Shows
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesNew Lights in the Dawnland“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 colonialism that followed. Replete with tribal songs, flute and drum interludes and ambient sounds, this conversational telling of the story creates its own imagery, to the considerable satisfaction of those whose voices are interwoven throughout.
The five narrators recorded for “New Lights in the Dawn...2023-11-022h 01
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesYou Don't GottaIn 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 small plot of land, lived without electricity or running water, and actively resisted militarism and oppression, working in community with others. Learn more about them here: https://www.nelsonhomestead.org2023-08-1610 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesIndigenous History in Northfield, MassachusettsNorthfield, 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 in the Connecticut River Valley. Here is the setting for 11,000 years of Indigenous intertribal exploration, settlement, and conquest along the vast waterway, told with animation and intimacy. Indigenous stories and memories have been long suppressed by those who spread out over these stolen lands...2023-03-031h 17
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesBrotherhood of the Spirit: A Tale of a 1970s New Age Community“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, intentional, spiritual, drug-free, homegrown living by members of the “Brotherhood of the Spirit (BOS).” Founded by Michael Metelica in 1969, the nascent tree house gathering was driven by aspirations of simple living and honest dealings. From a rural hangout it soon became the promised land for many alienate...2023-01-121h 05
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the Lines08 Fiddlin' John - John JohnsonFiddlin' 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 to come stay for days, even weeks, at a time to share their old tunes with such a willing young student. School was a row boat's pull across the Elk River and a mile's walk along the railroad tracks, a...2022-08-2908 min
The Great Trials PodcastGTP CLASSIC: Shanin Specter │Michael Goretzka v. West Penn Power Company │ $109 million verdictThis week we’re replaying a classic episode where your hosts Steve Lowry and Yvonne Godfrey interview Shanin Specter of www.klinespecter.com
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Episode Details:
Inner Circle of Advocates member Shanin Specter of Kline & Specter, PC shares how he obtained the largest contested liability personal injury verdict in Pennsylvania history after 39-year-old Carrie Goretzka was fatally electrocuted by a 7200 volt power line. West Penn Power linemen failed to properly clean the wires with a wire brus...2022-07-191h 19
A Breath of Song50. Navigate the Current with guest Saro Lynch-ThomasonNotes: There's a freedom in not waiting for a cure. Traditional music is a way to connect to your spiritual ancestral community; it can affirm your experience and there's the "big expansion of empathy that is happening when we sing." Ornamentation and pronunciation of words in oral tradition. We don't create in isolation. How Saro's mom conveyed joy in singing, and what Saro would love "every human being on the planet to understand about disability." The broad umbrella of disability. Speaking with compassion to our bodies, and how that relates to justice work. Why singing is too important to...2022-05-181h 07
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesSing Me Back Home: World Music in Western MassachusettsRick 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 somewhat analytical-sounding narration that follows an otherwise seamless flow of voices and music, as newer and older groups of immigrants discuss and play examples of a living, changing music, carried from other lands, preserved and evolved in the Connecticut River...2021-10-081h 00
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesRemembering Blair MountainRemembering 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 the original Battle of Blair Mountain was in danger from mountaintop removal mining. As of today it has been preserved.
Known as the Redneck Army for their red neckerchiefs, ten thousand miners marched 50 miles in late August to early September of 1921...2021-08-1715 minMichael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesDisaster at the Mannington Mines - Sarah KaznowskiIn 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 and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction https://www.folktalk.org/merchandise/books/written-in-blood-courage-and-corruption-in-the-appalachian-war-of-extraction/
Set to the music of coalfield songwriters and performers Jean Ritchie and Hazel Dickens, with a taste of ballroom dance music, this incisive...2021-05-1209 min
Middle Class Film ClassMCFC Episode 81 - A Fish Called WandaThe gang speaks fake Italian this week, as they review the British-American heist comedy, A Fish Called Wanda (1988) starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, John Cleese, and Michael Palin. While not a Monty Python production, the silliness prevails, and the laughs come from both the obvious, and the subtle bits. Kevin Kline won best supporting actor as his role as Otto, and the film itself won a list of awards, in addition to being #1 in the box office. Watch on Showtime, and let us know if you agree or disagree with our thoughts,In News this week...2021-03-241h 45Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesHolding Rugged Ground: The Civil War Along the Staunton-Parkersburg TpkeCivil 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 historic battles and their efforts to carry on daily life amidst the bloody War.
