Video post! Bugle madness!

Running with MJ

You may not know this, but I'm a really bad athlete.

This has always been the case. Last finisher at the Olympic Day races in elementary school. Actually permitted not to play volleyball in high school gym class because I was so inept. I exercise regularly, but it doesn't really make much of a difference -- I was born a klutz and will remain one.

This relates directly to today's topic: my first run for the athletics badge. See, I'm no great shakes at most athletic events, but man, running. So bad. So, so bad. A dear friend of mine (actually, several dear friends) worked for the NF Endurance Team and, as a result, I spent a little time volunteering at their marathon expo centers. This got my confidence up -- I could hang around near runners, so this meant I could become one. Right?

I signed up for the Philadelphia Distance Run and, several months before, began to train. Really, I did. I did the whole shebang -- long runs, short runs, rest days, weights, everything. But it was ultimately kind of a disaster. I finished the race, but in the throes of such tears and vomit and cursing (sorry, mom) that I swore I would never run again. (See the happy faces in that photo? Lies!)

Anyway, this is to give you context for something very, very important: while you may see this and suggest that running only a couple miles in a not-very-brief period of time isn't so bad, trust me. It is.

Now then.

As you may have figured out, I've realized that, for the athletics badge, I will indeed have to engage in some athletic activity and so, this morning, I went on my first actual run in, well, years. And know what? It wasn't that bad. This isn't to say that I'm fast, or that I went very far, but I finished up feeling pretty good. I did indeed both run and walk (which I swear is okay!), but, once again, have pity on a poor wimp.

While I was out, I noticed a huge number of cops in and around Prospect Park, and a bunch of people wearing Michael Jackson memorabilia. Somehow, I had totally missed knowing about the Spike Lee-sponsored Michael Jackson birthday party going on today. (Conveniently, I had loaded up my iPod this morning with nearly entirely old Jackson 5 songs.) Clearly, I have to stop by later.

I have a bugle.

This is going to be way harder than I thought.

Also, my neighbors are going to hate me. It sounds like I've been imitating livestock all afternoon.

New badge!

While I do believe my bugle should arrive tomorrow, I still want to get started on a new badge. I'm strongly considering the athletics badge, but there's one problem.

I'm not a 15 year old boy in 1911.

Seriously. The badge requirements are pretty unforgiving. I'd need to write an article on how to train for an athletic event, provide rules for one track and one field event, and meet some very strict physical standards. How strict? Oh good heavens.

The Handbook divides young aspirants into five weight classes: under 90 lbs, under 110 lbs, under 125 lbs, under 140 lbs, and over 140 lbs. (First, do we even need to talk about what a different time period this was? These boys were scrawny.) I will openly admit I fall into category 3. So what do I need to do?
* A running broad jump of 14 feet
* A running high jump of 4'4"
* A standing broad jump of 7'6"
* A standing high jump of 3'6"
* 9 pull ups
* A 20 yard swim in 16 seconds
* A 40 yard swim in 38 seconds
* A 50 yard dash in 7 seconds
* An eight-potato race (kind of a shuttle run) in 41 seconds
* Throw an 8 lb shot put 30 feet
* Complete 13 push ups
* Climb a rope in 12 seconds
* Run a 13 second 100 yard dash

This seems absolutely impossible to me. Seriously. I'm the first to admit this, but I'm kind of a klutz and kind of a wimp. (Also, as previously mentioned, a teenage boy and I are totally different animals.)

So what do you think? What physical fitness standards should I shoot for? I've been considering the APFT (push ups, sit ups, and a run)? The Presidential Physical Fitness standards I missed every time when I was a kid? Something else completely? I'm completely at a loss here -- help!

Handbook book club, #1

Surprisingly enough, very little of the Handbook’s text is actually badge-related information. Rather, of the 400-odd pages, only 20 contain badge requirements. The remainder is an assortment of information about how a Scout ought to live, discourses on chivalry, and instructions for preparing frogs’ legs for a camp dinner (if frying, serve with watercress).

More than anything, the Handbook is a prescriptive document for the healthy boy of the early twentieth century — if he wants to be strong and competent, he needs little more than to follow these instructions. It’s a step-by-step guide for becoming unquestionably manly.

The first section of the Handbook deals with the history of scouting, tracing it back to King Arthur and the Crusaders, who would unquestionably (we learn) have been Boy Scouts. Interestingly, the section also gives a nod to the Civil War soldiers who kept the United States together — interesting because the Civil War, to these folks, was really a piece of living memory, no more remote than the MLK’s march on Washington to us. (I’m being completely accurate here — from the surrender at Appomattox to the 1911 publishing of the Handbook was 46 years. 1963 to 2009? You guessed it.)

