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Baloo's Bugle

June 2006 Cub Scout Roundtable Issue

Volume 12, Issue 11
July 2006 Theme

Theme: Red, White and Baloo
Webelos: Aquanaut & Geologist
Tiger Cub
Activities

THOUGHTFUL ITEMS FOR SCOUTERS

Thanks to Scouter Jim from Bountiful, Utah, who prepares this section of Baloo for us each month.  You can reach him at bobwhitejonz@juno.com or through the link to write Baloo on www.usscouts.org.   CD

Prayer

Cub Scout Roundtable Planning Guide

We hope to be strong not in our physical might but in our belief in and support of our freedoms, established and maintained by our Constitution.  May the symbol of our country, the red and white stripes, and blue field with white stars, continue to fly high to inspire and encourage respect and freedom for all.  May the Scouts gathered here tonight, remember, honor, and respect the symbol of our great country, our flag, Old Glory.  Amen

Farewell to a Soldier
Scouter Jim

Some time ago I attended the funeral of my Uncle, Leslie C. Jones.  He was a veteran of World War II and as such was given the honors of a veteran’s funereal.  His casket was draped with the flag of our nation.  An honor guard of his peers attended to the honors due him.  These men were all fellow veterans of World War II.  This small group of soldiers, enfeebled by age, gave tribute to a fallen comrade.  The flag was folded and presented to the widow, taps was played, and a salute of a rifle was given.  All this was done with dignity and reverence.  During this month of celebration, as we look to the great flag of our nation, let us not forget the passing generations of the wars past and those who are now giving their lives in honor and duty.  Salute the flag. Salute the soldiers. Pass it on to another generation.

Flag Makers
Baltimore Area Council

From an address delivered by Franklin K. Lane, then Secretary of the Interior, before more than 1,000 employees of the Department of the Interior on Flag Day, June 14, 1914.

This morning, as I passed into the Land Office, the Flag dropped me a most cordial salutation, and from its rippling folds I heard it say: 'Good morning, Mr Flag Maker'

'I beg your pardon, Old Glory,' I said. 'Aren't you mistaken? I am not the President of the United States, nor a member of Congress, nor even a general in the Army. I am only a government clerk.

'I greet you again, Mr. Flag Maker.' replied the cheerful voice. 'I know you well. You are the man who worked in the swelter of yesterday, straightening out the tangle of that farmer's homestead in Idaho, or perhaps you found the mistake in that Indian contract in Oklahoma, or helped to clear that patent for a hopeful inventor in New York, or pushed the opening of that new ditch in Colorado, or made that mine in Illinois more safe, or brought relief to the old soldier in Wyoming. No matter: what- ever one of these beneficent individuals you happen to be, I give you greeting. Mr. Flag Maker'

I was about to pass on, when the Flag stopped me with these words:

'Yesterday the President spoke a word that made happier the future of ten million peons in Mexico; but that act looms no larger on the Flag than the struggle which the boy in Georgia is making to win the Corn Club prize this summer. 

'Yesterday the Congress spoke a word which will open the door of Alaska; but a mother in Michigan worked from sunrise until far into the night, to give her boy an education. She, too, is making the Flag. 

'Yesterday we made a new law to prevent financial panics, and yesterday, maybe a schoolteacher in Ohio taught his first letters to a boy who will one day write a song that will give cheer to the millions of our race.  We are all making the Flag.' 

'But,' I said impatiently, 'these people were only working!' 

Then came a great shout from the Flag: 

'The work that we do is the making of the Flag.

I am not the flag; not at all. I am but its shadow.

I am whatever you make me; nothing more.

I am your belief in yourself,
your dream of what a people may become.

I am song and fear, struggle and panic, and ennobling hope.

I am the day’s work of the weakest man,
and the largest dream of the most daring.

I am the Constitution and the courts,
statutes and the statute-makers,
soldier and dreadnaught,
drayman and streetsweep,
cook, counselor and clerk.

I am the battle of yesterday and the mistake of tomorrow.

I am the mystery of the men who do, without knowing why.

