When you "scope" a variable you enclose it in curly brackets (like those used for a function). What that means is that that variable can only be seen inside of that scope. However if you declare it outside of that scope then it can be used inside of that scope and outside. It basically allows you to have private variables within a function that can't be modified by any other function directly (you would have to pass them through as a param).

To save off the inital settings just use a getAttr on the variable and save it

Alan