A Scoutmaster's Blog

The Star Shopper is one of our local weekly newspapers. For several years they have placed a special insert in the issue just before Scout Week that features the local troops and packs. This year was a four page spread that included Scouting units from eight communities, including Melrose. It is very well done and features several photos of Cub Scouts and Scout BSA troop.

The units would like to thank the Star Shopper for their recognition of Scouting units. We would also like to thank all the sponsors who made this insert possible.

Does a local newspaper in your community do something similar to this for Scout Week?

(Names of the Scouts have been removed from these pictures in occurrence with online youth protection policies.)

The city of Melrose once had a cable access television station. It started up in 1986 and lasted for nearly twenty five years. It closed when the city decided to keep the cable franchise fees for the general fund instead of giving them to the station for operating funds.

I saw the potential of promoting our Boy Scout Troop on this television channel almost immediately, and decided to make good use of it. I would videotape our courts of honor to air on the station. I would take a VHS video camera with me on outings to create programs to inform people what the Boy Scouts have been doing. We even created some original programming using the Scouts as actors. I joined the station’s board of directors and created Scouting related programming for over twenty years.

One of the earliest Scouting related programs was an interview with five of the adult leaders of the Melrose Scouting program. It was titled The Leaders of Scouting. It was filmed in 1988. The guests included cubmasters, assistant scoutmasters, and committee members. I was a producer for the show and thought it turned out pretty good.

After Mel TV closed its doors the city donated all the programming to the Melrose Area Historical Museum. I am now a board member of that organization. The board’s chairman and I were talking one day and thought it would be a good idea to create a Youtube channel and post some of these old programs online for the community to watch once again. With the help of Shalon we have been digitizing some of the old VHS tapes and DVDs to post online.

Six programs have been posted online so far. I am happy to report that The Leaders Of Scouting was one of the videos uploaded to the channel. If you have 90 minutes some evening and are looking for something to watch I would like to suggest you watch this video. It is an interesting look at the Scouting program of Cub Scout Pack 68 and Boy Scout Troop 68 in the 1980’s.

The YouTube channel is called Mel TV3 Revived. The video can be found at https://youtu.be/cG7bjhYGqp4

Let us know what you think of the show. Do you think we should create a new show since we are now in the 2010s?

The Melrose Chamber of Commerce sponsors a Spring Expo each year which is held at the Melrose School gymnasium. This year’s Expo was held on Saturday, April 14th. Even though the Minnesota weather was not very nice that day there was a good turnout for the event, both in Expo booths and visitors.

The parents of one of the Boy Scouts of Troop 68 had registered to have a booth for their business and asked the troop if they would also like to have a booth. Since they were both going to be there all day the troop would have the two deep leadership requirement covered. The troop was also asked to provide assistance to the people who had a booth as they brought their items into the gym at the start of the Expo and help to carry out items at the end of the Expo.

It has been 13 years since the troop has been a participant of the Melrose Expo. Our booth back then was full of Scouting memorabilia and literature. It even had a television playing videos of various troop activities. This year’s booth was more modest and was put together the night before the Expo. We included some photo albums, literature, and a couple shadow boxes of memorabilia. The booth was located in the first aisle and it did get some attention from folks as they walked by. Who knows, maybe the troop could get a new member or two to join. The best part of having a booth of course, is that it was one more way to get the Scouting program into the public eye and let people know that yes, Scouting does still exist in Melrose.

The planners of the Expo, and the people who had booths at the Expo, really appreciated having the Boy Scouts there to assist them before and after the event. The Melrose Chamber of Commerce was very impressed with the Scouts and even offered to give a $50 donation to the troop for their work. It was a great example of demonstrating that a Scout is Helpful.

Does your troop participate in local city Expos? What do they do? Leave a comment below and let us know what your Scouts have been up to in their community.

It is nearly time for Scouting Anniversary to begin. Troops and Packs around the country will be participating in the celebration. Many units will start the week by attending local religious services on Scout Sunday, February 4th.

In Central Minnesota we have a local newspaper, the Shopper, that helps support the program by including a supplement for Scout Week. This year it is a four page spread and includes pictures from 7 Cub Scout Packs and six Boy Scout Troops. Melrose Cub Scout Pack 68 and Boy Scout Troop 68 are included in the spread, of course.