The Handbook also addresses virtue — kindness to animals, faithfulness to duty, that sort of thing. The scout is directed also towards physical hardiness and instructed to sleep “with the windows of his bedroom open both summer and winter,” and to take cold baths with rough towels. This is supposed to make him better able to endure hardship, and has the added bonus of exfoliated and minimizing pores. (The Handbook actually says this last part!) (No it doesn’t.)

One more thing: a scout should always, always breathe through the nose, never the mouth. No particular reason is given, though it's something I feel quite strongly about, too.

Covered in bees!

I have a feeling you’ve been waiting for this day. Because today, I can award myself my very first badge . . . Bee Farming.

I took a trip to the slightly-further-away reaches of Brooklyn to interview John Howe, a rooftop beekeeper. Tracy in tow (again!) we visited John first for a video introduction to his beekeeping background, and then to actually check out his hives.

Did I mention that, while 1000 bees sound like a lot, they look like a hell of a lot more?

John’s been a beekeeper for the past eight years, first with three hives and later with two. A self-taught beekeeper, he coordinates the New York Beekeepers Meetup. He harvests roughly 100 pounds of honey each year from his hives (buy some here).

In the backyard, John showed me his display hive, which he takes to schools and other public functions. It’s home to roughly 1000 bees, who, like I said, are a lot more than you’d imagine. (See that box right there? There are 1000 bees inside it. Seriously.)

John also showed us his honey harvesting room, where he uses a warm knife to remove the wax caps from the combs, then places the frame — the wood or plastic piece that holds the honeycombs — into his extractor, a giant steel salad shooter of a machine, which spins off the honey for filtration. Then? Delicious, delicious honey.

By this point, fully prepared with information about honey harvesting and with a little preparation for seeing a whole lot of bees, it was time to head up to the roof for a little hands-on research.

Would it be too dorky of me to say that the hives were buzzing? Seriously, they were.

I followed John’s advice, keeping away from the fronts of the hives. He tells me that he barely wears protective gear anymore — “I’m just not afraid.”

The hives are wooden langstroth models, the kind that almost look like a chest of drawers. He also has a single polystyrene tray. I wondered if bees might have housing preferences — the old-fashioned log cabin bees vs. the new money bees. Not so. “The bees don’t seem to notice, but I don’t like the look of it.”

One more beekeeping tidbit: while I’d imagined NYC’s beekeeping ban to go back hundreds of years (it seems like a colonial type of law, doesn’t it?), John tells me it only dates back as far as the Giuliani administration. Know what other cities ban beekeeping? As far as I can tell, Ypsilanti, MI. Seriously. That may be it, kids.

(Check out this article for a more London-y take on beekeeping.)

(Oh, right, and check out the sidebar for a running tally of badges.)

(Oh right, and for Kate.)

Best trip of the year. Seriously.

Moving on through the pathfinding merit badge, things have finally started to get a little more interesting. One of the requirements I’d been kind of dreading — knowing the directions to and population of 5 neighboring towns — has turned out to be at least a little bit awesome.

Why?

Boats.

Okay, so I reflected on this for a while, and really, being able to give directions to neighboring towns isn’t all that interesting, especially since we’re talking about a requirement that would just end with me saying things like “take the train to Hoboken.” “Take the train to Jersey City.” And so forth.

Clearly, this is a requirement that’s ripe for a little tweaking and so, instead, I decided that the better route would be to find, well, routes to all five boroughs. (And yes. I live in one already. Stop looking at me like that.)

Today, I took on Staten Island. Now, I’ll admit that my only prior knowledge pretty much consisted of two things: driving across the Goethals Bridge to get to other boroughs and one particularly unflattering episode of MTV’s True Life (I can’t find the episode, but the clip here gives you the picture.) I will admit: I was wrong. I was biased, and I was wrong.

Because getting to Staten Island involves my three favorite words in the English language: Free boat ride.

Y’all, I have seen the light. The Staten Island Ferry leaves from the southern tip of Manhattan and friends, it is free free free.

Unlike other excursions so far, I even had company on today’s trip — my college roommate, Tracy, joined me. (She took one of the photos: guess which!) We met up at Whitehall Ferry Terminal and caught a 9:15 ferry to Staten Island. The harbor was busy and the sun was shining — perfect!

Also, please note that, from the water, the ferry terminal looks like a giant, gaping maw.

