A Scoutmaster's Blog

Naguonabe Lodge 2012 NOAC patches

Several Boy Scout members and adult advisors of our Order of the Arrow Lodge, Naguonabe Lodge, attended the National Order of the Arrow Conclave (NOAC) last week. Unfortunately, I did not attend, but I heard that those who were there had a great time. Our lodge advisor, Chuck, sent me a note through Facebook that during one of the classes he attended this blog, A Scoutmaster’s Blog, was brought up as an example of blogs featuring the OA. Wow, I thought, there are some on the national level that read my blog? Cool.

Last Tuesday during our council’s roundtable meeting, I met with Dan, another adult advisor of our lodge. He had the 2012 NOAC patches with him and, of course, I bought a couple sets. Once again, they featured Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox. Once again, Paul was featured on the pocket flap patch while Babe was on the pocket patch. And once again, Babe would not be seen unless the pocket flap was raised. Somewhere along the way, Babe quit being a normal ox on our patches and became a minotaur, but that is alright with me. I am a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, after all.

What do you think of our lodge’s 2012 NOAC patches? (A larger version can be seen by clicking on the pictures.) What did your lodge’s patches look like? Maybe I should get a few more patch sets and do some trading with you.

More patches of the Naguonabe Lodge can be seen at our troop’s website: http://melrosetroop68.org/OApatches.html  .

Boy Scout patch blanket

When you have been involved in Scouting for as long as I have (over 32 years) you end up accumulating a lot of patches. Some are earned by simply attending a Scouting event. Others are earned by being on staff for an activity. Others have requirements that must be completed before being awarded. And finally, there are those that you buy just because they look cool. There is a lot of truth in the saying, “A Scout (or Scouter) will do anything for a patch.”

I probably have nearly 200 Scout related patches. For many years I stapled them to a four foot by four foot sheet of paneling and hung it on the wall. The patches were placed in rows, by year in the order I received them. I was fun to be able to view all the patches at one time. It was a colorful item used in some of the Scouting displays I would place around town during Boy Scout anniversary week in February.

Unfortunately, a few years ago, I ran out of room on the patch board. I had teased the Boy Scouts that when the board was full it would be time for me to retire from Scouting. The last patch was stapled to the board in 2005. I remained as scoutmaster (until the end of 2011) and currently serve as a committee member. I guess you could say the board really did not have any say on when I would retire from the Scout program.

I now have a problem. I have a lot more patches that need a home. I also need wall space to hang photos, art prints, and other items. It is time for the old patch board to come down off the wall, but I really have no place to store it. It may be time to do something I have wanted to do for a long time. It is time to create a patch blanket. Or two. Yep, definitely two blankets.

Several Christmases ago my sister gave me a Scout blanket as a present. A few years ago a couple Eagle Scouts gave me another Scout blanket as a gift. Last year I received a third Scout blanket at another Eagle court of honor. I guess I have enough blankets to make this work.

Tonight I began taking patches off the board and started placing them on the first blanket, which happens to be a Boy Scouts of America 100th anniversary design. I am placing more patches on it them I originally thought I would be able to place on it. I think it is going to look pretty sharp. I am far enough along to see that I will need two blankets for all the patches.

There is one major problem with my plan. I do not sew. I hate sewing. I am not good at it. And I do not plan to get good at it. I think I will use some Badge Magic to hold the patches in place and take them to a person in town has a sewing business in her home. I realize it will cost me some bucks to have this done put I think it is going to be well worth it. I plan to ask her if she can put a couple loops at the top of the blanket so that I could hang it on a wall or rod. This way I could continue to use it as part of Scouting displays.

What do you think about my first blanket? Do you have a patch blanket? I would appreciate hearing your comments.

Here is what is left on the board yet.

I finally did it! On Wednesday, after thirty years of holding the position, and after one month of retiring from that position, I pulled the Scoutmaster patch off the left sleeve of my Boy Scout uniform. I have been wearing that patch since September 1981. I think I have now been traumatized. I pulled it off myself. I should have left someone else do it. It may take months of psychiatric therapy to get over this.

A few years ago I bought a new uniform, so this was actually the third shirt on which I wore that patch. And I should mention that this was not the first Scoutmaster patch that I have worn. The first patch is still on the first uniform shirt. This was the latest uniform, with the latest patch, the one with the current meaning.

That patch did not come off easily. I had decided during my lunch break to bring my uniform to a local lady who does sewing. I stopped at home, grabbed my uniform out of the closet, and grabbed a Troop Committee patch along with a new Journey To Excellence patch. (Our troop earned the silver award this year.)

I had applied the Scoutmaster patch to the sleeve with Badge Magic adhesive. I was in a hurry so I grabbed the edge of the patch and pulled. And pulled again. And yet again. It was being stubborn. It did not want to easily come off. Either the Badge Magic was working well, or the shirt did not want to lose a trusted friend. I slowly, finally removed that round piece of cloth, leaving much of the plastic backing on the sleeve. I didn’t care, much. The new patch would cover up the mess. I grabbed everything and left the house.

I do not think I will be wearing the uniform very often anymore, but is was important for me to change the patches. I have always stressed to the Boy Scouts that they should wear they uniform correctly and proudly. I scoutmaster should set the example. Only one person in the troop should be wearing that patch and that person is no longer me.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to leave for my appointment with my therapist. He is going to help me remove the scoutmaster patches from the top of my shoes, the car windshield, my neighbor’s nose…

It has been said that Boy Scout leaders will do nearly anything for a patch. I guess I may fall into that grouping. I have been to many camporees and Scouting activities over the last three decades, and yes, I attended a few of them just to get the patch, but I have to add that I did have fun at the events. Many of the activity patches I have collected are found on a 4′ x 4′ sheet of paneling that is hanging on a wall in my basement family room.

