https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/keep-the-dash-alive--3522221www.coeurbridge.com.]]>enHistoryCopyright Julie Bonnerhttps://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/1aca7e2f71d4605cbd9f6784c2637929.jpghttps://www.spreaker.com/podcast/keep-the-dash-alive--3522221Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:38:29 +0000Julie BonnerJulie Bonnerjulie@coeurbridge.comResearching your family history is an exciting journey into the past. However, leaving a trail for future generations is just as important! Learn how to write and publish a family history book, learn how to use technology for future generations, learn...www.coeurbridge.com.]]>falseepisodichttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/killacranky-turning-history-into-a-book--72468501
Book link: Killacranky]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72468501Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:09:08 +0000Julie BonnerI had all of the articles, and I presented them word for word. I did use Claude (AI) to help sort through all of the stories and suggest an organizational spine for the book. This episode goes through how I used AI to do this work and how I asked it...
Book link: Killacranky]]>532ai,amazonkdp,book,editing,family,genealogy,history,kdp,photos,publishing,selfpublishfalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/killacranky-annotated-memoir-sorting-fact-from-fiction--72468487
Book link: Killacranky]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72468487Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:06:22 +0000Julie BonnerIn presenting the articles my great-great-grandfather wrote, I had to separate fact from fiction. He loved to embellish, like any good southerner, with his tall tales. I used the usual sources on ancestry - like census records, etc...but I also had...
Book link: Killacranky]]>663ai,ancestry,book,civilwar,evidence,genealogy,history,memoir,military,publishing,research,roots,sources,storytelling,writingfalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/killacranky-what-do-you-do-when-an-ancestor-writes-something-controversial--72468469
Book link: Killacranky]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72468469Wed, 10 Jun 2026 23:59:51 +0000Julie BonnerAlmost every family history runs into it eventually: an ancestor who wrote something you can’t defend. This episode is about the hardest editorial decision there is — and why erasing the ugly parts is the real failure. My great-great-grandfather’s...
Book link: Killacranky]]>676ancestry,civilwar,context,ethics,family,genealogy,heritage,history,memoir,rootsfalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/killacranky-writing-a-civil-war-memoir--72468446
Book link: Killacranky]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72468446Wed, 10 Jun 2026 23:55:29 +0000Julie BonnerNames and dates tell you a person existed. They don’t introduce you to who that person was. In this episode about a book I have published on one of my two times great-grandfathers' military writings, I share the moment family history stopped being a...
Book link: Killacranky]]>462ancestry,biography,familyhistry,genealogy,history,memoir,publishing,records,research,storytelling,writingfalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/how-to-answer-ai-questions-on-kdp--72035458
Loose Pearls: A Marriage in Letters, 1945–1946 — available on Kindle and audiobook. Paperback and hardcover coming soon.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72035458Sat, 16 May 2026 21:28:16 +0000Julie BonnerKDP (the Amazon self-publishing platform) now asks questions about how AI has helped with a book's content. In writing the Loose Pearls memoir of my paternal grandparents, I definitely used AI for assistance. I walk through how I answered these...
Loose Pearls: A Marriage in Letters, 1945–1946 — available on Kindle and audiobook. Paperback and hardcover coming soon.]]>390ai,family,history,kdp,letters,memoir,wwiifalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/how-to-write-the-family-letter-memoir-manuscript--72035159
Loose Pearls: A Marriage in Letters, 1945–1946 — available on Kindle and audiobook. Paperback and hardcover coming soon.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72035159Sat, 16 May 2026 21:04:26 +0000Julie BonnerAI did suggest a grouping of parts and the suggested manuscript, but AI makes huge assumptions about the content unless you tell it not to or to force it to notice its own assumptions. This video describes how i, with AI help, built the manuscript of...
Loose Pearls: A Marriage in Letters, 1945–1946 — available on Kindle and audiobook. Paperback and hardcover coming soon.]]>999ai,claude,family,genealogy,history,manuscript,memoir,voice,war,writing,wwiifalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/how-to-use-ai-for-a-family-memoir--72034716
 📖 Loose Pearls: A Marriage in Letters, 1945–1946 — available on Kindle and audiobook. Paperback and hardcover coming soon.