Once we arrived, however, we still had some exploring to do in what a sign in the terminal calls “The Borough of Parks.” We made a valiant effort to visit the Staten Island Museum (which doesn’t open until noon) and checked out the stadium for the Staten Island Yankees, who also have a Baseball Scout Wall of Fame. (Tracy and I momentarily misread this as the Boy Scout Hall of Fame and then were roundly disappointed.)

We caught our only downside on the return trip, when I tried to speak to some of the crew on the ferry. As they should have, of course, they asked the captain for permission to be interviewed, but he wasn't having it. Maybe I'm a security threat? I do look pretty tough.

The lesson? MTV lies, man. Go to Staten Island for the best $0 you can spend in the city.

Why doesn’t everyone do this all the time?

Oh look, I have a neighborhood

We've entered the really, genuinely un-writeable part of the pathfinding badge: locating things around my neighborhood. I understand where this is coming from, of course. When you were a farm boy growing up, it was intensely practical to know the locations of each doctor in a multi-mile radius. What if you got mangled in a plow? Now, however, recognizing each fire hydrant in the immediate vicinity is a little more sloggy than I'd hoped.

Requirements 5 and 6:
* Know the location of the nearest meat markets, bakeries, groceries, and drug stores.
* Know where the nearest police station, hospital, doctor, fire alarm, fire hydrant, telegraph and telephone offices, and railroad stations are.

But! The 17 ideals of scouting do inform me that one must be cheerful (in addition to thrifty, obedient, and clean). And so, off I went. Meat market accomplished days ago, there were still more locations to visit, and visit them I did. I'll spare you photographic evidence of the vast majority, but please believe me that, dude, there are a lot of drug stores.


There are also a lot of grocery stores, and since my neighborhood is exceedingly gentrified, there are a lot of grocery stores that fall into the realm of the absurd. This one, for example, featured the largest display of materials for the decoration of cakes I think I've ever seen. Man, I sound ridiculous.

There was also a great number of the more average groceries I frequent, but that sort of place was less open to my picture-taking.

In a nod to public safety, I did also visit the hospital (no, not in an emergency! emergency! way), and checked out a series of doctor's offices, as well.

Sadly, I think the telegraph and telephone offices have fallen by the wayside, along with the liveries and blacksmiths. There's a Verizon dealer on my corner, though. Does that count?

One more mark of success for the day: in my exploration, I acquired two delightful things. First, a small kefir, which was perhaps not the best choice for a walk outside on a hot day, but was still cold and tasty, and second, a copy of "Cloudsplitter," which has been on my reading list for forever. (I bought it at a stoop sale, from girl who was maybe 10 and was a hard bargain-driver. Man, I didn't dare to ask her to lower her price.) My husband wonders if I'm on a Civil War kick lately (I'm currently finishing the first volume of Shelby Foote's "The Civil War"). He may have a point.

Tomorrow, we're back into the more exciting section of pathfinding. How exciting? I'm going to Staten Island. Seriously.

Brooklyn horses

As you know, I’ve been walking the trails of Prospect Park in pursuit of the Pathfinding merit badge. Today, though, it seemed like time for me to try out something a little different than ambling around the park. Today, it was time to go for Requirement #4:

“Know in the country in the two-mile radius, approximately, the number of horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs owned on the five neighboring farms: or in a town must know in a half-mile radius what livery stables, garages and blacksmiths there are.”

As far as I can see, there’s no question that I live in a town, which frees me from making a census of my neighborhood sheep. Instead, I set out to locate and visit the livery stables, garages, and blacksmiths.

Now, the garages were the easy part. There’s an enormous number of car services, parking lots, and auto repair centers in the area (though not all of them are what you might expect — Pilates Garage offers no oil changes whatsoever, only exercise. Phooey). Regardless, expect a garage-related post later in the week.

Today’s more difficult task centered on blacksmiths and liveries.

Simply put, there aren’t any.

Once again, we’re hitting on the agricultural thrust of the 1911 handbook. Our 1911-era town would absolutely include not only one livery, but possibly several, horses being a critical part of the business of getting from one place to another. Really, in order to be fully true to the spirit of things, instead of liveries the truly loyal modern-scout (which I am, after all) ought to be seeking out car dealerships and rental facilities. After all, really, the purpose of this badge is to familiarize the scout with the things surrounding him -- how does one get from one place to another, after all? What roads are there? How might one travel them?

