Impressions by Heidi

I’ve been a Girl Scout leader for several years now, and was a Girl Scout a couple of years when I was a kid. I’ve seen some great things come out of the Girl Scout program — it truly offers experiences that girls often don’t get elsewhere.

The program has always been designed to build skills, friendships, sense of responsibility, citizenship and leadership. Many of the activities are centered around badges and other awards, though not all. Girls are encouraged to find project and complete major awards also, the “biggest” being the Gold award which is pretty much equivalent of the more familiar Boy Scout Eagle Award.

This year, though, Girl Scouts has made some changes that have made many of us wonder. Some are concerned about the New Age direction the program has taken — turning away from a traditional belief in God to more holistic beliefs.

I am more concerned with the hands-on of the program. I’ve reviewed a lot of material on the Girl Scouts of the USA Web site as well as the printed material for the 1st Journey, It’s Your World, Change It. It seems the Girl Scouts have given in to the warm and fuzzy “feel good” of modern society forgetting that we “feel good” about ourselves — develop true self esteem — when we learn new skills and reach concrete goals.

And somehow, in all of this, the girls learn to lead. Not top down lead, but make everyone happy and feel good while working as a group toward world peace lead.

Journeys and the New Girl Scout Leadership Experience are anything but. The program materials are biased toward liberal, socialistic, lesbian, and / or minority women. In the Junior (4th and 5th grade girls) book, Agent of Change, GSUSA presents several women from history — oh, excuse me Herstory — as role models. I can’t complain that any of the women are unworthy. Each and every one is! Not one, however, is white! Could they not find one white woman to uphold as a role model? Let’s think . . . the founder of Girl Scouts, Juliet Gordon Lowe? Or maybe Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Earhart, or, well you get the idea. I’m not looking to exclude, just balance.

Juniors earn the first of 3 awards, the Power of One, learning about themselves. I spent 3 meetings with my girls picking qualities from the Girl Scout promise we want to develop in ourselves and how we can do that and discussing how the role models live(d) the Girl Scout promise. We looked through books, journaled and wrote about our own choice for role model.

My girls had enough.

How can you expect 4th and 5th grade girls to be engaged, week after week, on that type of activity? They actually approached me and very politely asked if we could quit the Journey and return to badges.

No problem.

What did they have in store for the next few weeks if we had continued? One “active” activity — a trust-guided obstacle course — and more discussion, this time about a comic book style story in our Journey books to earn the 2nd award, the Power of Team. Then chosing, planning and carrying out some sort of service project to do with members of the community. The simple logistics of that in today’s busy world blows my mind. Never mind making it happen to earn the Power of Community.

What are they supposed to learn? They have good qualities. No one’s good qualities are better than their friends’ good qualities. They can group their good qualities together to gather more “power” and use that to motivate others in their community to do good.

OK. Sounds good. But it means very little to 10 year olds. Really.

As I worked on the Journey with the girls I kept emphasizing where we were going. The links between the lack of concrete requirements and the awards are too tenuous for them. They want to know we do x, y, z and earn something. Sitting around and talking introspectively about set their eyes rolling back in their heads. They want, no they need, to do actively in between discussions in order to maintain their focus and experience the principles behind the discussions.

Awards don’t mean anything to kids if they don’t understand, specifically, why they earned them. Awards without meaning do not build self esteem. Learning, doing, completing — that builds self esteem.

On the simple week-to-week implementation of the program, a Journey takes 6 to 8 weeks or more. It’s hard to make up sessions if a girl misses a meeting. And girls do miss. They get sick — this winter was awful — they have school work that takes precedence, they have familiy activities. Trying to do badge work or other activities during between Journey sessions breaks up the continuity.

Journeys, more specifically Agent of Change for Junior Girl Scouts is too abstract to be practical. From what I’ve seen of the other It’s Your World, Change It! and the related resources such as Transforming Leadership, the entire program is.

I am seriously disappointed with the new direction Girl Scouts is taking. All the studies, research and planning they’ve done is great. Girl Scouts needs to keep up with a changing world, but research means nothing if the resulting program fails in the implementation. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see Journeys bringing positive change to the Girl Scout program.



I was looking through my library catalog for books on astrology and Thirteen Orphans by Jane Lindskold showed up in the list. Not really what I had in mind, but it caught my attention so I grabbed it.

And I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

Thirteen Orphans centers around a few characters represented by animals from the Chinese zodiac. These people are decendants of orphans from the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice. The original 12 were exiled, and took another with them — the thirteenth orphan. Their magic and secrets are tied up in Mah-jong.

They have lived for 3 generations in the United States undisturbed, but now they are being tracked down, probably a renewal of the old feud. Unfortunately, most of the Orphans know about their heritage only as folk tales, and those that know more — some of the magic — have never really used it.

The mixture of ancient culture and beliefs, magic and fantasy, with modern day America makes for an intriguing read. Lindskold’s descriptions are rich and vivid, her storytelling excellent.

According to the dust jacket, “Thirteen Orphans is the first volume of a brilliant new contemporary fantasy series.” I did locate Nine Gates at Amazon.com but it won’t be released until August 18. I know I’ll be looking for it!



My husband thinks dragons are evil. He watches all those movies where dragons raid human civilization and burn everything in sight.

But those movies are just plain wrong!

Read Dragonflight and the other Pern novels by Anne McCaffrey and you’ll see. Dragons are our friends!

Dragonflight is, I believe, the first of McCaffrey’s Pern novels. I read it when I was in high school and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve read all that I can find, and when I see one I haven’t read I snatch it up immediately. Life pretty much stops until I’ve turned the last page.

The stories follow a colony on a planet named Pern. First thought to be ideal, the original settlers were soon attacked by threat — a spore that spins down from a red star — and had to completely restructure their life.

Dragonflight begins several generations after the colonization. Most of the knowledge of the original settlers has been lost or relegated to legends as the people have had to structure their lives around staying alive. But at this point, the planet is in social upheaval. Thread hasn’t fallen for many turns (years) and many believe it will never fall again. Dragons and dragonriders, the planet’s defense against thread, are no longer the revered heroes they once were. Many of the planet’s dragon holds are empty, and no one knows why.

Dragonflight chronicles the resurgence of dragonkind, just in time to meet their misunderstood enemy. It is the first in the Dragonriders of Pern trilogy. McCafferey’s Harper Hall trilogy is written in the same time frame, from the perspective of the Pern’s harpers, the men and women who instruct and keep knowledge and legend alive.

Other books go back into the past, to the original civilization or further into the future to fight the thread at it’s source. I totally love this entire series. McCaffrey has put together a completely believable society and culture. The story line is consistent and engaging. Her characters are excellent — good qualities, bad qualities, totally human.

I’m not sure how many Pern books there currently are. There are a lot! Anne McCaffery’s son, Todd, has begun writing where his mother left off. His latest book, Dragon’s Fire is scheduled to hit the shelves at the end of November. You can bet I’ll be one of the first to own it!

So what is it that fascinates me so? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the heroines — strong women who get the job done. Maybe it’s the heros — hot men, you know! Or the way they work together in an ideally equal society.

Or maybe, it’s the wonderful beasts, the dragons, who breath fire, fight thread, and communicate telepathically with their humans. Yeah. That’s it!

Whatever it is, read these books!