The social divisions, passions and violence of the era left deep traces among the citizens of the new war-born state of West Virginia still resonating in recollections of their aging descendants. Th...2021-01-231h 13Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesOld Virginians And Wildcatters: War, Wealth and Work Along the PikeAlthough 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 Virginia, the birth of West Virginia in the midst of the bloody Civil War, the origins and progression of the oil and gas industry, told by the people who lived it, along with an insider's view of small town life. This project was...2020-10-091h 18Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesTook Off Running: Race and Culture Along the TurnpikeTook Off Running is part of a series of audio history and musical productions that explore life along the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, an early toll road through the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. Featuring first-hand accounts of local residents, this production brings to life voices of the region's inhabitants in a vibrant, fast-moving quilt of stories on race and ethnicity in the 19th and 20th century. Michael and Carrie Kline of Talking Across the Lines scripted and produced this documentary from 90 oral history interviews, seasoned with West Virginia music recorded especially for the series.
Executive Producers: Phyllis Baxter and Mary Rayme
...2020-07-141h 17Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesSwitchbacks And Wagon TracksVoices of the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike is a series of audio history productions that explore life along the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, an early toll road through the Appalachian Mountains of Central West Virginia. Featuring first-hand accounts of local elders, this production brings to life voices of the region’s inhabitants in vibrant stories and music. Over ninety oral histories augmented by musical selections and ambient sound recorded especially for the series.
Switchbacks And Wagon Tracks: Building the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike takes listeners from Native American experience up to the American Civil War through vivid portrayals by historians and old-timers who remember what their el...2020-05-091h 12
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesRiding Freedoms Train: The Underground Railroad in the Upper Ohio Valley[Excerpted from the CD jacket of Riding Freedom's Train: The Underground Railroad in the Upper Ohio Valley]
Wherever there are instances of institutionalized oppression and cruelty, history provides us with examples of people who risked everything to free themselves. And often, people nearby have aided in the escape from bondage. Thus, from the beginning of the enslavement of Africans on the American continent, there existed a clandestine means by which slaves fled captivity. The Underground Railroad was not a specific mode of travel nor a singular route, but rather, a secret illegal network which assisted slaves in their flight to...2020-03-2458 minMichael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesGathered At The Ohio River"Gathered at the Ohio River" is a 63-minute audio piece produced from interviews recorded in the 1990s by Talking Across the Lines for the Wheeling Spoken History Project. Co-sponsored by the Wheeling National Heritage Area Corporation and the National Park Service, this project recorded 160 local voices from diverse neighborhoods, ethnicities and industries. The Spoken History Project opened the door for citizen participation in this effort to reinvent Wheeling as a Heritage Area.
This piece is ideal for classroom and community education uses as well as personal enjoyment.
For more on this project click on https://www.folktalk.org/spoken-histories/local-histories...2020-01-091h 03Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesBorn And Raised In Tobacco Fields: Portrait of a Changing American LandscapeBorn & Raised in Tobacco Fields is a 58-minute audio documentary telling the vivid and complex story of the Tobacco Buyout in Calvert County, Maryland in 2003, the most monumental change in the economic and cultural landscape of southern Maryland since its founding as a tobacco producing colony in 1634.
