Room to Grow was produced by Nicholas Boyer and Carrie Kline with Michael Kline of Talking Across the Lines, based on Carrie’s interviews with farmworkers. We want to unveil the lives and personalities of the people who grow food in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. How much richer will the world be when curiosity drives us beyond barriers of language, shyness and hesitation to cross lines of difference to break bread and care for each other? Believe us, we’ve had so much fun sharing meals, nights, and laughing over our attempts at speaking each other’s languages and splashing through the deep farm mud together.

You’ll hear from these people in order of their first words:

“Orquédia” (pseudonym), Joanne Graves translating for Orquédia, Carrie Kline, Nicholas Boyer, Mireya Katerina Tsironis Genius, Angelique Bickford, “Amistad” (pseudonym) and Sandy Wang who translates for Amistad.

The music we include from around the world, in order of hearing, is

Cuando Allá Se Pasa Lista performed by Josue Cristobal Bonilla,

Afou ‘eis Allon Stin Karda by Ross Daly,

Pájaro de Libre Vuelo performed by Mario Diego Congo,

Anigma by Ross Daly,

El Hielo by Santa Cecelia,

Vasilla de Barro written by Gonzalo Benitez, performed by Música Ecuatoriana

Sin Masticar by Ile

Cuatro Tablas performed by Argemiro Jaramillo

Duerme Negrito performed by Mireya Katarina Tsironis Genius

No Life is a Crime by Sam Gleaves

Sueño Guajiro performed by Colmillo Norteño

Gracias a la Vida by Violeta Para performed by Mercedes Sosa

The Trumpet Vine by Kate Wolf performed by Michael and Carrie Kline with Bruce Betler

Piensa en Mi by Ruben Roman Leyva and Christian Perez, performed by Los del Limite

A Better Life to Find was written by Joe Herrmann © 2026 Yodelayhee, ASCAP, except chorus, from "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, performed by Critton Hollow and company, Cathy Fink producer, video by Jim Robeson Productions, LLC

Photo "Wall Road" © Lisa Elmaleh

If you see a background photo accompanying this production it’s from a legendary painting, “Study of Migration and the Golden People” by Judy Bacca.

You can see and hear this and our other Talking Across the Lines productions on the Talking Across the Lines podcast and YouTube Channel, or at Soundcloud.com/ talkingacrossthelines.

Enjoy and share this production. And if you see something, say something. If you think you see ICE (in Massachusetts specifically) call the LUCE hotline at 617-370-5023. You can contribute to their work at lucemass.org/donate

At the time of this release, Angelique’s partner Maico was living back in Guatemala where he landed after pressure to self-deport his way out of a Texas detention center. But the family has been FaceTiming every day, so Camilla and her loving father could stay close and Angelique and Maico could stay connected. As we prepare to air Room to Grow, Angelique and their now one-year-old daughter are visiting Maico in Guatemala before being forced to live separately, at least for the time being, Angelique returning to work on the farm and Maico seeking employment somewhere in Latin America. Of course he came to the U.S. because there was no work at home. You can support this family by contributing to their Go Fund Me page at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ma...

And get to know your neighbors. You never know what doors will open. For Talking Across the Lines I’m Nicholas Boyer and I’m Carrie Kline.

“You Can’t Unknow the Past”

Twelve Years of Archaeological Research Affirming Centuries of

Indigenous Memory and Belief Neglected by Non-Indigenous Historians

This production opens with the voice of David Brule, Coordinator of the American Battlefield Protection Program Advisory Board leading an April 2, 2025 monthly board meeting, open to the public, in the Town Hall of Montague, Massachusetts in Turners Falls. He gives a broad overview of a research project now completed, funded with grants totaling nearly $200,000 from the National Park Service since 2014, to explore the archaeological past of a bloody massacre by English colonists, and the battle that ensued following seven miles of the frantic English retreat down the Green River.

At dawn, May 19th, l676 hundreds of elderly and young multi-tribal refugees awoke in an unprotected encampment at Great Falls, on the North side of the middle Connecticut River, to musket fire and the screams of their people’s murder. Brule’s recounting is an important summary of the place of this brutal event in the larger tapestry of King Philips War. It was the bloodiest war of the Colonial period, perhaps of our entire national history, and established the tone of governmental policy toward displaced Indigenous populations ever since.

Raised just a mile away, Brule grew to young adulthood without ever hearing the gruesome story: it was never referenced in school curricula or local lore. In fact, being Indigenous was barely acknowledged anywhere. Colonial histories have pretty thoroughly excluded the Indigenous perspective. The victors usually write the history.

