Scout Patch Collectors

Sunday Scouting Hot Finds Newsletter January 10, 2015

I’ll expand on one of my favorite words of wisdom from Mac McLean that some of you can relate to. Mac used to always say the people that should get the patches are the ones that attended the event. This explains why in his day (and mine) at the end of the event they would form a line and say ok everybody can go through the store again and buy 2 more or 3 more or whatever until there were none left.

Sounds like common sense except that in my lodge we have broken that rule several times and it makes for a mess. At the banquet two patches were available that were 2-3 years old. Both patches were impossible to get at the time (they wouldn’t sell them to you!) but now a few years later they are blowing them out cheap. So the new advisors are like “what are we doing with 50 of these – let’s sell them!”. It would be nice if everyone would follow Mac’s sage advice and just let the people who are there buy the patches. After all isn’t the patch supposed to commemorate that event?

I am sure many of you can relate to that story either from a council/lodge that suffers from that decision making or from a Scout group that has figured it out and does things right. Why should someone three years later have the privilege of buying a patch (in quantity) that a person who was at the event didn’t have the ability to purchase. Ok rant finished!

For fun I convinced Mac to let me record his talk last night at the banquet. I have never done that before but how many of us would love to be able to go back and have a recording of some memorable speakers sharing history? Sorta reminds me of the project that the OA did for the 100th anniversary.

CLICK HERE TO OPEN THE JANUARY 10, 2015 ISSUE OF THE SCOUTING HOT FINDS NEWSLETTER