To the Editor:
Re “What Happens When Girls Get to Be Boy Scouts,” by Erica Song (Opinion guest essay, July 26):
I am writing as a member of Girl Scout Troop 145 of Dallas, led by Marjorie Wheeler from 1955 to 1963. The four remaining members of the troop are now in our 80s. One of us holds a doctorate in sociology; one created two community libraries; one sells high-end real estate; and I write.
I would like to take gentle but firm exception to the perception expressed by Dr. Song that we spent our scouting years in the kitchen or touring banks. When we weren’t pitching tents and building cook fires and hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park or pier fishing on the Texas coast, we were volunteering with teen occupational therapy programs or as museum docents.
Read the Girl Scout manual from those years, and you will find a stealthy feminist instruction book. Scouting taught us the value of planning and cooperation. We learned how to be capable in the outdoors, and how to change a tire or a bandage.
These rich experiences did not appear from nowhere, of course. Highly educated parents, gas money to get to distant campsites and free time figured into our scouting equation. Could sharing our girls-only experience with boys have improved it? Hard to imagine.
Jane Albritton Santa Fe, N.M.
To the Editor:
Erica Song makes the typical mistake of believing that girls can’t become leaders unless they experience the discomfort of camping just as boys do. Leadership skill is often developed in different settings — for example, girls leading a school orchestra or girls leading a staff of other students in a school kitchen.
You don’t have to experience being wet or cold or exhausted or searching for firewood in a dense forest to grow into a kind and capable leader as an adult. And there are many kinds of merit badges that offer a variety of leadership growth experiences. Doing the work of any type provides opportunities to learn to lead. Those of us who didn’t particularly like camping can testify to that.
Ellen Creane Guilford, Conn.
To the Editor:
Erica Song’s essay beautifully captured the importance of girls in scouting. As a Scouts professional during the transition to include girls, I witnessed firsthand the intense hesitation to the change, even though international scouting had been coed for decades.
For generations, the distinction of Eagle scout was denied to girls. It is a program that can open doors for a lifetime. While the opportunity is new for young women, research has shown that participation in the program yields permanent advantages.
We all benefit from civic-minded youth. Membership has declined from many millions in my youth to roughly one million today. Correlation is not causation, but would our society be less polarized if more children learned civics, accountability and resilience from leaders like Dr. Song?
Heather Lerner San Jose, Calif. The writer is a former chief development officer at the Silicon Valley Monterey Bay Scouting USA Council.
To the Editor:
Erica Song doesn’t get it. The Boy Scouts were and still are about boys. That’s it. It’s not about girls and fairness. I was a boy scout, and have many fond memories of my friends and me doing many scouting activities. Boys doing boy things — yes, without girls. That’s exactly what was great about it. We had our time.
If girls want to do the things that the Boy Scouts do, they should. But they should figure out a way to do it without destroying what the Boy Scouts built for boys and young men.
I have two daughters, and they enjoy spending time hiking and camping and being outdoors, but I would not want them to encroach on the Boy Scouts.
Daniel Cash Bonita Springs, Fla.
To the Editor:
When I was a young girl, I knew that boys had more fun. I am the fifth of eight children, and we had a rowdy childhood, but it was always the boys I played with. Wrestling, building forts, playing in the woods, making mud pies and competing — in everything. No curling irons, makeup or teen magazines. Always having fun.
This taught me a lot about life. Girls and boys are different, but also very much alike. It also led me to a career as a psychotherapist, working with men who have been imprisoned and have suffered and caused suffering.
My childhood and career have taught me that the better girls and boys understand one another, the better they can get along. And that can only make the world a better place.
Eileen Redden Windsor, Conn.
To the Editor:
I have been a girl scout since age 7. I am now 90. In the 1950s I was a camper, then a counselor and then a troop leader. Together we tied knots, identified plants, built fires, pitched tents, climbed peaks in the White Mountains, canoed and camped on the Connecticut River and Rangeley Lake. We canoed and hiked and camped in the Adirondacks. And we endured rain, cold and black flies. I still frequent those places, though I stopped overnight camping in my 80s.
Erica Song represents one part of today’s young people. Girl Scouts have not changed their name and still offer girls the same opportunities that I and my three best friends from those days (all in our 90s) recall with pleasure. A shared counselor song sung with great laughter after trips, cooking our lunches back at camp over the fires we made each day.
In the future, please give credit to us girl scouts who continue to thrive and survive discomfort, and who have not changed our name.
Elizabeth Thorndike Ithaca, N.Y.
The Trump Plane Ploy
To the Editor:
Re “Secret Plan Spirited Trump Out of Turkey Amid Threats” (front page, Aug. 12):
So, let me get this right. Based on intelligence about a threat to President Trump and Air Force One from Iran, he boards the plane from one side and leaves it from the other, while reporters and some White House staff members stay on the plane. It takes off, and they serve as “unknowing decoys.”
Can someone please explain the ethics behind this decision? Is it OK to make a conscious effort to save the president’s life while possibly sacrificing the lives of many others? If there was a legitimate threat again Mr. Trump and the plane, why did the U.S. government whisk away the president and leave the others as sitting ducks on a plane?
I guess Mr. Trump’s life is worth more than that of the reporters and his staff. How shameful!
Michael Hadjiargyrou Centerport, N.Y.
An Act of Kindness
To the Editor:
Re “On the Benefits of ‘In-Between Moments,’” by Melissa Kirsch (Inside The Times, Aug. 10):
I am writing to applaud the charming article about the joy and purpose of running errands. It liberated me from thinking that too many errands are a waste of time. Perhaps that was my guilt about the pleasure these small excursions provide.
You never know whom you’ll meet or what opportunity for a random act of kindness might appear.
The other day, there was a woman working as a cleaning attendant in a grocery store bathroom. There was something special about her, so I said, “I hope that this won’t offend you, but in my day, we acknowledged the bathroom attendant,” and so I discreetly placed $5 in the palm of her hand.
She began to cry. She said, “In 25 years of doing this, no one has ever recognized me like this.”
I felt bad that I had given her only $5, so I reached for a $10 bill and started to hand it to her. She demurred, saying: “No, no. It isn’t the money. It’s that you treated me like a human being.”
I left that women’s bathroom feeling richer than I ever have.
Elaine Tanay West Bloomfield, Mich.
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