Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the Lines

“New Lights in the Dawnland” Recorded and Produced by Michael Kline, Talking Across the Lines, Sunderland, MA Time 2:00:08 “New Lights in the Dawnland” is a two hour audio documentary based on five individually recorded voices recounting 13,000 years of Indigenous history of Northfield leading up to the arrival of English colonists in the 17th Century and the impacts of

In honor of the 100th birthday of the late Juanita Nelson, we are posting this 11-minute audio teaser, a sampling of what is to become a longer piece imparting the clear and persuasive ways in which Wally and Juanita Nelson lived their lives. The Nelsons were beloved to hundreds of people. Wally and Juanita, who lived their final three decades in Western Massachusetts, worked a sma

Northfield, Massachusetts' Indigenous Origins This recorded testimonial is the account of an Indigenous resident of Northfield, Massachusetts, Joe Graveline, creating a sense of the town's pre-European history. Graveline's discourse is strongly rooted in archaeological and geological findings right around his own home and fields. He is open to the way the land itself speaks to him

“Brotherhood of the Spirit:” An Unvarnished Window into New Age Communal Life of the Post-Vietnam Era in Western Massachusetts Recorded by Carrie Nobel Kline and Joan Stoia for the 350th Anniversary of Northfield, Massachusetts Oral History Project in the Fall of 2022. This 65-minute audio recorded narrative offers a moving, compellingly honest account of back-to-the-land, in

Fiddlin' John Johnson (An 8-minute radio piece from The Home Place Series) Produced by Michael Kline, supported by the Humanities Foundation of WV (1979) John Johnson, born and raised in Clay County, was a towering figure in the circle of legendary West Virginia fiddle players. His father, recognizing the boy's talent as a five year old, invited neighboring and distant fiddlers

Rick Rees, Michael Hoberman, Carrie and Michael Kline created this radio piece in 1993 for WFCR, Public Radio of Western New England. Michael Kline recorded the interviews and musical sessions that make up this production while serving as folklorist for the Pioneer Valley Folklore Society. With funding the Mass Foundation for the Humanities, we were required to write and read a som

Remembering Blair Mountain was written and produced by Miranda Brown while interning with Talking Across the Lines. Brown weaves oral history interviews recorded by Michael and Carrie Kline and music from the The Blair Pathways Project, produced by Sara Lynch Thomason. The Klines' interviewees were marching to Blair to commemorate the original march of 1921 and save the location of

In this powerful 8-minute program, union organizer and widow from the Mannington/Farmington Mine Disaster tells Michael Kline of the last day she spent with her husband. In 1968, 78 miners needlessly died in a West Virginia coal mining tragedy. For a deeper understanding of what really happened and how it could've been avoided, read The Memo, a chapter in Written in Blood: Courage

Civil War enthusiasts will be captivated by the unfolding story of the Allegheny Mountain campaigns of early 1861 punctuated by lively West Virginia fiddle tunes and songs, cradled in the ambient sounds of the surrounding country side. Digitally recorded interviews with Pocahontas and Randolph County West Virginia elders detail memories of their families’ first-hand encounters in

Although these stories, tunes and songs take place along the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike in northcentral West Virginia, they could be about many places in rural and small-town America. Part of Michael and Carrie Kline's 100-voice oral history project with 30 more musical performances by people along the historic road, themes in this podcast include the Civil War in western Virgin