This is a pretty valid concern, after all. When I was first learning to drive a car (at the same age, more or less, as the boys trying to earn this badge a hundred years ago would have been), my total lack of directional awareness caused my parents no end of woe. This wasn't just me, either. My friends would call for directions to my house, though they'd been there a hundred times or more. A child won't pay attention to the way we get from one place to another, not really. Part of childhood, or part of an ideal childhood, I guess, is a certain faith in your parents. They know how to navigate the world, both metaphorically and literally. The actual mechanics of moving through the environment aren't necessary, and so they slip by us. Part of growing up, really, and putting away childish things, is that learning of how to move freely from one location to the next. Really, that's how I see the Pathfinding badge as a whole -- not only another contribution to the scouting ideal of becoming an expert woodsman, but also as a piece of encouragement towards growing up and becoming self-sufficient in whatever world in which one happens to live.

In my case, I happen to live in a world in which there are no liveries.

Well, more precisely, there aren’t any within a half mile of my house. Kensington Stables is outside the golden radius, but I paid a visit anyway. They’re located in, well, Kensington, right at the southern tip of Prospect Park. I got off the bus and followed the smell of horse (unexpected in the city), which led me right to the door of the stable. Once there, I spoke to Walker, who's worked at the stable for 18 years and owned it for 16.

“The city grew up around the stable,” he told me, when I asked about operating stables within spitting distance of the Prospect Expressway. The stable itself was built in 1930, 20 years before the highway (and 19 years after the Handbook was written!), and continues to serve mostly locals. There’s no boarding at the stables (on account of a lack of space, Walker tells me, not a lack of interest), and they offer a great number of lessons — there was a gaggle of excited little girls thronging around us while we spoke.

Most interesting, really, was the process of shoeing horses. I’ll admit that, when I arrived, I was secretly hoping to come across a stable and farrier all at once, or at least to catch a hot tip on where to find a forge. Not so much. It appears that blacksmithery, in general, has gone mobile — Kensington’s horses get shod by a blacksmith who works out of a truck. (And what trucks! This guy's blacksmithing trailer looks like an ice cream shop, slaughterhouse, and walk-in freezer all rolled into one.

Other surprising bit of information regarding horseshoeing in New York: due to various permit difficulties, most places have shifted to using a process known as “cold shoeing,” in which the farrier shapes the shoes without heating them (which I thought was a trick only doable by Superman). The forge-free process means that the farrier doesn’t have to essentially have the permits to drive a truck filled up with explosives, which comes out, ultimately, cheaper for everyone. There appears to be some internet debate regarding the merits of each type of shoeing, but Walker assures me that his horses are quite content — from what I could see, I believe him.

Also, I’ll be making these with dinner tonight. Yum.

Hey honey

Beekeeping is illegal in New York City. You didn’t know this? Me neither, though you can read all about it here. However, this hasn’t stopped dedicated apiarists, and I don’t intend it to stop me from my full-scale pursuit of the bee farming badge.

The bee farming badge seems deceptively simple. There are only two requirements:
1) Have a practical knowledge of swarming, hiving, hives, and general apiculture, including a knowledge of the use of artificial combs;
2) Describe different kinds of honey and tell from what sources gathered.

However, given the illegality of my pursuit, this could get tricky. Fortunately, there are the good folks at websites like http://www.nyc-bees.org/, where I tracked down a gentleman willing to help me out. We’ve scheduled a meeting next week — I’ll keep you all posted!

Meanwhile, I spent time today at the Union Square Greenmarket, talking to Dewayne from Tremblay Apiaries. Dewayne works with Tremblay, building their honey-harvesting materials for . . . get this . . . six hundred hives. (This means that there are something like 60 million bees. Yikes.) As far as he’s concerned, the beekeeping holds a secret message for modern society — “the bees can live, a hundred thousand in the same house, and they can all work together for a common goal.” And the honey they make? Delicious.

I’m currently enjoying a nice glass of ice water with lemon juice and some of the Tremblay Apiaries linden honey mixed in — this honey is NOT the kind I’ve gotten from regular grocery stores. It’s sweet, almost woody-tasting, and I cannot stop eating it. I tasted a very light, mild raspberry honey and a floral spring mix, too, and it’s utterly bizarre to me to see how different the varieties are. I hear buckwheat honey is delicious, but due to a bad crop on neighboring farms this year, there was none to try. Rats.