In 1900 on the Town of Gill’s shore of the flooded Connecticut River above the Great Falls Dam in the presence of a gathering of thousands, a newly set stone monument acknowledged the leadership of William Turner and his 145 armed recruits in a predawn attack, killing more than 300 unarmed elderly and child-aged refugees encamped near the river. The short text, carved in stone, does not go on to explain that the atrocity was carried out within earshot of the nearest Indigenous coalition forces encamped on the other side of the river, who immediately gave chase. In the seven miles of deadly pursuit, archaeologists centuries later, exhuming troves of musket balls from the buried past, have documented the maneuvers of Indigenous forces which killed more than 50 of the retreating English, including Captain Turner himself. It was a heavy price to pay for a campaign of genocide against the Natives.

Nonetheless the 1900 monument remains, a 125 year old assertion of a significant English colonial victory. It is a powerfully engrained vision to challenge with alternative, long buried truths, now finding their way into daylight through scientific interpretation.

David Brule is the details person in this case, having for 12 years chaired the American Battlefield Protection Program Advisory Board. He is also a compelling storyteller who has brought to life in recurring public presentations a new understanding of the Valley’s past. As president of the Nolumbeka Project, Incorporated, at the annual Pocumtuck Homeland Festival at Unity Park in August along the River’s edge over the last ten years he regales growing audiences.

Brule has stirred widespread research of the vast array of complex sources, including early Colonial observations of Indigenous life through unpublished letters, diaries and other written records. For more than two decades, he has been lifting a shroud of erasure far and wide, offering an alternative, balanced, collaborative narrative of an unforgettable, shared past, in search of peace and reconciliation.

The final archaeological report of more than 400 pages by the Heritage Consultants, LLC., further enriches and complicates our understanding of the Northeast region and the people who lived and died trying to defend it from the ruthless Colonial experiment beginning 400 years ago.

This is a teaser, a taste of what is in the second of our two podcasts featuring Angelique Bickford, a 26-year-old first time mother. While working in the packing shed, she fell in love with Maico, another employee on the organic farm. She learned Spanish easily to communicate with him and her fellow workers and after a period of shy courtship they decided to make a life together.

Right when their baby was born, four members of their family living nearby were violently seized—the door knocked down—without a warrant or provocation, and abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, some detained, others deported. Angelique and her partner lived in fear, all the while loving their life together with their housemates and their new precious child. But soon enough, on the way to work Maico too was pulled out of the vehicle in which he was riding early one morning this spring. He too is in detention. Angelique expresses hope, a sense of calm mixed with distress and outrage, along with her own theory as to why so many of her new family members and co-workers are being seized.

Angelique Bickford is a nearly-26-year-old first time mother. She is a natural, and her three-month old daughter is calm and happy. This is remarkable given the circumstances. While working in the packing shed, she fell in love with Maico, another employee on the organic farm. They managed to embark on a special relationship despite great shyness.

Right when the baby was born four members of their family living nearby were violently seized—the door knocked down—without a warrant or provocation, and abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, some detained, others deported. Angelique and her partner lived in fear, all the while loving their life together with their housemates and their new precious child. But soon enough, on the way to work Maico too was pulled out of the vehicle in which he was riding early one morning this spring. He too is in detention. Angelique expresses hope, a sense of calm mixed with distress and outrage, along with her own theory as to why so many of her new family members and co-workers are being seized.

MireyaGeniusEdited4-21-2025 by Michael and Carrie Kline, Talking Across the Lines

We present this field interview with Mireya Katrina Tsironis Genius made with Carrie Kline in April of 2025.

Now in her early thirties, Mireya Genius is an organic vegetable farm manager in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts. She traces her involvement in agriculture to her childhood on the Isle of Crete where her parents had settled in a small traditional village with plenty of room for vegetable farming, which soon captivated her with its possibilities. She learned to raise chickens from an elderly half-blind woman, and became watchful of older people. Her pursuit of farming eventually brought her in conflict with old Greek male farmers who found her youthful enthusiasm annoying and her interest in driving a tractor out of the question. So she finished up her studies and looked to settle in other parts of the world before landing in western Massachusetts eight years ago to make a start in commercial farming. Mireya Genius came because here she can more fully express herself. She enjoys working in a group—it makes the time pass—and she was learning new farming practices from fellow workers.

