New York Folklore Society Newsletter

"Folklore may be the most accessible of the scholarly fields—everyone lives with it and creates it—and NYFS is now making that accessibility a working reality."— Elsie Freeman Finch

Resuming our series of self-authored profiles of NYFS board members, we introduce Elsie Freeman Finch. Elsie joined the board two years ago and serves on the Publication and 2000 Conference committees.

Photo of Elsie Freeman Finch and Herbert Finch

Elsie Freeman Finch and her husband, Herbert. Photograph courtesy of Elsie Freeman Finch.

NOTE: The New York Folklore Society Newsletter and New York Folklore Journal were replaced by Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore which debuted December, 2000.

New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org

Summer 1998

SUMMER 1998 NEWSLETTER MAIN PAGE

Meet the NYFS Board: Elsie Freeman Finch
Joined in 1996

Like David Quinn, whose comments preceded mine, I am neither a folklorist, a museum specialist nor an anthropologist, as are many of my colleagues on the NYFS board. In my last career dispensation, I was an archivist-cum-educator in charge of public education programs at the National Archives. Earlier I have been a secondary school and collegiate level teacher of English and history, an editor for several small consumer magazines, an advertising person, a waitress, a dressmaker, and a singer specializing in music of the Baroque but making money from Gilbert and Sullivan. Currently I edit learning material for my professional society, serve on several boards in my new hometown, Ithaca, New York, and give unqualified advice to the owners of a restaurant in which I am a partner.

Oddly enough, all of those fields made me an aficionado, consumer, and probably a creator of folklore. Literature, particularly American literature, absorbs and reconstitutes folk stories and traditions; instrumental and vocal music from the l6th century forward liberally quote the melodies and forms of folk music; and social history, which has in the past 20 years dealt with the lives and times of ordinary people, is coming to understand the connection between the events we call history and the beliefs and behavior of the people who make it. And in each field in which I worked, I absorbed the traditions—stories, jokes, myths, behaviors—that bound that particular group together. So it was with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation of the board of the NYFS to join them, and I now tell friends that it is one of the few of many boards, advisory groups, committees, task forces, and other work units I’ve served on where I come away from a day’s meeting still liking and admiring my colleagues and its exemplary director, John Suter.

Like any organization of professionals, NYFS creates and maintains programs that enhance scholarship in the field; the archives, mentoring and publications efforts are powerful examples. But like David Quinn, I too want to see a wider popular base of members and enthusiasts, beginning with school children and advancing through our senior population, of which I am one. Folklore is serious stuff but it’s also great fun, as anyone who has enjoyed (or in my case, endured) jokes about tenors and sopranos, folk music concerts, demonstrations of traditional crafts or storytelling sessions with an ethnic or age group will testify. Folklore may be the most accessible of the scholarly fields—everyone lives with it and creates it—and NYFS is now making that accessibility a working reality. But we need more members, more appreciators and creators of folklore among our number. I personally hope to see our excellent and evolving publications in more schools and public libraries, see folklore material integrated more aggressively into school curricula, help more community groups understand the coherence that their own folklore and customs give them. It can be done, and this organization is working hard at it.

The personal stuff: I grew up in Rochester, New York, and have lived all over the country. Six years ago, after many years of being single, I married my best friend in the archival profession, Herbert Finch, and moved to Ithaca; my two sons live in the Washington, D.C., area. From first grade through college, I was a beneficiary of New York’s splendid education system. I have a B.A. in history and literature from SUNY-Albany (which was then a college to train secondary school teachers, and the only upstate New York school that I knew about where a kid without money could get an arts degree) and an M.A. from Boston University in American literature and education.

Like many of my cohorts at SUNY-Albany, I swore I would never teach, but not only did I come to teach students from middle school through adult education, I also ended my full-time career creating and managing an innovative program for those learners at the National Archives. My job there was to make archives accessible at many levels, in many formats, to many people, and to persuade my colleagues in the profession that it was their job as well. Over time, I succeeded.

Making folklore equally available is my self-appointed job with NYFS. Join us. We are a strong, flourishing organization, and we need you, your stories, your worldview, your energy. And by the way, you’ll love it.

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