To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Membership
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:27:26 -0800
I used to belong in the 1980s, and still have all the Pomonas.
Here are the dues for 1986, to be sent to Mary Kurle:
U.S.A. $6, 2 years $10
Canada and other countries $8, 2 years $15
The extra cost was because postage costs more for international mail.
I'm not sure why I ceased membership, though it may have been that
there was no reminder to renew. Now that information is often
included on the address label, but perhaps it was not then. I have
since become much more organized, and keep a database of all the clubs
I belong to, and when I have paid dues - to one club for a lifetime,
one for 20 years, others for whatever multiple is possible.
The multiple year's payments are to minimize the complications of
paying to a foreign country. It is more trouble for foreigners to
pay. We can't just slip a cheque into an envelope. It means paying
to buy a money order which sometimes is available only at a main
branch - someone in the U.S. once wrote of the difficulties he had
trying to buy a money order to send out of the U.S. It was amazingly
complicated, and worth printing in New Yorker magazine. It reminded
me of my mother-in-law trying to negotiate the bureaucracy in India,
where she finally gave up and flew home, her business not done.