Good Read

I just finished reading an excellent book, Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. The book discusses in depth what it refers to as "Nature Deficit Disorder" that many of today's youth suffer from--essentially the idea that youth and families today do not spend enough time in nature.

The idea that our youth need more time outside, especially unstructured time, isn't something that should come as a surprise. Some of the surprising statistics brought up include the therapeutic effects of nature in calming ADHD youth, the increasing obesity rate despite the increase in organized sports, and the increasing distance placed between ourselves and nature.

I've commented before on my concern that families and youth do not allow themselves free time. To be constantly on the run is way too stressful to maintain long and is a big reason why so many eat less healthy as they race to eat in between activities. I greatly appreciated the idea that time outside needs to be unstructured and in less-than-manicured areas (i.e. not well-mowed grass fields).

Thinking back to elementary school I spent an awful lot of time outside in a small stand of woods next to the apartment complex we lived in building forts, catching turtles (painter turtles do bite), racing bikes and just exploring. Other times we hauled our GI Joes across the length of the complex with elaborate battles spread throughout. That was fun and allowed us to be creative and let our imagination run free. When I hit middle school, I was still outside with Scouts at least one weekend a month on campouts that had some structured activity but also allowed us to explore the land, learn to appreciate it and how to live with it. This experience more than anything built an appreciation for nature that can't be learned in a classroom, from TV or online.

Louv proposes, and I agree, that our schools and families need to take our youth outside and let them experience it for what it is. This experience will build a more robust conservation mindset in our youth than any program the Sierra Club and it ilk can produce. The idea that we are responsible for our environment and need to live within it can only come from experiencing it.

The later portion of the book describes a number of alternatives to move forward in getting our youth back into nature. Some of the ideas are more than a little idealistic including a goal of mass de-urbanization. The idea of creating more natural parks in our cities and suburbs and integrating natural education and experiences into the school curriculum are much more likely. The hardest part will be changing the mindset that many seem stuck in with the need to be busy in everything.

One of the really good chapters discussed the growing relationship between the faith communities of our country and the conservation/environmental movement. God placed man on Earth giving him dominion over all on, but also a duty to replenish it. What a perfect statement of the modern conservation movement as expressed best by many sportsman's organizations. I, as many, also find nature to be the place where I feel closest to our creator. How can one not be amazed at the beauty of nature and the stars in the night sky and not think of the majesty created? I found one quote particularly interesting: "Science is the human endeavor in which we are frequently reminded how wrong we can be. (If scientists rely only on reason, then) our work has no meaning. It needs to be placed in some spiritual context."

Overall, this book is a great read and certainly gives food for thought for any parent, educator or anyone involved in working with youth. For the Scouting movement, it really is a great rallying cry to get back to our roots in the outdoors in our programs even as we adapt them to serve a diversifying population. Take the time and read it.

Loyalty

The word won't leave my head the last few days. Of the 12 points of the Scout Law, it is the second and the one that most truly stirs my heart and my mind. Everything we do in relation to others requires a greater or smaller dose of it. Those with whom the interaction is simply random it can simply be respecting their space. On the gripping hand, though, with those we love, it is that self-sacrificing devotion to be there for the other's well being.

As a family, I feel blessed with how loyal we are to each other. Despite living in different states, we talk frequently and each have a demonstrated willingness to drop it all to help when in need. It saddens me to realize that many families don't have that bond. For me, it is one of the deepest and strongest roots that makes me who I am. Once past the wariness of a new relationship with a person or idea or even a place, it is an automatic instinct to build a degree of loyalty. The longer and more beneficial I find that relationship, the deeper the depth of the loyalty goes and the stronger the resolve to keep that faith.

For all its strength, it also is an Achilles heel, easily struck by the right blow with unexpected consequences. The knot it ties me with at times seems Gordian in its complexity when the knowledge that what needs to be done has potential to cause harm to the other party in the interest of helping.

A lack of loyalty to anyone or anything is a lack of center. If you cannot define to what you are loyal how can you stand for anything? Is there anything that such a man believes in? Can that man have hope? Loyalty implies hope for the future and faith in the present.

When I stand next to repeat the Scout Law, listen to the second point, echoed loudest.

Ungrateful?

Again, I am won over by Ben Stein's insight into our society. Check out this post from American Spectator. Too bad we're too busy whining about whether our football team won (or not, stupid Lions) to pay attention to him.

Paying for a Long September

It was a long September that seems like a blur as it rapidly fades from memory. It was my 6th September working for the Boy Scouts and felt just as long as every other one prior. The upside however is that we ended with a big win being ahead on the membership side of the house for the first time in my tenure here setting us up to be successful by year end.

