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January 10th, 2010
Nisha Kittan 114: First Flap Issued
Previously I had reported of the formation of Nisha Kittan lodge, in Lewis and Clark Council, from the merger of Kishkakon 32 and Taleka 81. Thanks to Rich Dillow, I now have an image of the lodge's newly issued first flap. The lodge has decided to use 114 as a lodge number. As far as I know there are no other issues from this lodge at this time.
The design of the flap a simple portrayal of the lodge's black wolf totem, depicted baying at a full moon. It's nicely done. However some observant collectors, especially those in the Southern Plains may find this patch rather familiar looking. I have to wonder if the designer of this flap was inspired by another patch.
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October 27th, 2009
Never Assume
There is an old adage about what happens if one assumes. Randy Holden recently gave me an example of why one shouldn't assume.
A few years ago this privately made patch bearing the name and number of "Unilachtego 107". Given the history of lodge 107 and what was already published in Blue Book, and a proclivity for the recycling of some old lodge names, I assumed this was a predecessor lodge to Kon-Kon-Tu 107 that never had an authentic issue. That was where I was wrong.
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August 30th, 2009
The Unknown Lodges
The Unknown Lodges (Originally printed in Blue Book reprinted with permission of the American Scouting Historical Society)
by Jeff Morley and Bill Topkis
It is hard to imagine the Order of the Arrow of the early 1920s. The scouting program itself was less than 15 years old and the Boy Scouts of America was only one of several scouting organizations competing for national dominance. In those days, the program was not even called Order of the Arrow. What we now know as the OA began in 1915 as Wimactendienk W. W. and was one of several honor camper societies to form during the first decade of Scouting.
Based upon the few first-hand accounts by members who were active in the 1920s, minutes of early meetings of the Grand Lodge and the official History of the Order of the Arrow by Kenneth Davis, an amazing picture of the orders early years begins to emerge.
Scout councils began procuring their own camps in the early to mid 1920s. Before then, it was commonplace for councils to share large camp areas. Three such areas were Treasure Island on the Deleware River near Philadelphia, Lake Kawonanke, and Crystal Lake in New York. Scout encampments from many councils co-existed along the shores of the latter two locations and in the case of Kawonanke Lake, we know that well over thirty different scout councils had campgrounds there at the same time. In circumstances such as these, it is easy to see that if one council utilized a popular honor camper society, it would not be long before the idea would spread to neighboring council camps and such was the case in the early days.
Read the Full Post on blog.oaimages.com
August 25th, 2009
Guest Editorial: On Patch Restrictions
Rick Obermeyer taught a training session on "Ethical Patch Distribution" at NOAC earlier this month. The topic of patch restrictions often arises in conversation both at NOAC and elsewhere. It is raised often enough that he included an answer to this question in his handouts. I share this here with his permission.
Q4: How do you feel about restrictions?
A4: That really isnt in the context of this session, but since we have time, Ill give you my personal opinions, if you like. I cant speak on restrictions for everybody. That would be too presumptuous. I can only talk about what works for my own lodge back home. Shall I go ahead?
How my lodge feels about restrictions is based on some premises. The first premise is that we are all brothers in the Order of the Arrow. That is, equal brothers. We all got into the OA the same way, with election by others. If we have Brotherhood membership, thats because we all individually made a personal promise to accept the challenge to cheerful service that was shown to us during the Ordeal. If we are Vigil, that is a sign given to indicate that others feel that we have done a decent job of keeping that personal promise we made to ourselves at Brotherhood.
Read the Full Post on blog.oaimages.com
August 22nd, 2009
Patch Trading at NOAC
Now this is patch trading!
Jason Spangler, aka The Santee Swapper, took out his video camera during the evening patch trading at NOAC. Rather than showing every single patch that was out there -- an almost impossible task if I say so myself -- he wanted to capture the atmosphere of patch trading in Read Hall. The video clip is after the jump.
Read the Full Post on blog.oaimages.com
August 18th, 2009
2009 NOAC: Who Had the Most Patches?
Now that NOAC is over we can start to get a better grasp on what the lodges issued for this event. I would not be surprised if there's ultimately close to 1500 issues from the approximately 300 lodges. Keep those images coming.
Today's question: Which lodge issued the most patches for NOAC. Skyuka 270 had 14 pieces and they are not a lodge known for its large quantity of issues. Has anyone issued more?
I think there's at least 11 issues from Amangamek Wipit (not yet online) so they could be a contender with a few more patches. Wipala Wiki has been known for a large number of NOAC patches in past years, but I've not seen much from them yet.
