Beads, Badges, and Campfire fun!

The theme for series five of the cast-on podcast is Campfire fun.Now, I was a campfire girl before moving on through several levels of Girl Scouts, and many of my young weekends were spent earning badges. Ridiculous numbers of badges. I loved being faced with a variety of challenges, doing them, and then getting a really cool embroidered badge for it. (hmmm... indication of a later interest in fiber arts?) It was satisfying on numerous levels: 1) yankee mentality that sees all free time as an opportunity to be productive 2) exploring, creating, thinking, learning 3) immersing myself in a particular topic for a while and then moving on to something else 4) accumulating pretty little tokens that I could show off to others.

Fast forward oh, let's say 15 years or so, and in steps Brenda Dayne to bring it all back. On her website, you can see a list of requirements from the 1914 edition of the Campfire Manual for the HOME bead. Some of my personal favorites are the following, with my commentary, because, well, it is my blog, isn't it?

Cooking: a) Prepare a gruel, a cereal, an eggnog, and milk toast and arrange an invalid’s tray attractively. (Is this supposed to be the invalid's meal?) b) Write out a menu for three weeks suitable for a school girl who is inclined to be too stout. ("inclined to be stout"???)

Marketing: Market for one week one week on one dollar and a half per person, keeping accounts and records of menus, etc. (If only!)

Laundry: a) Do a family washing, using modern labor-saving devices if possible. (Heck, I should be getting THREE badges a week!) b) Use two agents for softening water, two soaps for different uses, two kinds of starch for different uses, two methods of bluing, and two household methods of bleaching. (you mean, I can't just divide lights and darks and be done with it?)

Housekeeping: a) Wash and wipe dishes and leave the dining room in order, after one meal a day, for two months. (Ok, make that five badges a week) b) Take care of the milk and cream from at least one cow, and see that the pails and pans are properly cleaned for two months. (um, anyone got a cow I can borrow?) c) Repack a faucet. (I'm sorry, what?) d) Install an electric bell and care for it for three months. (And again... huh?)

Baby Craft a) Know how much a baby should grow in weight each week for the first six months, in height for each month for the first year, the relation of weight to disease and vitality. (Isn't that what the Internet's for?) b) Know and describe three kinds of baby cries and what they mean. (Can I substitute Mobi sounds/behavior?)

Next up, still under the HOME bead, we have Entertainment. Because after you've planned and prepared all the household meals, cleaned the place top to bottom and cared for all the children and infirm, you are expected to provide the entertainment of the evening. This could include such fun as a) Play from memory five piano pieces of the difficulty of Schumann’s “Scenes from Childhood, or perhaps b) Commit and recite five hundred lines of standard poetry, or maybe you'd rather c) Know and tell five standard folk stories. I think I'll take d) Plan and give a pantomime entertainment