Thursday, August 05, 2004

“The Scouter” – Simon Kenton Council Sept. 2004

Licking District Trailmarkers

From the last reports on School Night Round-Ups to the Fall Camporee/Apple Butter Days at Camp Falling Rock, there’s quite a bit to keep up with, so without any editorial blather, let’s start with:

Popcorn is Poppin’ Out All Over!

Oct. 1 to 28 is the Popcorn Sale window, but first are “Show & Deliver” sales from Sept. 20. If your unit didn’t get popcorn info at the Fall Program kickoff or Roundtable (first Tuesdays, 7:15 pm, Central Christian on Mt. Vernon Rd. in Newark!), call Mary Rose Lewis, our newest Popcorn Kernel with Tressa Kroll on the Popcorn Corps. Mary Rose can be reached at 345-1306 (home) or 345-4336 (work).

Pick-up for the “early” Show & Deliver sales is at the Alltel Building on Hopewell Drive (across from Park Lanes in Heath) Oct. 2 from 8 am to Noon. Unsold material – including broken cases this year! – can be returned Oct. 30 at Alltel from 9 to 11 am.

Orders for the Popcorn Sale in general need to be in by Oct. 28 (mark that date, Oct. 28!!), with pick-up Nov. 20 from 8 to Noon at – you guessed it! – Alltel, our good corporate partner. Bring checks to that location, dated to Dec. 6, to receive your unit’s order.

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Fall Round-Ups and School Nights

Most of you will see this after the bulk of Cub Scout registrations for the new program year are turned in; Sept. 20 is the date Bill Acklin, our Membership Chairman, and Tim Bubb, School Night Chairman, would like to have all results for units, especially Cub Packs.

Many Boy Scout units have an open house early in the school year, along with Venture Crews (Randy Crothers will be working with those 14 to 21 year old young men and women this year as they continue to grow across Licking County). Whatever your branch of Scouting, if you have new Fall registrations, we need to get them on Scouting rolls, with insurance, and receiving great membership bonuses like . . . this newspaper!

Call Bill at 344-1502 if you have results yet to report on getting “The Scouter.”

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From the Commish:

October 5 Roundtable will be devoted to Charter Renewal Training. Hopefully we’ll have all the information about the “new” on-line recharter process. I and my commissioners will be there “in force” to answer your questions. See you there.

Yours In Scouting, Mike Deeslie

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Boy Scout Leader Basic Training

If you have Boy Scout new leaders, or leaders needing training, contact Mike as noted above, or Jim Francis at 366-7677 about “BSLBT” (however you pronounce it).

Dates are held on Sept. 11 & 12, and the full weekend with outdoor experience Oct. 8, 9, & 10.

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Fall Camporee – Apple Butter Days

Nov. 5-7 is our Fall Camporee weekend, where with your registrations turned in, your popcorn sold, and your leaders trained, you and your Scouts can come and enjoy the real heart of Scouting, which is “Outing” out at Camp Falling Rock.

Saturday, Nov. 6 will offer a number of special Cub activities, and Friday through Sunday is open to Scouts and Venturers. Mike Dalton will be in touch as the District Activities Committee continues to offer great experiences for your unit program.

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Down the Trail -- A Closing Word

Some recent publications I had threatened to discuss in this space two months ago (July/August) will wait, as we have so much of immediate interest to share. But a note from the Round-Up Training: Bill Acklin and Trevor Gamble, our District Chairman, reminded all of us that, of youth eligible in Licking County for Cub Scouting, 1 in 5 or 20% are registered. Their goal this year is to get our “density” figure up to 1 in 4, or 25%.

Right along with that, may I offer that to reach that goal, we need to get as close as we can to 100% of eligible youth getting an invitation to a Scouting unit. We’ll never see anything close to 100% density, but each young person in Licking County deserves to hear about the opportunity to learn and grow through outdoor education, leadership development, and values training in the Scouting program.

Ask your local fast food joint to put on their sign for a week the date of your local “Round-Up,” send your info to your local correspondent in those free weeklies around the county, put up a sign in your place of worship or service group’s hall, and make sure to invite a child on your street and their parents to try out Scouting for themselves.

The personal invitation, in the end, is the one that matters the most.