So, let’s say I have a hive of bees (I don’t), and I want ‘em to make me some more linden honey. How can I do it? I have no idea. Fortunately, this seems be because it’s impossible. “You can’t convince a flower, or a bee, or the weather to do anything,” Dewayne told me. The best you can do is put the bees — who are shockingly efficient at honey harvesting, finding the flowers with the highest sugar content first, then the next, then the next, then the next — somewhere near one of the plant varieties they might like.

One final thought on bees, this regarding artificial combs. First, I really don’t get it. I’ve been unsuccessful at finding information about artificial combs on the internet, and the folks I’ve contacted online (so far) haven’t had much to say on the subject either. This may just be because people don’t use them much — the artificial comb badge requirement may be a relic of a society eager to take ever more steps in farming technology. However , Tremblay does have one technology piece that I think is unbelievably cool. See, bees can be subject to mites, which like to nest in the hexagonal cells of the honeycomb, right up alongside the larvae. If the cells are too big and the larvae have too much wiggle room, there’s space for mites, so a good beekeeper wants to make sure his colonies all have small cells. To that end, the folks at Tremblay have plastic sheets imprinted with appropriately-sized cells imprinted on them (like this, I think), in order to give the bees a head start.

Also today, in Union Square, I was distracted by a woman from one of the many cat rescues in NYC. Someone had just dropped off something like 10 severely abused kittens, one of whom I wish I could unsee. Please, guys, stop by the NYC Humane Society site and consider throwing a few bucks their way.

Personal history fact: I’ve never been stung by a bee. Have you? Since I haven’t, does that make me magic, smelly, or just really, really lucky?

Exploration, and meat

So, um, how was your night last night? Really. That’s cool. Oh wait, I wasn’t listening because I just won an awesome bugle on ebay.

Now then.

As I’ve been spending more and more time with the handbook, I’m increasingly impressed with what an artifact of an agrarian society it is. Simple things: the agriculture badge’s request that one grows an acre of corn, the poultry farming badge’s requirement that one raise a brood of at least ten chickens, or the gardening badge’s criterion for cutting grass with a scythe.

Equally interesting is the pathfinding badge. This one is a maze of complicated steps, and it’s going to be one of my first badge projects.

Now, the first requirement is that the applicant scout must learn “every lane, by-path, and short cut for a distance of at least 2 miles in every direction around the local scouts’ headquarters in the country.” This seems like a great idea, but I’m not sure how tenable it is in New York — I’d like to point out, after all, that an absurdly huge number of people live within 2 square miles of my house.

(I found a population density estimate for my neighborhood of 68,000 people per square mile. A circle with a radius of 2 miles has an area of (roughly) 12.6 square miles, or 853,000 people. Now, of course, that circle would also contain Prospect Park, whose population (one hopes) is 0, so we’ll subtract the area of Prospect Park (585 acres, or 0.9 square miles), so there’s actually a population of (maybe) 795,600 people. But still.)

The point is, those people necessitate a whole lot of roads. So maybe learning them all is both absurd and (a little) unsafe.

I discovered for myself an alternative task. Instead, I’m going to learn all the pathways of Prospect Park.

This is actually kind of a decent task — according to at least two people I just spoke to at the Prospect Park Alliance, no one seems to know exactly how many miles of trails there are. There appear to be about 4.5 miles of paved roadways/sidewalks, and I’d estimate at least 2 times that many miles of trails (take a look at the runners’ map for more details). This would mean there are maybe 12 miles of trails in the park — this seems like enough to learn in order to qualify for the badge. Right?

So, today, I set out.

It’s a gorgeous day, and some areas of the park were absolutely absurdly beautiful — I’d never been to Prospect Park Lake, and it’s shockingly lovely.





Of course, you can’t forget that you ARE in a city.






There are also some really surprising architectural bits, like a Greek-styled pavilion which, try as I might, I can't find labeled on any maps. I'd love to know its history. Can anyone help me out? (PS: I've had these shoes for ten years. Yikes.)


On the way back, I made friends (I guess) with a woman who told me all about how Swedish and Norwegian people are the most beautiful in the world. (I’m neither. However, my husband is, so I didn’t fight too hard.)


Also, the badge requires me to know the location of all the meat markets within a 1/2 mile radius of my house. Fortunately, there’s only one. I’d never been inside before (I’ve been a vegetarian for something like ten years), but man, I’m glad I went. Gorgeous gnocchi, tons of nice bread, all kinds of good stuff. If you’re a carnivore, stop in. (The bread is extra good news! I wanted to make bruschetta the other night but couldn't find a nice-looking loaf of bread. I substituted in a pizza crust, partially baked, from a pizzeria on my block, and while the whole thing came out nicely, I really would have preferred the bread. So yay!)