However, the sheet was filled a few years ago and now I am looking for a different way to display them. A patch blanket quickly come to mind, but I do not like sewing. There are probably about 150 patches on the sheet of paneling and another 30 or so patches waiting for a home.

How many patches do you have? How do you store or display them? Leave a comment and let us know.

100 Days Of Scouting: Day 90.

Patches, patches, and more patches. I have quite a few patches. I have already written about my collection of 2001 National Jamboree council shoulder patches, and the collection of Order of the Arrow lodge patches. Add these two together and you may get close to how many patches are in my regular Council Shoulder Patch (CSP) collection, the subject of today’s Memorabilia Monday.

I began collecting CSP’s shortly after attending a scoutmaster training session at Philmont Scout Ranch in 1984. It was during that conference that I was introduced to the world of patch trading. Unfortunately, I did not bring along any patches to trade, but I have made an effort to bring patches to any other national event since then. Patch trading offers a great opportunity to meet people from around the country, and even from other nations.

The picture shows a small part of the collection. I am sure the collection could be much larger, but I am still a shy guy and the opportunities to trade have been few and far between. Sometimes, If I happen to drive by a council office I will stop by and but a patch or two. You could say I trade currency for a patch at those moments. I would guess that the collection currently has over 130 patches, including every Central Minnesota Council patch variation since 1980. (I think.) This does not include the Jamboree patches or Order of the Arrow patches.

Do you collect council shoulder patches? How many do you have? Do you have any that have a special place in your collection?

100 Days of Scouting: Day 56.

If you have been following me on this blog, you know I like to collect Scouting patches. On this Memorabilia Monday I would like to present my collection of Order of the Arrow lodge patches. Of course, I am not going to show the whole collection. I will highlight just a few of them.

I began collecting OA patches shortly after going through my Ordeal in the mid 1980’s. I belong to the Naguonabe Lodge of the Central Minnesota Council. Collecting patches is somewhat of a challenge for me because my lodge frowns upon trading our lodge patches. Of course, this makes them highly tradable since there are very few Scouts within the lodge that will trade them, including me. Luckily, the lodge does design special “tradable” lodge patches for special activities like National Jamborees and Conclaves.

My collection includes regular Order of the Arrow lodge patches from across the country and special National Jamboree patches from the 2001 National Jamboree. (I was the scoutmaster of one of the two council troops that attended that year.) The collection has been growing slowly. Usually, I only get to add a few patches a year. But grow it does. Someday, maybe I will have a large collection to fill a couple three ring binders. Time will tell.

100 Days of Scouting: Day 28 .

Bryan Wendell, the writer of the Bryan On Scouting blog (formally known as the Cracker Barrel) wrote an article today that I found to be quite interesting. He wrote about Memorabilia Monday. He encouraged readers to send in a picture of something from their Scouting collection along with a short description. I thought it was a great idea. I left him a comment to tell him I was going to steal his idea for my blog.

I have been collecting Scouting memorabilia for over 30 years. The collection includes Boy Scout and Cub Scout handbooks, patches, coffee mugs, novels, and plenty of other things. I thought I had enough stuff to write a Memorabilia Monday article for several weeks, so I sat down to make an outline. I came up with enough “themes” for 45 posts. That would take me through November of this year. Today will be the first post.

One of the highlights of my Scouting career was attending the 2001 National Jamboree as the scoutmaster of Troop 1417. While at the jambo, I began trading jamboree council shoulder patches, also known as csp’s. I came home with a few dozen of them and have been adding to the collection during the last nine years.

The patches are kept in a three ring binder, organized in clear pages that contain from a two to six patches each. Even the larger patches and patch sets are protected by plastic sheet protectors.

Most of the collection is made up of single patch sets, or only one or two patches from a set. I have been lucky enough over the years to add a few complete sets of csp’s from a few council contingents. It would be fun to post a picture of each patch along with this article but there are too many of them. I settled on showing a small portion of the collection. The pictures are thumbnails. Click on any one to see the larger view.

By the way, if you have any patches from the 2001 National Jamboree that you do not want any longer be sure to write me a note. I may be able to help you find a good home for them.

Do not forget to check out “Bryan On Scouting” located at http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/

I have been doing a lot of thinking about patch blankets since the last blog post. In fact, I took out my two Scouting blankets over the weekend to see if they would work. I received both blankets as gifts, one from my sister for Christmas, the other from a couple of Eagle Scouts at their court of honor.

As I looked at them I thought that if I did start sewing patches on them I would not want to cover up the center logo or the writing on the edge of the design. However, I could put quite a few patches between the logo and border. That could look pretty cool.

The next thought was that I would not want to turn both of them into a patch blanket. The one with the white frills on the edge would have to stay as a throw blanket. So, I would need another one or two if I was to put all my patches onto blankets. I began looking online and found several Scouting themed patterns that could be used as a blanket. However, I did not find the fleece pattern for these blankets any longer. I could just use a red or green surplus army blanket. But this would look much cooler.

The next thought was how would I display it when it was done. I thought a loop sewn into the top of the blanket would allow me to hang the blanket by sliding a closet rod or dowel into it, like I saw in a picture recently. Or maybe just a few small loops instead of one full length one.

My last thought was why am I making this such a tough decision? I still do not know what I should do.