With a score of voices and songs, this production was the winner of the Oral History Association's Non-print Award in 2005. Written and produced by Talking Across the Lines, L.L.C.2019-11-2958 min
The Great Trials PodcastShanin Specter │Michael Goretzka v. West Penn Power Company │ $109 million verdictEpisode 042: Shanin Specter │Michael Goretzka v. West Penn Power Company │ $109 million verdict
This week, your hosts Steve Lowry and Yvonne Godfrey interview Shanin Specter of www.klinespecter.com
Remember to rate and review GTP in iTunes: Click Here To Rate and Review
Case Details:
Inner Circle of Advocates member Shanin Specter of Kline & Specter, PC shares how he obtained the largest contested liability personal injury verdict in Pennsylvania history after 39-year-old Carrie Goretzka was fatally electrocuted by a 7200 volt power line. West Penn Power linemen failed to properly clean the wires with a wire brush before installing them, per the manufactur...2019-11-261h 19Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesDark Was The Night - Etta PersingerEtta Persinger of Beckley, West Virginia describes a life of close knit family and church members, full of love and care. Close to her heart is shape note singing and "the old songs," as she calls them. Listen to her quiet passion and the power of the congregation "singing the shapes."2019-10-2508 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesThe Spoken History Productions Of Michael And Carrie Kline - By Jean SnedegarThis production, layered with local voices and music, aired on West Virginia Public Broadcasting in 2008 and remains current today. Radio producer Jean Snedegar produced this 15-minute documentary in which Michael and Carrie Kline discuss the power of documenting spoken history through deep listening. For more on the Klines' work visit www.folktalk.org and https://www.facebook.com/klinesacrossthelines2019-09-1715 minMichael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesThe Red Robin Inn - Charlie BlevinsCharlie Blevins is an extraordinary musician and storyteller. A coal miner who made his home in southern West Virginia, he owned and operated the Red Robin Inn in the coalfields of Mingo County. Tune in for some the best and most authentic performances of traditional music you'll ever hear. Feel the pathos when he says the new highway, "Corridor G is going to wipe out our heritage," built in the path of this historic tavern.2019-08-0908 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesHope Shorts Series—Stretching The LimitsTo rockin' tunes and blues numbers, Nathan Shelton and Brenda Jackson, alumni of Mount Hope High School in Fayette County, West Virginia, each tell of their own devastating collision with racism in their school years during the 1960s. They, along with Elinor Agee, discuss the ways in which interracial families have always been part of the fabric of West Virginia life and have become perhaps more so in recent times. Tune in for music, humor, pathos and ample resilience.2019-07-0510 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesRemembering Blair MountainIn honor of the current Centennial of the March on Blair Mountain and Battle of Blair Mountain, we're reposting a favorite piece. 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 the original Battle of Blair Mountain was in danger from mountaintop removal mining. As of today it has been...2019-05-3015 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesRevelations: A Celebration of Appalachian Resiliency in GLBTQ PeopleRevelations: A Staged Reading Celebrating Appalachian Resiliency in GLBTQ People, was performed for its 17th time in Shepherdstown, West Virginia April 12, 2019 as part of the SpeakStory Series and is presented as part of our Talking Across the Lines podcast. We are available to produce it in your community with a volunteer cast over a fire day residency.
Revelations is a theatrical presentation on Appalachian resiliency in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people written and produced by folklorist Carrie Nobel Kline, Spring 2001 Rockefeller Fellowship recipient and Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia at Marshall...2019-05-091h 40
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesHope Shorts Series—Climbing Education's LadderTo the tune of country blues and jazz, played by coalfield bluesman Nat Reese on guitar and Ralph Gordon on bass, African American educators and esteemed community members talk about the obstacles and impetuses related to getting an education. What were the losses in terms of community support for black students, once schools integrated? Students black and white learned widely from the few but powerful black educators who kept their teaching jobs through integration.2019-04-1822 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesHope Shorts Series—What Our Mothers Taught UsOllie Watts Davis and Willie Ben Pritchett paint pictures of their mothers, grandmothers, early teachings and shortfalls driven by alcohol in one case and racial discrimination in both. Willie Ben even gives a lesson on housecleaning. "Most people just organize a little," he says, detailing how much his mother taught him to survive, when she was able. Dr. Davis treats us to an operatic grand finale performing one of the most uplifting gospel songs.2019-03-2114 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesHope Shorts Series—Willie Ben - Blacks Clueless About College AdmissionsWillie Ben Pritchett, an Honors Student, football and track star and glee club member, discusses the educational dead ends for black students at Mount Hope High School when he graduated in 1964, unless the students already had a family member with experience in navigating the college admissions process.
Pritchett goes on to describe how he survived and finally thrived. He exemplifies the idea of “each one pull one,” on an underground railroad from Mount Hope, WV to Washington, D.C.2019-02-2811 min
Mountain News & World ReportHealth, Education, and the EconomyIn this episode we bring you stories - past and present - on health, the economy and education in the mountains. We begin with four pieces from the Ohio Valley Resource and wrap up with the fourth in a six-part series from Michael & Carrie Kline with Talking Across the Lines about race and class in Mt. Hope, WV in the 1960s.2019-02-2200 min
Mountain News & World ReportNational Conversations, Local ImpactIn this episode we bring you two stories highlighting how the economic decline here in eastern KY is being talked about at a national level. Then, in honor of Black History Month, this episode wraps up with the third in a 6-part series from Michael & Carrie Kline, exploring the history of desegregation in Mount Hope, WV.2019-02-0800 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesHope Shorts Series—Home Grown, Made From Scratch, Preserved To LastTo a background of blues riffs and folk songs, Bernice Clayton and Nathan Shelton, natives of Fayette County, West Virginia describe their older family members' ability to make do from scratch, from the land, making sorghum molasses, making soap, preserving food, and squatting on land during the time of the West Virginia Mine Wars, getting by with a pinch of humor and a pound of know-how.2019-01-2910 min
Mountain News & World ReportSickness & Health in AppalachiaIn this episode, we bring you stories of sickness and health in Appalachia. First, from WMMT’s own Ohio Valley Resource reporter, Sydney Boles - we’ll hear from widows of miners with Black Lung about how effects of the deadly disease ripple out into the community. Then, also from OVR we’ll learn about a vaping company that in marketing products to teenagers, is creating a major health risk for youth.
