We are in the middle of monsoon season here in Tucson. Much of the time, this means that there is a lot of lightning and not so much rain. When it does rain though, watch out! Brigid took this gorgeous picture the other night -- that is one WHOPPER of a lightning strike!

Have I told you about the issues Ron has been having over the last couple of years with his fellow Den leaders for Cub Scouts? There has been another development, so I need to explain the whole thing to you. Ron volunteered (I put his name in actually) to be the co-leader of a den when Andy was in 1st grade. His co-leader, A., needed someone to help her out with things since the den was a big one (16 kids). It was a little chaotic at times, but they got through the year and no one was hurt and everyone had a great time. Two of the moms had problems with how Ron and A. ran the meetings. These two women, J. and E., decided that they could do better and so they split off and started their own den. This happened in May, right at the end of the school year and what they did was contact certain parents and ask them to be part of their den. Yup, they cherry picked the original den and left all the kids that were loud or troublemakers, or they just didn't like, to have their cub scouting experience with Ron and A.

So, Ron and A. found out about this at the beginning of the year and figured whatever, we will just keep on going. One of the mom's in Ron's den asked to be moved over to the other den. J. and E. refused to take that kid. Refused. To. Allow. Her. Kid. To. Join. THEIR. Den. How about that for the Boy Scouting spirit? Things started getting bad at this point and J. and E. were very rude to Ron and were very public about it -- yelling at the Committee meetings, for example. Meanwhile, Ron is having his own set of issues to deal with since he cannot seem to come up with one single meeting time that all four of his den members can make. Once a meeting is set, it is up in the air whether or not they will show up. Ron got really fed up about all this crap and the final straw happened when he sent in his paperwork for everyone to graduate to Webelos. Somehow the file didn't make it in (but no one called Ron to find out why they didn't have it), and there was a huge blowout at the final meeting of the year. One of the moms sent a flaming email to Ron yelling at him about the whole thing. Ron quit, after talking for a long time with the Committee Chair about what had been going on. The Committee Chair told Ron that she was going to tell J. and E. to take Ron's den in.

We all went to the kickoff barbecue for CCD last night. Who should be there, but A., Ron's old co-leader. Ron sat down and talked to her about what was happening since he hadn't heard anything over the summer. It turns out that J. has resigned from being a leader, and E. invited two of Ron's former den members to join her den. That left two of the den members out of luck -- they weren't invited to join E.'s den and there are no other dens at the school. The two boys that were ignored were Andy and A.'s son. Well, Ron is totally pissed off now. He figures that E. can crap all over him -- he doesn't care, but when she starts crapping on Andy, and having Andy pay the price for her not wanting to deal with Ron, all bets are off. Ron has told me that he is going to talk to the Pack leader tonight (the Scouts are recruiting at back to school night tonight), and if something isn't done, then he will take it all the way to the Council. You know, Ron doesn't get angry that often (especially compared to me), but when he does get angry, watch out!

I will keep you posted on what happens on this -- I hope we get it resolved without too much upset.