I hear what you're saying, Jim but by its very nature folk must be an ongoing process and remains an integral aspect of human community whatever age we live in - or whatever form said community takes. Country living these days has precious little to do with folk in the old sense, and much contemporary rural folklore will, ironically, be derived from urban traditions. An example of this is cars pimped with a strobe-light fitted underneath. I'd heard reports of this tradition from friends in London (the effect was to make the car look like it was floating!) but the first time I actually saw one was in the village of Staindrop in County Durham! Short lived; it was outlawed, though I believe certain cars still carry them.

One aspect of Folklore might be of the past, but in Warshaver's Three Levels of Folklore, level one is very much of the moment; the things that are done without any intention of it being folklore, which is where, I feel, the most important stuff is because whilst the gentry might not have created the actual lore they did define it as being folklore and instigate the study of it as an abstract concept. Meanwhile, the folk, the people, are too bust getting on with the business of living to be hung up on such academic significances, leaving the folklorists very often clutching at empty air. Because what is folklore without folk? In contemporary studies folklore becomes the study of people & ethnography without the old antiquarian notions of ancient origins, continuities and lost archaic meanings. The medium very much is the message, and folklore is very much about what people do, and continue to do, and will continue to do, as long as there are people to do it.