UP AND COMING

It’s only natural these four would be in Outdoor Hall

Jerry Fisk (in 2012) uses a machine to hammer the heated steel he is folding for a Damascus steel blade at his shop near Nashville. Fisk is one of this year’s inductees into the state Game and Fish Commission’s Outdoor Hall of Fame.
Jerry Fisk (in 2012) uses a machine to hammer the heated steel he is folding for a Damascus steel blade at his shop near Nashville. Fisk is one of this year’s inductees into the state Game and Fish Commission’s Outdoor Hall of Fame.

Another Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame induction ceremony — the 24th! This year’s a peach of a class — the writer/television producer Steve Bowman, the bladesmith Jerry Fisk, Ducks Unlimited president George Dunklin, and the late wildlife officer Joel Campora, who was helping two women trapped in their Y City home during a flood when it collapsed. (Campora, Scott County Sheriff Cody Carpenter and the two women were killed.)

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Junior League of Little Rock president Marisha DiCarlo.

Jim Gaston, whose last name is somewhat synonymous with trout fishing on the White River, was already the Legacy Award winner for the Aug. 21 Statehouse Convention Center gathering before his death last month, and that hasn’t changed.

Tickets are $100.

Last time I was there I remember an aquarium the size of a dump truck, full of gar and bass and blue catfish, as well as a lot of mounted antlered ungulates. You just might see Ted Nugent there.

Might.

I once saw Alice Cooper at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. I texted all my friends, and all my friends texted back, “Pics or it didn’t happen.” Ugh, I guess it didn’t happen.

Just like Ted Nugent.

MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS …

Earlier this summer, over a small-plates lunch at the splendidly rethought Heritage Grille Steak and Fin in the Little Rock Marriott downtown, Junior League of Little Rock president Marisha DiCarlo told me that membership to the League was a modest $133 annually. Then she said, “it doesn’t cost a lot.”

Notwithstanding the knee-jerk reaction anyone invites when she says “not that much” about something like $133, I do declare these dues are do-able. Eleven dollars a month? That’s a movie ticket. That’s your monthly direct withdrawal for a 10 Fitness membership (after the $60 sign-up). Of course, the latter promises sculpted glutes and fluted calves and water-weight loss. Of course, it’s not fun, either. Hmm.

The Junior League of Little Rock, though, comes with a network. It’s an education, a resume item, a blast — usually, well, it’s supposed to be — and it’s newly flush after a $1 million capital campaign. So $133? Sign me up.

Curses! I have a pair — of mismatched chromosomes.

The whole notion got me thinking about membership dues. What’s “a lot,” what’s not, and what’s the value proposition?

I threw a query across the river at the Junior League of North Little Rock and was told it’s $200 annually. (Now, to be clear, both Junior Leagues require cookbook sales and November fundraiser ticket sales that add up to a fair bit of additional “dues.”)

What are the yearly dues for the most exclusive club around? The very tippy top of the central Arkansas club membership pyramid: the Alotian Golf Club out near Lake Maumelle. Xanadu with sand traps! A very nice woman told me over the phone that annual dues are confidential, and when I told her I was interested in becoming a member — which is true, very interested — I was told membership is invitation-only. (I subsequently reached out to some members on deep background and asked the dues question and was told, rather sternly, that they’d never, never divulge.)

The Country Club of Little Rock’s annual membership is decided by its members — like when the Legislature votes itself pay raises? — and a woman named Natalie there gave me a flash of deja vu: “If you’re interested in becoming a member, you should talk to a member.” I did, and apparently dues vary depending on length of membership and other factors, but the cost may be $300 to $600 a month.

Sounds like a lot, but consider this — while it’s true some of Little Rock’s High Society are not members of its country club, none who are members of the club are not Society.

Membership in the well-connected Rotary Club 99 of Little Rock is $400 annually with a one-time fee of $500. That doesn’t include the Tuesday lunch meeting, a buffet at the Clinton Presidential Center, which is perhaps $20 a plate.

Here are a couple of professional associations to throw in the mix, the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Arkansas Medical Dental & Pharmaceutical Association. The former puts on an awards luncheon in November for fundraising and philanthropy, along with monthly networking and discovery meetings: roughly $300 annually. The AMDPA was founded in 1893 by a group of black medical professionals barred from whites-only groups, such as the American Medical Association; there are quarterly meetings and an annual Scientific Session: $325.

(Then there’s the Society for Professional Journalists. Membership is $75 per annum, which prompted this sarcastic gripe from a seasoned beat reporter, “you know how rich we reporters are.”)

The Clinton School of Public Service is a $16,800 tab. True, it’s a two-year degree — an actual education — and not a club, but there’s something very fraternal about the way its students and alumni move through the world. Their consistent demonstration of the old Paul McCartney line “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make” is mantric.

Besides, amortized over 40 years, say, it’s only about $400 annually.

Former Travel editor Libby Smith is a dues-paying member of the Aesthetic Club, the 132-year-old semi-monthly meeting at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, at which “reports” are given. She pays just $40. (Wouldn’t high school students be floored to discover there’s a club for adults who pay for the chance to give research reports?) Smith’s other club, the Daughters of the American Revolution, is $45 — they pay a little more to get out of writing reports.

There are many other clubs and associations around town, for food and fencing, chess and chicken-raising, books and beekeeping and … risk management. The invisible hand of the marketplace assures us they’re all priced about right, though some, I contend, are priced more right than others.

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