Field research in American folklife is fun when it takes you outdoors on a fine day for a talk with the local herb doctor, barn builder, storyteller, or moonshiner.

Field research in American folklife is profitable when the results of your happy experiences can be used to answer theoretical questions about cultural change, encourage a higher valuation, monetary or otherwise, of our still flourishing traditions, foster an awareness of social conditions that will smooth the way for necessary political and economic change, and reinforce the enduring values·of our culture in the face of the clamor to change for change's sake.

Yes, folk life fieldwork can be both fun and profitable, but to hear some professionals talk--the anthropologists, folklorists, cultural geographers--you'd never get the idea that good work and good times could go hand in hand.

Scholarly writing fosters the impression that to accomplish anything in the field one must be numbered among a select few described variously as blessed with the God-given talent to "talk to the folk," or as "thoroughly grounded in cognitive anthropology."