GSWAC (Not a Council) Series

Every once in a while, I’ll decide to dedicate a few posts to some topic of interest to me.  Or sometimes, I have no intention of it stretching into multiple posts, but things just turn out that way.  And then sometimes my curiosity takes me down a really deep rabbit hole (and hopefully it doesn’t collapse in on me one day).  Here are the topics I’ve covered that span a few entries: 

Camp WaBak’s History

Camp WaBak is a residential camp located near Marietta, SC near the SC/NC border.  It started in 1948 and is beloved by many through the years.

Camp Mary Elizabeth’s History

Camp Mary Elizabeth is a smaller camp of 56 acres located within the Spartanburg, SC city limits.  It started in 1947 as a gift to the Spartanburg council.  After doing some research in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, I was able to put together a brief history of the camp and highlighted some of the things that make this camp special.

Cookie Memes

And where would GSWAC (Not a Council) be without cookie memes?  What’s ironic about this is that I hate cookie season.

The 2004 Revamp aka The Core Business Strategy

Since I was out of pocket in the GS world from 1989 when I earned the Gold to when I started back as a volunteer in 2010, I was curious about what had happened that caused such an upheaval back in the early 2000s known as the Core Business Strategy.  I read through a wide variety of sources and also observed and spoke with a number of people on all sorts of levels to try to piece together a picture of what happened.

Back to the Future & Membership Dues

I didn’t originally intend this to turn into a series, but it expanded into one very quickly.  This one explains why and shows how the National Board doesn’t have the authority to change the amount of annual and lifetime membership dues.  It kinda tacked on to the Lifetime Membership Dues proposal at the 2017 National Council Session.  Kinda.

This issue was settled when the National Council voted at the 2020 National Council Session to give authority to the National Board – which is what should have been done in 2008. We would have avoided a lawsuit and a decade of turmoil.

The Farthest North Council vs. GSUSA Case

Because we can’t get enough of the topic of membership dues, here’s the saga of the Farthest North lawsuit filed against GSUSA in February 2017 arguing that GSUSA/the National Board did NOT have the authority to raise dues in 2012 from $12 to $15 and then again in 2016 from $15 to $25.

VTK and You:  A Video Series

I went into full dork mode and created a series of videos showing what it looks like to use VTK from a volunteer point of view.  This is not a “how to” series.  I created it in the hopes that it will help others (cough, cough, GSUSA) see what parts of VTK can be improved and fixed.