminder to the Town just who is putting on the breakfast. Wilson–nice job!

With this year we passed an important milestone. We used to be one of the places to get breakfast. This year we became one of the events. We were listed in the official program. In a town without many places to get a real breakfast, we are an important part of what makes Patriots Day possible and we are a very important element which allows people to stay in town all day. The Chamber of Commerce loves us. As I walked up Mass Ave–well, limped would be more like it–many people stepped out to thank the troop for the breakfast. With our VIP service which was really a Working Staff service, we served police officers, both armies, the editors of both newspapers, and a number of officials including Jay Kaufman, our State Rep who always shows up at our Eagle ceremonies. The people we served are on the go from 4 AM until late in the day on Patriots Day and I know they appreciated the service.

As usual, everybody did a marvelous job. Once a year we run a restaurant and I have to say, you all did an A+ job. The one part I never get pictures of is the cleanup because by that time I am absolutely beat. For everybody who helped on the final push to break down the restaurant and clean it all up, you get an extra gold star.

The management team deserves a sustained round of applause. Franco, Charles, and Ginny get three extra gold stars!

-Hank

Dear Scouts and Scout Parents,

As the subject of this email suggests, we had a very successful Pancake Breakfast yesterday, probably surpassing anything we had in previous years. So, let’s first congratulate each other that we have done a very good job in many respects: setting up on Thurs, Sat. and Sun, and carrying out the main event on Patriots Day. I am particularly impressed with the willingness of everyone present to help in any way they could, which makes the jobs of the coordinators so much easier. Given our resources, I don’t think we could do much better than we did. So, let me highlight the morning we had, and acknowledge a number of people that gave me special help throughout the whole process.

I estimate that we served about 1500 paying customers. We also served about 60 Minutemen at 3:30 am before they went to do the re-enactment, and I think it was highly appreciated on their part. Initially I worried that this early shift could mess up our kitchen routine for the regular shifts, but it turned out to be really easy and we could do things in an almost leisurely manner. For that, I should thank those early risers who made this possible. The regular customers arrived at around 6:20 am or so, and they came like a flash flood. I could not see the end of the line for the next 90 minutes. We were running at full capacity: coffee was refilled at an astonishing rate at the mobile greeting station that seemed to make the customers not mind waiting in line for 15 minutes or more. I could hear someone asking for more pancake batter every few minutes. One server was waiting for fresh pancakes to be delivered, and the VIP table kept asking for more of everything. At one point, I saw that the line was really short and no sooner did I declare that the
kitchen crew could relax a little, the line filled up again and we were running behind in pancakes once more.

We have also served between 100 to 150 VIPs, but we were so busy we lost count of how many. For a grand total of 1700 people, this was for sure the biggest crowd we have had. Despite having food items that were at least 10% more than year 2006 (last year’s was affected by the storm), we nearly ran out of many things. With 3300 sausages and 290 lbs of pancake mix (many thousands of pancakes), we just had a handful of leftovers. We ran out of decaf coffee and hot chocolate (which was quickly replenished with a trip to Stop & Shop). We almost ran out of paper plates! However, I have not heard major complaints from the customers because once they paid, the rest of the process was smooth sailing: the serving line was superb, the pancake supply was just in time, the drinks supply line was flowing smoothly, the tables were for most part cleared quickly and set up quickly again (only one comment overheard and related to me about a table not cleaned quickly enough), and in general they were happy. Thanks go to the efficient kitchen crew despite a grill with uneven heating zones, the food and drinks serving crew, the mobile greeting teams who kept the customers  cheerful while waiting in line, the scouts who worked really hard on clearing the tables, taking out trash, mopping up wet and dirty floors, serving silverware or drinks, checking the toilets, and manning the syrup table and the cashier station.

I have to mention that this year we had at least 25% more sitting spaces (thanks go to the scouts who did the setup on Thursday), and therefore we felt understaffed in terms of enough scouts to do all those cleaning in time. As I said earlier, we were running at essentially full capacity and everyone present must have felt quite exhausted afterwards. That said, we will try making some adjustment next year so that we will have enough manpower to handle the large crowd. I like to thank the understaffed cleanup crew for a superb job of cleaning everything in the kitchen, dining area, and the toilets. I wish a few more people actually signed up for the cleanup because it would make the job so much easier and faster.