The downside is that I took the hit in health. For the first time since joining the BSA, the Crohn's Disease seems to be flaring up along with some sort of strain or rip in an abdominal muscle that I have no clue how I did. I've been limping by for the past week which truly annoys me as I hate to be sidelined by my health. Of the fun events of the week with my health, a high point was the ER where I got a CAT scan for the first time which was interesting and then returned to the same hospital for an IV med the next day. If that wasn't enough, I got to spend the 3rd day having our staff meeting in a different hospital's conference room. The other high point is that the doc decided to put me on prednisone, a steroid, to put the Crohn's back in its place. I hate the stuff, especially the fun side effects which include me being much more irritable than normal (or just not as good at hiding it). 40 days of that and we'll see what the doc says. In the interim this muscle thing is annoying as well.

I wasn't the only casualty either, Brian was down for part of the week with the flu and has a season-ending injury in tearing his right ACL. The joke by Wednesday was that we were hanging a big "Out of Order" sign on our district for the moment. Our volunteers will love lifting since neither of us are doing much of that for a while.

On a more positive note, I did get to have some fun in September, even if it was all with Scouts. I went out to a camp in NW Wisconsin for an OA event that I had no responsibility whatsoever at. Fun, but the low was 23 degrees that weekend which is too darn cold for September. I also got to MC an Eagle Court of Honor for one of my adopted brothers who also happens to share my birthday. It was really long (1:45), but I was honored to be asked and I was told it was a good show. He also had the largest "shrine" that I've seen--ever.

That's enough for now. GO LIONS!

On Washington...and Freedom

Excerpt from "Vanity Wares" by Jeffery Lord on The American Spectator:
"...Washington is notoriously unable to resist the crack cocaine of the conventional wisdom and the accompanying side drug of politics as horse race. In my time alone it has been completely wrong about everything from the Soviet Union and the future of Communism to the results of abolishing welfare-as-we-knew-it, the credibility of the CIA, the electability of Ronald Reagan, the inevitability of a President Michael Dukakis and the ability of Bill Clinton to hold on to his presidency. Long before I arrived the town was busy scorning Harry Truman for the certainty of a Dewey presidency, insisted the most qualified man in America for the White House was Herbert Hoover and that isolationism was the sure-fire answer to America's problems after World War I. It thought Lincoln was a failure, Harding was a saint and that buying Alaska was a folly. To this day it believes the mass murder of millions of Southeast Asians after the Democratic Congress forced an end to American financial backing of Vietnam is some sort of triumph and that Democrats really are the party of Civil Rights instead of the perpetrators of a 150 years of slavery and segregation..."

I think this description rings true to many folks of every political viewpoint except maybe the lunatic fringe. As long as it stays there and leaves me alone (unlikely), life is good.

Another piece from the same website is "The Daring Possibility of Freedom" by Quin Hillyer. The premise of the article is that freedom is a concept counter to the idea that "government knows best" that our current politicians on left and center right seem to believe much to my personal dissatisfaction. Here is an excerpt: "First, freedom is the quintessential American political value. (Not equality, not diversity, and not any number of other trendy concepts.) Second, freedom properly defined cannot exist without firm, and firmly enforced, limitations on governmental power and scope. Third, and most controversially, the American ideals of freedom not only are not at odds with organized Judeo-Christian religion, but actually sprang directly from those religious traditions and depend on those traditions to survive and thrive...". Good piece. Of course that presupposes that as a reader you tend towards the conservative or libertarian view of the world.

Well Said

Rebuttal of a liberal viewpoint on poverty in Milwaukee by Patrick McIlheran courtesy of Charlie Sykes' blog:
"The question isn’t why we tolerate these inequities so much as why we tolerate the personal dysfunction that is behind them. I suggest it’s because what we find more intolerable would be the kind of intrusiveness into the lives of the very poor that could help them become as prosperous as most Americans are. We cannot bring ourselves to forcibly make people not become pregnant while unmarried. We will not force children to pay attention in school or, for that matter, attend school. We won’t mandate a longer time horizon, a change in personal outlook, a resulting ambition to learn a useful career at MATC.

I don’t know that we should. I do know this, though: The question of North Ave. is not how it can be that some have so much while others on the same street have so little. Rather, it is why some fail to do the fairly simple things — stay in school, delay childbearing until marriage, learn a skill to permit employment — that most Americans of every race, ancestry and neighborhood manage to do, making them middle-class and relentlessly affluent."

Amen.

NFL--Another Confirmation as America's Sport

Here's another story in the news about how the NFL is now America's sport. Shoot, even I, previously a decidedly un-sports fan, have become a football fan and play in 2 fantasy football teams and watch a lot of football, especially in HD, in the fall.

I'll post something more on the rest of what I've been up to this weekend when I have the time.