On the other extreme: Were there any lodges in attendance that issue no patches for NOAC?
Read the Full Post on blog.oaimages.com
Archive for February, 2008
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has announced the winner of its 100th anniversary logo contest. Congratulations to Philip Goolkasian of Troop 223, Sequoia Council. His winning logo is pictured here.
Further information about the logo contest and the winning entry can be found on the BSA’s website.
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"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
Winston Churchill
As far as most users will see, everything is finally back to normal here. The last roadblock was getting the subdomain, blog.oaimages.com, working properly. There’s still a couple of minor things that aren’t right yet, but the average use will probably never notice.
You may have noticed that I took the opportunity to update Wordpress, the software that runs this blog. I had to first update various other software here, something that would have been cumbersome without doing a complete reinstall like what was done. The new version of Wordpress opens up many new possibilities for this blog and should make life a bit easier for the various contributors here.
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"It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it."
Aristotle
This is another of the recent images sent to me by Brad Hutto. There are several chapter pieces yet to appear online.
Skyuka lodge issued their first activity patch of the year for the 2008 Lodge Banquet. The patch is shaped like a stereotypical “Indian brave” wearing a single feather. The design prominently features the lodge’s totem incorporated into a totem pole.
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"The quickest way to reach the point of success is to follow a straight line that carves through failure."
Josh Traeger
David Cody reminds us of a piece that has escaped Blue Book listing for a couple of decades. This piece was issued by Tsungani chapter and is very rarely seen. Few were made. I have to wonder if any made it outside of the lodge, beyond any chapter members who may have moved and taken this with them.
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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
A couple of weeks ago Brad Hutto sent me a number of images of new issues from Skyuka 270. The first of these are the rest of the 2007 activities patches for this lodge.
Skyuka produced two different patches for their 2007 Banquet. The first version with a blue sun was already on this site as eA2007-1. The second version has a yellow sun and I have numbered it eA2007-2, renumbering the Spring Fellowship and pre-Dixie patches accordingly.
There are also new patches for the 2007 Ordeal and Fall Fellowship. All these patches follow the same general design of an American Indian shooting an arrow into the sky, with a mountainous background. The colors of the mountains reflect the season in which each event was held.
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"Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away."
Robert Orben
Things are kind of back to normal on this site, even if my personal life is now a complete mess. In the week that this blog was off line, I had some new issues to report. Now it’s time to start adding them here.
In late January Eswau Huppeday lodge hosted the annual Carolinas Indian Seminar. As is customary in recent years, two patches were issued for the event. Thanks to David Cody for providing the images for these issues.
Each year’s patch design has followed the same basic scheme: an arrowhead on a light blue background featuring a different style of dancer. A fancy shawl dancer was featured on this year’s patches.
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"The right thing to do never requires any subterfuge, it is always simple and direct."
Calvin Coolidge
As many now know this site and blog was offline most of last week. We were the victim of a hacker.
This was discovered and confirmed last Sunday night when I was having trouble with the mySQL engine that powers this blog. We needed to restart the server. It was at this point that it was confirmed that someone else was using this server without my knowledge. The hacker had been using the server’s resources for some time, running a password cracker. This explains some of the problems that had been experienced recently with accessing the site.
Most of the site is back to normal now, but a few issues elude me. Perhaps some of the techie folks reading this might be able to help.
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"Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good."
Calvin Coolidge
“..Look at what you’ve done,
Then at what you want,
Not at where you are,
What you’ll be..”
– “Move On” from “Sunday in the Park with George”, Stephen Sondheim
It’s been a very rough week here. I’ll write about what happened to this site later. Thursday morning’s events capped the week off in grand fashion. I was fired.
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"A leading authority is anyone who has guessed right more than once."
Frank A. Clark
I’m waiting on news and images of some rumored new issues, namely forthcoming flaps from Occoneechee, and some activities patches from Eswau Huppeday. I also haven’t had the time to finish some posts on state shaped patches.
So, after seeing the news of the dreadful cold weather around the country this past week, I was going post some pictures of the first signs of Spring here in central North Carolina. However we, too, had an unexpected appointment with Mr. Winter. Yes, we do get snow here in central North Carolina.
Long time readers of this blog might remember back to last Spring when I built this small pond, here surrounded by snow and frozen over.
(More pictures follow.)
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"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Lewis Carroll
I’m sure many of you have had some trouble getting on this site in recent weeks. For that I apologize.