I am the clutch of an idea and
the reasoned purpose of resolution.

I am no more than you believe me to be, and
I am all that you believe I can be.

I am what you make me, nothing more.

I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color,
a symbol of yourself,
a pictured suggestion of that great thing which makes this nation.

My stars and stripes are your dream and your labors.
They are bright with cheer,
brilliant with courage, and firm with faith,
because you have made them so out of your hearts.

For you are the makers of the flag and
it is well that you glory in the making.

Franklin K. Lane,
former Secretary of the Interior (1913-1920)
from an address given on Flag Day, June 14, 1914
The entire text of the speech is available at
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Plaza/7750/FlagMake.html


Quotations

Quotations contain the wisdom of the ages, and are a great source of inspiration for Cubmaster’s minutes, material for an advancement ceremony or an insightful addition to a Pack Meeting program cover.

The whole inspiration of our life as a nation flows out from the waving folds of this banner.  Author Unknown

If anyone, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him - it means just what Concord and Lexington meant; what Bunker Hill meant; which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known - the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties.  Henry Ward Beecher

There is not a thread in it but scorns self-indulgence, weakness and rapacity.  Charles Evans Hughes

I am whatever you make me, nothing more.  I am your belief in yourself, your dream of what a people may become.... I am the clutch of an idea, and the reasoned purpose of resolution.  I am no more than you believe me to be and I am all that you believe I can be.  I am whatever you make me, nothing more.  Franklin Knight Lane

When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
Joseph Rodman Drake, The American Flag

I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol of yourself, the pictured suggestion of that big thing which makes this nation.  My stars and my stripes are your dream and your labors.  They are bright with cheer, brilliant with courage, firm with faith, because you have made them so out of your heart.  For you are the makers of the flag and it is well that you glory in the making.  Franklin Knight Lane

A moth-eaten rag on a worm-eaten pole
It does not look likely to stir a man's soul,
'Tis the deeds that were done 'neath the moth-eaten rag,
When the pole was a staff, and the rag was a flag.
Sir Edward B. Hamley, 1824-1893

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  Francis Bellamy, The Youth's Companion, 8 September 1892

It is the flag just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the men whose people have been here many generations.  Henry Cabot Lodge

That piece of red, white and blue bunting means five thousand years of struggle upwards.  It is the full-grown flower of ages of fighting for liberty.  It is the century plant of human hope in bloom.  ~Alvin Owsley

Off with your hat, as the flag goes by!
And let the heart have its say;
you're man enough for a tear in your eye
that you will not wipe away.
Henry Cuyler Bunner

We take the stars from heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity, representing our liberty.  George Washington, attributed

Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Francis Scott Key, The Star-Spangled Banner

Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War.  It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant.  It means justice.  It means liberty.  It means happiness.... Every color means liberty.  Every thread means liberty.  Every star and stripe means liberty.  Henry Ward Beecher

We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.  Justice William J. Brennan, for the Majority US Supreme Court Decision, 3 July 1989

Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen?  Thomas Carlyle, "Sartor Resartus"

The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights.  It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life.  It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history.  Woodrow Wilson

It’s Just a Piece of Cloth
St. Louis Area Council

 

It's just a piece of cloth, that's all it is
Just a piece of cloth.
But when a little breeze comes along, it stirs and comes to life
And flutters and snaps in the wind, all red and white and blue....
Then you realize that no other piece of cloth could be like it.
It has your whole life wrapped up in it...
The meals you eat, the time you spend with your family,
The kind of things boys and girls learn at school,
The strange and wonderful thoughts you get in church. Those stars on it...
They make you feel just as free as the stars in the wide, wide, deep night.
And the stripes....they are the bars of blood
To any dictator who would try to change this way of life.
Just a piece of cloth, that's all it is
Until you put your soul into it and give it meaning;
Then it is the symbol of liberty and decency and fair dealing for everyone.
It is just a piece of cloth
Until we breathe life into it.
Until we make it stand for everything we believe in
And refuse to live without it.

 

 


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