Library of Congress Bicentennial Celebration Presentation - Page 2
The Pacific Flyway Decoy Association
"Dedicated to the Preservation of Wildfowl Art and Sculpture"
("Art isn't for Sissies")
In 1989, Bob Solari, then president of the 360 member Pacific Flyway Decoy Association, surveying a calendar of activities that threatened to place club expenses and club income in dangerous proximity, and thinking that the crisis might be eased with a boost in public awareness, advised his assembled Board of Directors, "We need a phrase to tell what our club is about." This is the sort of assignment for which boards and committees were conceived, so with the practiced ease of pro forma deliberation, a suitably grave, bland, and inoffensive motto was submitted and approved: "Dedicated to the Preservation of Wildfowl Art and Sculpture."
For a time this ornament served to decorate a pamphlet or balance a letterhead, but it is not the sort of thing to distinguish a T-shirt. Not even the highest club official or the oldest living member could quote it in a pinch, so in time, a kind of free translation has evolved based on 29 years of the realities of show business; the high hopes and low turnouts, the triumphs and tantrums of weekend celebrities (and hopeless novices), the festive banquets the night before, and the sobering balance sheets the morning after; all of this has come down to a tough mission statement having more to do with self preservation than public awareness: "Art isn't for Sissies."