The server this site runs on is now six years old, aging, and unable to keep up with the demands put upon it. Some of the software can no longer be upgraded due to the age of the operating system here. Some possible new features can’t be implemented for the same reason It’s past time for a new server.
Your help is needed. I have been expecting this eventuality and putting aside some of the subscription and advertising fund but that is not enough to pay for the server I think I need. So, I am setting up a New Server Fund and accepting donations to it via PayPal. If you wish to donate to the new server, please click the button below.
OAImages.com
New Server Fund |
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This button will also be put on the main page of this site. Remember donations are strictly voluntary. Any amount is appreciated.
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"The different branches of Arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."
Lewis Carroll
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Recent OAImages News
December 5th, 2009
A Fun Few Days
I'm sure most of you noticed the problems this site has been having over the past few days. It went offline several times. It was a frustrating experience. To add to my woes, I somehow managed to pick up some "bad stuff" on my computer at home. The last time I had this much trouble with my site, server, and home PC I was also let go from my job. Luckily that did NOT happen!
"Techie Talk" follows...
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October 4th, 2009
Blocked Emails
I have been made aware this evening of a couple of issues with email.
Hotmail is currently blocking email from some RoadRunner servers at this time. RoadRunner is my ISP and my outgoing mail, except for messages automatically generated by my server come from there. RoadRunner currently has published this notice:
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September 30th, 2009
More NOAC Images
To those who are wondering where the rest of the NOAC patches are... A large group will be uploaded to the site later today or this evening. I'm working on large groups from the 200s and 300s ranges of lodge numbers right now. Stay tuned.
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September 21st, 2009
Temporary Email Outage: Resolved
Last Friday RoadRunner started blocking email from my server because of spam without my knowledge. I had been filtering all my incoming mail at OAImages through my RoadRunner so as to filter out most of the several hundred spam messages that I get every day. RoadRunner apparently did not like that. I had no idea the server was being blocked until I saw over 800 notices that email was rejected on my server's queue last night.
This is now resolved and I am now receiving mail again, but it is coming directly (unfiltered) to me from my server, spam and all. I am currently working to block the spam.
If anyone sent me email between Friday morning (9/18) and this morning (9/21), please don't assume I received it. I probably did not see it. Please send again.
Thank you.
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August 7th, 2009
OA Blue Book Going "Web 2.0"
One of the big items of discussion at the recent pre-NOAC TOR was the fate of Blue Book. For those who don't know, the various legal issues in which this became entangled are now resolved. The new editor in chief of the Blue Book is Roy More. His desire is to maintain this resource in electronic and online forms. It has become impractical to publish this in book form as was done for the first six editions.
The goal is to create an "ever green" resource, with active input by collectors. It will be going "Web 2.0" in many respects. OAImages, will remain an integral part in this. This does not mean uncontrolled anarchy though, with lodge listings being changed at will by anyone who chooses. Roy writes:
...OA Blue Book will not become a Wikipedia. This is a standards (sic) project which means there must be structure, discipline and stability. That said, Blue Book will become much more open for all...
There are still many issues that need to be worked out. Roy More has started a blog at oabluebook.com to discuss some of the various issues that need to be resolved. There are only a few posts there now, but he plans to update this frequently. Please check this out and comment on the posts there.
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April 1st, 2009
New Policies on Patches Announced
This post covers an important change in policy that will soon become effective regarding patches issued for all Order of the Arrow lodges chartered by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Please read the whole post carefully.
At a recent meeting at the National Headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America, it was announced that a new policy will be put in place by both the Boy Scouts of America and the NationalOrder of the Arrow Committee regarding lodge patch issues. Further announcements and clarifications will be made at this Summer's National Order of the Arrow Conference and at section conclaves throughout the year. This policy will be effective September 1, 2009.
All lodge flaps, and patches issued as multiple piece sets (most commonly two-piece sets) must be ordered through BSA Supply Division, or an official BSA licensee. The national OA and the BSA has decreed that all items must be produced in a minimum quantity of 1000 (one thousand) pieces. In the case where a lodge wishes to make minor changes in design or colors, 1000 of each must be produced.
Should the lodge feel they do not need that many pieces to suit their needs, the BSA Supply Division will purchase all remainders from the manufacturer and retain them. They will be available to the lodges should more be needed. At the BSA's discretion, they will also be made available for sale in all BSA run Scout shops.
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Posted in Scouting News by John E. Pannell on February 29th, 2008 at 12:05 am 
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has announced the winner of its 100th anniversary logo contest. Congratulations to Philip Goolkasian of Troop 223, Sequoia Council. His winning logo is pictured here.
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