It's here! It's here!

I just had a visit from the UPS woman, and she left me a great surprise!

THE BOOK!

Want to see? I bet you do. Also, you need an introduction.

This is Maisie. She can't be a boy scout because she's a girl.

This is Charlie. He can't be a boy scout because he's a cat.

Now for specifics about the book itself. I looked on eBay for an original print, but they were running in the hundreds of dollars, so instead I went for the Dover reprint of the 1911 edition (available here). It's a plump little volume, about 400 pages with a section at the end including the ads that ran in the original. (The advertisement for Peter's Chocolate, which is "absolutely the most sustaining; has the most delicious taste that always makes you want more, and does not create thirst" is far and away my favorite.)

The merit badge descriptions begin with Agriculture (which would require the cultivation of an acre of corn whose yield is 25% above "the general average") and ends with Taxidermy, for which the young person in question must "mount for a rug the pelt of some fur animal").

Coming tomorrow: how in the hell am I going to do this?

Also, in thanks to Katie for her great suggestion earlier, I do have a question for you guys: there are 57 badges (I'll list them in the comments), of which only 11 are still in service. Which one do you find the most surprising? Which one would you totally have gone for as a kid? Let me know!

So why?

You might think I would have an illustrious and triumphant personal history with scouting. It would make sense.

You would be wrong.

I was an indifferent kind of Girl Scout, moving up from the Daisies into the Brownies and the Junior Girl Scouts with little fanfare and accompanied by most of the other girls in my elementary school. I liked the crafts (at one point making a little candy cane holder out of fake fur and googly eyes that holds a cherished place in my heart as Fweep Fweep the Christmas Bat), and was a poor camper, which hardly mattered, because so was the rest of my troop. We would haul two, three, four camp stoves into the woods with us, making needlessly elaborate dinners (a Chinese-themed camping trip once involved wonton soup and stir-fried beef. In the woods. Seriously). We’d arrive at a drive-up campsite, unload the cars, cook, eat, sleep, and get up the next day and go home. I’m pretty sure my dad and I once left a father/daughter camping trip in order to avoid a hike.

Anyway, the bulk of my experience of any real, serious scouting enthusiasm comes from two sources: my father’s mid-60s Philmont belt buckle, which I wore proudly all through graduate school and which remains the coolest article of clothing I own, and my grandfather, who was once awarded a Silver Beaver (don’t laugh) and whose store sold scouting equipment of all types.

My grandfather is (at least in part) the real inspiration for this. He’s a former WW2 pilot living in Florida, and the man is a machine. He swims a half a mile every day. Two or three years ago he challenged my best friend and me to a race and won. If a lifetime of scouting did this, I want a part of it.

How about you? Were you a scout? Did you stick with it? Quit? What happened?

Up and at 'em

“A scout! He enjoys a hike through the woods more than he does a walk over the city’s streets. He can tell north or south or east or west by the ‘signs.’ He can tie a knot that will hold, he can climb a tree which seems impossible to others, he can swim a river, he can pitch a tent, he can mend a tear in his trousers, he can tell you which fruits and seeds are poisonous and which are not, he can sight nut-bearing trees at a distance; he can reef a sail or take his trick at the wheel, and can pull an oar or use paddles and sculls; he knows the stars by name and can find his way by them; he can identify birds and animals and fish and knows the ways and habitat of each.”

And it goes on from there. He is brilliant. He “possesses the quiet power that comes from knowledge.” He “would die rather than have [his honor!] stained.” Creepy, but he “can make himself known to a brother scout wherever he may be by a method which only scouts can know.”

The introduction to the 1920 Boy Scouts of America handbook. The picture they’re painting of a boy scout sounds like a woodland Jesus, Daniel Boone crossed with Mata Hari and the dog whisperer. Sadly, guys, I’m nothing like that.

I’m Emily, a late-20s NYC schoolteacher. I live a half a block from the subway in a walk-up in Brooklyn, a long way from the woods the ideal Boy Scout holds dear. I can hardly tell my right from my left, and I wouldn’t know a nut-bearing tree from a can of salted peanuts (which, I’m pretty certain, do not grow on trees). Also, I’m not a boy.

However, this is no reason not to strive for self-improvement. (Isn’t that what a good Scout would do?) In a moment of weakness, and in a search to escape my urban lifestyle, I’ve gotten my hands on a reprint of the original 1911 Boy Scout Handbook. And I’m planning to earn me some badges . . . .

Welcome aboard.