Finally, I would like to thank especially three people without whose help the event would be much less enjoyable for everyone involved.
First of all, Charles Hatvany, the ex-manager who knows everything about the event inside out, helped me with the planning, inventory checking, did all the solicitation and resulted in generous donations from, alphabetically, Dunkin Donuts (two stores), Rancatore’s Ice Cream, Stop & Shop, Roche Brothers, and Wilson Farm. Then there is Ginny Caples, the assistant manager of this event, whose calm and no-problem attitude made me less anxious as the event got closer. Not only did she help with the planning, she did most of the shopping, including last-minute search for butter pats. The third person is of course your indefatigable Scoutmaster Hank Manz. How he managed to bring more tables and chairs out of seemingly nowhere is still beyond my comprehension but that move was brilliant because he expected a huge crowd and we did get one. When you see them in our next meeting, please thank them for making the event run so much more efficiently and without serious glitches — they were there during all the setups and throughout the event from start to finish.
I have received some suggestions for improving the logistics and we will take all these helpful ideas into account for next year. Thank you. Finally, for those who missed this year’s Pancake Breakfast, you have missed out the fun and nonstop action of working together with other scouts and scout parents, seeing happy and satisfied customers, and working for the one and only one funding raising event of the troop. (You have also missed tasting the pancake burrito!) So, start make your plans to stick around for next year: it’s always on Patriots Day and it’s the Monday of Spring’s school vacation week. As of today, I will begin accept early sign up!

Thank you all for making this event go very smoothly and I look forward to seeing you next year (but please sign up early!)

Yours,
Franco Wong
2008 Pancake Breakfast Manager

As most of you are aware, our plans for a Hudson Rod and Gun Glub campout fell thru this year due to renovation/construction at the club. We have however replaced it with a camping trip to Camp Split Rock with a hike up Mt Monadnock.

Please download the flyer/permission slip for the May 17-18 Camping/Hiking Trip to the Mt Monadnock Area. Please return permission slip with payment to John Woodhouse by May 1

Also in order to gauge rough count, I would greatly appreciate a reply from each scout and each adult who thinks (or knows) they can attend

Thank you
John Woodhouse

Just a quick reminder that the summer camp payment is due the week after vacation (May 1st). You can pay early if you want. Just print the form, fill it out, write the check and send it to me. My address is on the form.

Thanks,
Jeff Shorter

Please congratulate Hank Manz on being awarded the Silver Beaver Award. This is the highest award given to a scout leader, and is for outstanding long-term service to youth. Service is measured in tens of years for this award. This is a council level award and is a very big deal. It will be awarded to Hank at the Council Dinner on May 12th. T160 has had a number of other leaders who have won this award in the past including Gerry Abegg, Paul Gilbert, Isham Peugh, and John Dreyer. We are very fortunate to have such dedicated leaders associated with the troop.

We should also congratulate Paul Gilbert for receiving the District Service Award, & John Dreyer for receiving the “Norman A. Norton Good Scout” award. These are also 2 of the highest awards given out by the district. They will receive these awards at the Flintlock District Dinner on April 29th.

Be sure to congratulate Hank, Paul, and John when you see them.

Best regards,
Steve Silva

Troop 119 Gini Shevrin brought us this news…

The Boston Minuteman Council’s Flintlock District honors several scouters each year in the spring. This year’s honorees include several people with ties to Troop 119 and Troop 160.

Bernie Gunther, Scoutmaster of Troop 119, is the Flintlock Boy Scout Leader of the Year

Troop 119’s Gini Shevrin and Craig Weeks are each recieving a District Service Award, as is Paul Gilbert from Troop 160.

John Dreyer , known to many of us as the Chartered Organization Rep from Troop 160 and Pack 160, as well as the District Commissioner, is recieving the coveted “Norman A Norton Good Scout” Award.

These people will be honored at the District dinner to be held on Tuesday, April 29 at the Winchester Country Club. If you are interested in attending, click here to register for the dinner.

Youth are welcome to attend as well, at a slight discount. Pricing and details are to be found by following the above link.

For a complete list of honorees for the district: Continue reading ‘Flintlock honors Troop 119 and Troop 160 Scouters’

Hi everyone,

We have a need for an adult to fill the following position:

Youth Protection Training Assistant - we are looking for someone to assist Charles Hatvany with the upcoming youth protection training that will be taking place in May.  Charles has been leading this training for some time now, and he is looking for someone who can assist him with the upcoming training sessions.

Please let me know if you are interested in helping out with this position.

Thanks,

Margaret Stebbins
781-652-0183