And I invite you to share your Scouting news with me at disciple@voyager.net, or call 928-4066 and leave your info or call back contact numbers.

Jeff Gill, District PR guy and Chaplain

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Hebron Crossroads 8-08-04
by Jeff Gill
Hartford Fair -- you think of sunny skies, sudden downpours, stock barns and amusement tents, midway rides and demolition derbies.
OK, and from the Hebron Crossroads area, you think of a long, long drive, farther than it would take to get to the Ohio State Fair. But Licking County is the second largest land-area county in the state, so what do you expect?
Through next Saturday, out past Croton north of Johnstown, this "Independent" Fair, not a county fair, will host our county 4-H displays (including this area's Prime Producers booth), county entries in quilting, gardening, and pie baking. But don't call it a county fair! County champions in swine, beef, and equestrian competition will be declared: since parts of Knox and Delaware Counties participate, don't call it a county fair. This is the Hartford Fair, bub, and don't you forget it. And a proud tradition it is, too.
Last week the family was on vacation, and we got to spend a day at my own childhood county fair, the Porter County (Indiana) Fair, their 154th edition. This is one big honkin' county fair, larger than many state fairs (we were always told), with sights to see like 20 "farm scene" entries in the 4-H barn.
For all the kids entering projects from 4-H in fair judging, i can't help but mention my sister Debbie. For four years she entered a dress and a food item in the county fair, winning a "participated ribbon."
Then she won not only the county "Grand Champion" awards, but went on to the Indiana State Fair, gaining both a "Reserve Grand Champion" for her challa bread but a "Grand Champion" for the outfit she handmade.
This is cool enough for a high school kid, but my real point is that she then went on to get a PhD in apparel merchandising and interior design, became a college professor, and travelled with her work on fabric and fashion to New York, Paris, and Milan, not to mention Nazca, Peru to evaluate ancient Inca textiles from the Andes.
All because she kept on entering the county fair with her 4-H projects. From dusty fairgrounds to exotic mountaintops: it can happen, trust me! I've seen it with my own eyes.
Speaking of watching the skies, if not the mountaintops (Sunset Hill west of Hebron doesn't count), the night of August 11 & 12 offers the Perseid meteor shower. These nighttime streaks of blazing light are the last hurrahs of dust from Comet Swift-Tuttle, a regular visitor to our heavens, peeled off that ice ball around 1862, now burning up in Earth's atmosphere.
Early in the evening of Aug. 11 to the east and after 2 am the morning of Aug. 12 more to the west you should see 40 or more meteors per hour, with a few less most of the evenings leading up to those nights and just after.
Fanning out of the constellation Perseus (hence the Perseids), these dashes of light in the darkness show how the cosmos and this planet continue to trade material and influence through the long ages. Go out Wednesday night, lay out a sleeping bag to the northeast, and lie down with your head to the southwest. If you can trace the course of the Milky Way, you'll see the main track the Perseids will follow.
Hebron Christian Church is pleased to welcome the Land of Legend Barbershop Chorus, directed by John Tegtmeyer, to their worship Aug. 15 at 10:30 am. You may well have heard them already, as these men travel all over Licking County during the summers, sharing the gift of their music with congregations in communities large and small. Good to have you all in Hebron, thanks to Kent Herreman!
All of us pray that there are no further terrorist attacks in the US, and many suspect that the next one is inevitable nonetheless. With a recent increased level of alert in the financial district of New York City, i'm reminded of the remarkable monument on the very steps of the New York Stock Exchange, right under the gaze of George Washington's statue across the way marking the first inauguration of a US president.
"The Ohio Company," a stock venture organized by a Cutler, one of the families ancestral to the Dawes clan just up Route 13, is remembered where 212 years ago a group of stockbrokers began yelling at each other with strange hand motions. The hand motions are now computer trades, and the yelling is often into wireless headsets, but that marker recalls a day only recently past when the fate of adventurers and tracts of wilderness were settled by a simple exchange of stock.
May the New York Stock Exchange continue on uninterrupted, and may the carving honoring "The Ohio Company" stand unmarred for many years to come.
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church, and owner of no stock himself; if you have tips on buggy-whip futures or swampland in the Sahara, or news of local interest, call 928-4066 or e-mail disciple@voyager.net.