“People here in the fields were speaking Spanish,” she recalled.” They called themselves ‘Hispanics’ and knew the ropes. I learned fast. I was white and bi-lingual (Spanish) and assumed to have good leadership skills. So I progressed in my employment goals, even learned to drive a tractor! ‘Here,’ they said. Go ahead.’ No discrimination.”

Yet she found people in Massachusetts slow to accept her socially and suffered acute loneliness for a time, often crying in asparagus fields, wondering what she was doing here. She fell in love with the workers she was soon supervising and came to find out the divide she was feeling was widespread. She decided to try to bridge the gaps dogging her work, for instance, that United Statesians in general don’t bother to learn about other people. “They just like to get things like coffee cheap, without knowing how it is produced, or the people who produce it. The same with nameless migrants working in the hot summer sun to grow the vegetables we eat. We don’t even know their names, living situations, social needs, or the threats of deportation that presently haunt them, whether or not they are legally in our valley. Many of them come for medical reasons. They like the quality of farming life.”

Wally and Juanita Nelson were civil rights activists, peace activists, war tax refusers, subsistence farmers, and advocates for simple living. They were members of groups such as CORE (Congress on Racial Equality), FOR (Fellowship of Reconciliation), and Peacemakers. In western Massachusetts they were founding members of the Greenfield Farmers' Market, the Free Harvest Supper, the Valley Community Land Trust, and Winter Fare. They were recipients of numerous awards during their lifetime, including the Courage of Conscience Award from the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, Mass., the Sacco and Vanzetti Award from Community Church in Boston, and the Local Hero Award from CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) for championing local food and agriculture. (Excerpted from https://www.nelsonhomestead.org)

As folklorists, gatherers of oral testimonials and audio producers, we Klines, along with production assistant Nicholas Boyer, produced an hour-long audio tapestry. This is an interweaving of many of the 25 voices we've recorded near and far under the guidance of the Nelson Legacy Project Archival Committee. Each interview averages 90 minutes. We excerpt short portions in order to weave a conversation on the themes of the Nelsons' lives—race, or the one human race, nonviolence, war tax refusal, joy, dance, land trusts and the action around the Kehler-Corner home seizure in Colrain by the IRS, the local food movement and simple living.

Most all of our documentaries have music woven throughout. We created a short piece on the Nelsons called You Don't Gotta. You can hear it on the Project website where you can also enjoy a great many other audiovisual pieces and writings featuring the Nelsons.

“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 and surrounding areas in Massachusetts and Vermont 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 Dawnland” spoke from memory and the heart where memory dwells without notes or prior discussions as to the intended content of their testimonials. The five voices belong to old friends who have paid increasing collective attention to their own Indigenous cultures and histories, buttressed by a decade of archaeological research of their homelands and battlefields. It is a study of the confluence of the focused efforts of the five in the service of wider understanding and inclusion – among themselves and non-Indigenous neighbors.

This production, then, has it's roots in intertribal memory and legend passed through a multi-generational conduit of oral tradition. Its sources are enriched through spiritual interaction with natural surroundings, as well as, more recently, the surfacing of old letters, diaries and other written colonial records. This production does not purport to be a polished or footnoted, scholarly, historical, rendering of Squakheag's past. Library bookshelves groan with euro-centric studies which have long peddled destructive stereotypes and historical inaccuracies.

The response of these narrators is a passionate reaching out in search of balance and reciprocity in the telling of a shared past as a cornerstone to peace and reconciliation. It is dedicated to the life, accomplishments and speedy recovery of Doug Harris and his devoted new wife, Genevieve Frasier.

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 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.org

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 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 we call New England. Isn't it the victors who always write the history? The clarity and passion of this account awakened us to new ways of thinking about New England culture and history—from an Indigenous point of view. Local Indigenous people have been reminding us that, “We are still here.” Those who left have in many cases returned. Those who never left are speaking their past, dancing the dances, singing the songs, chanting the chants and reseeding the land and culture with ancient knowledge.

A grant from the Northfield Cultural Council, a branch of the Mass Cultural Council kicked off an oral history project to gather local memory about life and times of residents of this special town on the New Hampshire border in western Massachusetts. The 350th Committee stressed the need for an in depth understanding of pre-European settlement of the Town. Massachusetts State Senator Jo Comerford has supported the project and has been particularly concerned with our recording Indigenous narratives. This pleased us and we have been thoroughly enjoying interviewing Joe Graveline and other Indigenous scholars and cultural practitioners. The Northfield 350th Anniversary Oral History project has drawn intense interest from a wide variety of residents and turned up all kinds of profound renderings of the past. Much of the work has been carried out with grit and determination from local volunteers.