Monthly Archives: May 2009

Some quick notes …

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Canoe Trip
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The canoe trip will be returning to St. Brigids between 2 and 2:30 PM today.  Keep in mind that once they arrive they have to hang the tents and get the gear unloaded.  If there is some extra time, we are going to do a quick debrief while the event is fresh in the mind of participants.

If you are a canoe trip parent and if you read this before the arrival time, call anybody else you know who has a Scout on the trip so we can get out the word.

Early word is that the trip was a total failure.  That is if you hate sunshine, warm water, soft ground and easy camping.  If you like those things, then the trip was a complete success.

Memorial Day Parade
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Thank you to:

John Caples
Patrick Foley
Ryan Woodhouse
David Kirby

who all took some time out of their weekend to march in the Memorial Day parade and take part in the ceremonies.

We also salute our brothers and their leaders from Troop 119 who had a very nice showing from the troop and helped remind people that Scouting is still alive and well in Lexington.

Help Needed
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A couple of local leaders, one of whom is Skip Irving, the first Scoutmaster of Troop 119 after it started up again after a brief hiatus, will be receiving awards at the Depot this Thursday.  I need a couple of Scouts for the Oath and Law.  It will conflict just a bit with our usual meeting, but this is an important event.  Please respond to me directly if you are interested, but do it now so I won’t panic.  :-)

-Hank Manz

Memorial Day Service

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All,

Lot of stuff going on this weekend,   canoe trip, philmont shakedowns, eagle stuff,

but if you wish to participate in the Lexington Town Memorial Day service to honor those Brave Amercan Soldiers who gave their life in the service of Our Country…………..Please show up in full Class A uniform at 9:30 AM at the town public works building parking lot at Mass Ave (next to police station).   If rain  go to cary hall.

bring water bottle, sunscreen

Thx
John W

Notes from the canoe trip

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Got a call from Meg this afternoon.  She said they got to Perkins Island around 2:30 PM with no problems.  The Scouts made camp, ate their lunch, and were off fishing, exploring, and doing what Scouts do on trips.  The weather has been perfect.

The funny thing is that early reports this morning for Lexington were that we might pick up some heavy rain with wind gusts.  We started to get that, but then the weather cleared and it was a fine day.

Quite a change from our last canoe trip to Perkins when it poured all day and all night.  Everybody still had a good time, though … as we always do.

-Hank

More on water bottles plus a note about e-mail changes

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Awhile back, before the big push really started, I wrote some notes about possible contamination when using those very popular hard plastic bottles that Scouts love.  Rather than repeat everything I said, those notes are available on our Web site in the archives although other material may be contained in the notes as well.  One of those other notes concerns summer camp which might be of interest to the parents of New Scouts.

Some of the links embedded in the notes may be stale at this point.  But the one thing which has definitely changed is that Harvard has just completed a study which indicates that a considerable amount of the main culprit, bisphenol-A or BPA, passes into the human body even when only water is in the bottle and even when that water has been in the bottle for only a very short time.

http://www.troop160lexington.com/home/2007/10/31/a-scoutmaster-minute-on-plastic-water-bottles/

http://www.troop160lexington.com/home/2008/04/26/a-scoutmaster-minute-april-22-2008/

http://www.troop160lexington.com/home/2008/07/10/scoutmaster-minute-extra-july-2-2008/

So do two things.  If you buy a water bottle of any type, make sure it is BPA-free and then encourage your son to carry water in it instead of exotic beverages.  There are other things in plastic besides BPA which are probably not good for people and carrying around acidic beverages in plastic containers can’t be good in the long run.

Here are the links to the news story and to the press release from Harvard.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/health/19536287/detail.html

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2009-releases/bpa-chemical-plastics-leach-polycarbonate-drinking-bottles-humans.html

There is one note–while a #7 is an indication of polycarbonate material, it is not an indication that the bottle contains BPA.  Most BPA-free bottles contain a note of some sort to that effect, however.

E-mail Changes
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If you wish to make any e-mail changes, send a note to charles -at- hatvany -dot- com. Note that I have written the address so as to confuse those who would send us SPAM.  If you send a note, use the standard form of xxxx@yyy.com.

-Hank Manz

Multiple e-mails

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Several parents have put their own address on the Scout e-mail list even though their son’s name is also on it.  I understand–you want to know what is going on and you want to be able to monitor communications.  But that means you get three e-mails instead of just one.  Let me try to talk you out of putting adult names on the Scout list unless your son doesn’t have an e-mail address.

First, adults will just about never use the Scout list all by itself.  My e-mails, for instance, go to Adults or Adults plus Scouts, almost never just to the Scouts.  The Scout list might be used alone, but almost always by another Scout for communication on advancement or an Eagle project or something like that.  So if I want to send out an e-mail just to Scouts, I will probably ask the SPL to send it.

But, you ask, how can I monitor Scout e-mails?  That brings us to:

Second, there are at least two adult names on the Scout list.  One of them is mine.  Another is John Woodhouse’s.  So even though we get multiple e-mails, we do it just to provide some monitoring.

Since starting the list how many inappropriate e-mails have I seen from Scouts?  None.  Zero.  But if we did, we would speak to the Scout about it.

-Hank Manz