New York Folklore: Volume 21, No.1-4: Reflections on Public Folklore in New York State, Then and Now

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NEW YORK FOLKLORE
Vol. 21, Nos. 1-4, 1995

“IT OUGHT TO BE RETURNED TO THEM...IT NEEDED TO BE SPREAD AROUND”—REFLECTIONS ON PUBLIC FOLKLORE IN NEW YORK STATE, THEN AND NOW
by Robert Baron

As a daydreaming, restless adolescent gazing at the walls of DeWitt Clinton High School’s library in the Bronx, I often stared at a vivid mural depicting my school’s eponym in a glorious moment of uniting our chronically divided state. My eyes often fixed upon the vessel used by Governor Clinton to pour water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic Ocean during the climactic moment of that ceremony—the “"Wedding of the Waters.” It served as a vehicle of consubstantiation, as waters flowing out of New York City were united with waters from the Great Lakes which embrace upstate.

History tells us that the Erie Canal opened up America to westward expansion, sparked the development of most of upstate’s major cities, and helped make New York City the nation’s financial powerhouse. However, as a New Yorker concerned with coordinating folk arts activities around the State, I am most awed now by Clinton’s achievement in successfully bringing off an endeavor with results so mutually agreeable and beneficial for both upstaters and downstaters.

When I was sixteen, I was barely conscious of the significance of the achievement celebrated in that vaguely mythic mural with its curious bucket.(1) After sixteen years of searching for commonalities in the State’s folk culture and attempting to generate statewide activities in our field, I now understand well the challenges engendered by a State shaped by sharp regional disjunctions. The founders of the New York Folklore Society brilliantly addressed these challenges a half century ago. They built an organization joining New Yorkers from throughout the State in a common endeavor of education, popularization, presentation, and research about New York’s folklore. Harold W. Thompson, Louis C. Jones, and Benjamin A. Botkin achieved for the folklore of New York State in the mid-twentieth century what DeWitt Clinton accomplished for its economic development in the early decades of the nineteenth century....

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

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