We nearly did not make it this year. The troop did not have a recent photo ready to turn in. Luckily, on Saturday January 27th, the troop had an activity that allowed us to get a photo that included most of the current Scouts and adult leaders. The Cub Scout Pack also had to scramble a bit for a photo that included a fair portion of the pack membership.

Not only is it great to see this type of promotion in a local paper, but it is also great to see all the sponsors who have an ad with the spread that paid for the four pages. The packs and troops would like to give a big Scout Salute to those businesses.

Of course, in the name of youth protection, I removed the names of the Scouts before I posted the photos to this blog. You can click on the pictures for a larger view of the photos.

Does your local newspaper do anything like this to celebrate the anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America?

Scoutmasters are proud of their Scouts.  They welcome them as they come into the troop as a 10 or 11 year old, sometimes frightened, Webelos graduate from a Cub Scout Scout Pack and than watch them grow as they develop Scouting skills and become leaders within the troop. Sometimes they even acheive Scouting’s highest honor, the rank of Eagle Scout. But there are many more ways a scoutmaster becomes proud of his Scouts. Many of them come to pass after the young man leaves the troop.

On example is when a scoutmaster receives word that a former troop member does well with his chosen occupation. I have two alumni, that I know of, that now work for the Boy Scouts of America. Keith works in Texas at Boy’s Life magazine, after spending several years at Northern Star Council. When Keith moved on his position opened up and another alumni of Troop 68 applied for the job, and got it. Sergio is now a Communications Specialist at Northern Star Council.

Sergio recently posted a new video to Youtube that he created about Scouting. This video was shown at the Northern Star Council, Boy Scouts of America 2015 Annual Meeting. The name of the video is Vitamin N. You will understand after watching this three minute video.

Great job Sergio!

A long time ago, 1987 actually, I joined the board of directors for our local community access television station, Mel-TV. I was a member of the board for 20 years, many of those as the chairman. I retired from the board a few years before the City of Melrose decided to shut it down and keep the cable franchise fees in the general fund. Many people, myself included, thought this was a big mistake. After all, how many cities of our size had a community access channel that was actually being used, and used well. Citizens thought the station was a huge asset but the city council did not feel the same way.

During those 20 years I videotaped a lot of Boy Scout courts of honor and troop activities. I would edit them at the studio and they would be scheduled during the week’s programming, usually a few times. It was a fantastic way for the community to keep up with what the Scouting program offered the youth. It was a great promotional and public relations tool.

I still video record most of the troop’s courts of honor and some of the activities, even though I do not have the station available to show them any longer. I guess I just got into the habit and have not quit it yet. I do edit some of the shorter videos to use on the Melrose Scout Productions Podcast, but the bulk of it just sits on the computer or on tapes, unedited.

There are videos from summer camp, of the Watchamagumee egg drop competition, of courts of honor, and more. I would guess these files are using hundreds of gigabytes on my hard drives. I really should do something with them or just delete them, but I find I have a hard time deleting them. Some people hoard material items and fill up their house. I hoard video files and fill up my hard drives.

My goal this winter is too sit down at the computer and get serious about editing these video projects and share them with the Scouting families. I should be able to find some to share on the MSPP podcast. Maybe the local cable company would like some of the courts of honor for their local channel. I just need to sit down and start getting to work.

For the last 15 or 20 years I have been collecting videos of Scouting commercials and promotional films. I have a few dozen of them. Some of them are very good. Several not so much. A few are just plain weird. But they are interesting to watch.

At tonight’s district roundtable I plan to give away some dvd’s I created featuring many of these videos, along with a couple old training videos. I plan on giving two of these discs to the Cub Scout roundtable. The other six I will give away to lucky winners at the Boy Scout roundtable. I am also hoping to have a projection screen set up during the roundtable to show a few select videos since promoting Scouting within your home community is a theme for the evening.

Some of these videos can be seen on our troop’s website. Check them out at
http://melrosetroop68.org/videos.html

The National Capital Area Council, BSA, recently posted a new promotional video to YouTube. I thought you might enjoy watching it.