While the first two stories focus on challenges to health in the region, we’ll finish this episode on a positive note with the second in a 6 part series f...2019-01-2500 min
Mountain News & World ReportBuilding The Communities We WantIn this episode we bring you recent news from the Ohio Valley Resource on a proposed bill to shore up miners pension benefits and reinstate the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. Then, WMMT’s Mimi Pickering takes us back a gathering of business women in Harlan County KY in November 2018. We finish this episode with the first in a 6 part series. Hope Shorts: Wit & Wisdom on Race Class & Community Survival from Mount Hope WV - was produced by Michael and Carrie Kline.2019-01-1100 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesHope Shorts Series—Baby Red, Baby Ray, Movies & Lemonade CupsIn this interweaving of oral histories and music, natives of Mount Hope, West Virginia discuss their close knit relationships across racial lines in the 1940s to '70s, as well as the ways local adults shielded young blacks from institutional racism. "I never had to be false to myself. I could always be me. And I'm proud of that," says Mount Hope mother Bernice Clayton.2019-01-0810 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesSinging The Blues - Nat ReeseThis West Virginia bluesman describes the span of his career throughout the southern coalfields. His dad came from Virginia "to shake that money tree," but precious little shook loose. Nat Reese expresses humor and pathos through music and narrative in this eight-minute production made with WV Humanities support by Michael Kline in the 1980s while working on staff at the Augusta Heritage Center. Photo is by the great Douglas O. Yarrow.2018-10-0308 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesHope Series Part 2: Dollars & Cents: Race and Class in the West Virginia CoalfieldsDollars & Cents: Race and Class in the West Virginia Coalfields is the second installment in the Hope audio series, commissioned and directed by the Mountain of Hope Organization, supported by the West Virginia Humanities Council and produced by Talking Across the Lines, LLC, www.folktalk.org; www.facebook.com/klinesacrossthelines/
Hope is an interracial documentary project looking back 50 years on Mount Hope, WV, a truth telling. Michael and Carrie Kline, along with O.H. Jackson Napier, collected more than 40 life story interviews from sons and daughters of coal miners. The stories focus on the fabric of life and work in...2018-03-1658 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesHope Series Part 1: Game Changer: Football as a Catalyst for Peaceable School IntegrationGame Changer: Football as a Catalyst for Peaceable School Integration is the first installment in the Hope audio series, commissioned and directed by the Mountain of Hope Organization, supported by the West Virginia Humanities Council and produced by Talking Across the Lines, LLC, www.folktalk.org; www.facebook.com/klinesacrossthelines/
Hope is an interracial documentary project looking back 50 years on Mount Hope, WV, a truth telling. Michael and Carrie Kline, along with O.H. Jackson Napier, collected more than 40 life story interviews from sons and daughters of coal miners. The stories focus on the fabric of life and work in...2018-02-2058 min
Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the LinesPay Dirt: The Gas Rush in Modern Day AppalachiaThis is an eight-minute narrative and musical profile of the gas rush in central West Virginia with diverse voices and views produced by Talking Across the Lines on 4-18-14.2017-12-0407 min
The Mike Harding Folk ShowMike Harding Folk Show 142PODCAST: 13 Sep 2015 01 Les Flammes D'enfer - Richard Thompson - Evangeline Made02 Parlez-Nous À Boire - Ten Strings & A Goat Skin - Corbeau03 The Silver Spire/The Hunter's House - Modesty Forbids - Calliope House04 My Grief On The Sea - Jennifer Cutting's Ocean Orchestra - Ocean: Songs For The Night Sea Journey05 Prentice Boy - Chris Bannister - The Unicorn And Other Stories06 Three Witches - Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin - Live At Calstock07 Whitsun Dance - Phillip He...2015-09-131h 15