AI PROMPT: "I am working on a book of letters between my grandparents during World War Two. I am going to upload the master log and a batch of transcribed letters. Please read each letter and propose a row for the log. The columns are letter number, date, author, written from, written to, key quotes, emotional tone, historical details, family details, recommendation of either BOOK or ANCESTRY, notes, source file, and war timeline context. State the BOOK or ANCESTRY recommendation in chat with the full source filename before writing anything to the spreadsheet. Wait for my explicit approval before appending. Make honest BOOK or ANCESTRY calls. Do not oversell weak letters. I need the exact filename of every letter recorded in the source file column. Please remember this for every batch going forward. I cannot match book or ancestry decisions back to specific files without it."]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72034716Sat, 16 May 2026 20:15:06 +0000Julie Bonner548 letters is a huge archive. So, yes, it took me 8 years to figure out how to turn all these letters into a book. With the advent of AI tools, I felt I had a way to help me manage them and make them into an interesting book. In this episode I share...
 📖 Loose Pearls: A Marriage in Letters, 1945–1946 — available on Kindle and audiobook. Paperback and hardcover coming soon.

AI PROMPT: "I am working on a book of letters between my grandparents during World War Two. I am going to upload the master log and a batch of transcribed letters. Please read each letter and propose a row for the log. The columns are letter number, date, author, written from, written to, key quotes, emotional tone, historical details, family details, recommendation of either BOOK or ANCESTRY, notes, source file, and war timeline context. State the BOOK or ANCESTRY recommendation in chat with the full source filename before writing anything to the spreadsheet. Wait for my explicit approval before appending. Make honest BOOK or ANCESTRY calls. Do not oversell weak letters. I need the exact filename of every letter recorded in the source file column. Please remember this for every batch going forward. I cannot match book or ancestry decisions back to specific files without it."]]>1040ai,anthropic,claude,genealogy,kdp,memoir,prompts,workflow,writingfalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/digitizing-the-548-fragile-wwii-letters--71961127
LINK TO BOOK ON AMAZON]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/71961127Mon, 11 May 2026 19:12:34 +0000Julie BonnerBefore the writing, before the organizing — preservation. In this first method episode, Julie shares how she digitized over 500 wartime letters between her grandparents Woodrow and Vera Bonner, written across the Pacific in 1945 and 1946. The free...
LINK TO BOOK ON AMAZON]]>621ancestry,archive,dictation,family,genealogy,history,letters,memoir,preservation,transcription,voice,wwiifalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-eight-week-pearl-hunt-a-wwii-soldier-story--71939714
Amazon Book Link: Loose Pearls: https://www.amazon.com/Loose-Pearls-Marriages-1945-1946-Correspondence-ebook/dp/B0GZGG32V5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1GU5JQJS9UV0I&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.hAzeTcXxjnnEilURvb3WqA.tnCbCN1An3CxqxdYjQwphW9E8wdU-aolIKWKvSfqDqc&dib_tag=se&keywords=loose+pearls+julie+bonner&qid=1778350576&sprefix=loose+pearls+julie+bonner%2Caps%2C430&sr=8-1]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/71939714Sat, 09 May 2026 18:28:26 +0000Julie BonnerIn February 1946, my paternal grandfather, Woodrow Bonner, found a string of cultured pearls in a shop in Kobe and wrote to my grandmother, Vera, that he was going to try to buy them. He couldn't. What followed was an eight-week hunt across occupied...
Amazon Book Link: Loose Pearls: https://www.amazon.com/Loose-Pearls-Marriages-1945-1946-Correspondence-ebook/dp/B0GZGG32V5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1GU5JQJS9UV0I&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.hAzeTcXxjnnEilURvb3WqA.tnCbCN1An3CxqxdYjQwphW9E8wdU-aolIKWKvSfqDqc&dib_tag=se&keywords=loose+pearls+julie+bonner&qid=1778350576&sprefix=loose+pearls+julie+bonner%2Caps%2C430&sr=8-1]]>592family,genealogy,letters,memoir,military,wwiifalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/preserving-stories-are-priceless-my-first-book--59680458
When you are preserving the stories of your family, you can use Zoom and other platforms to create videos AND podcast episodes. Future generations will find these priceless!

In this episode, this method is discussed around a story that I preserve for my family. The story is about the influence of my mother on my reading habits and a book I saved!]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/59680458Sun, 28 Apr 2024 03:29:28 +0000Julie BonnerIf you google the phrase "family history questions" you can find many pages that can give you ideas about what to share with future generations of your family. I was struck by one question that asked - do you have a toy you have kept from your...
When you are preserving the stories of your family, you can use Zoom and other platforms to create videos AND podcast episodes. Future generations will find these priceless!

In this episode, this method is discussed around a story that I preserve for my family. The story is about the influence of my mother on my reading habits and a book I saved!]]>735falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/episode-5-move-me-lord--59073695
You will hear about the technology I used to pull the audio together and the history passed to me. 

I used Zoom to record the audio introduction
The music was on a cassette I pulled off using a USB cassette to digital recorder
I used MixPad to combine the files to preserve it for family history!
If you want to see the video: https://youtu.be/G4WlB2YnhxQ - in the video you can see a picture of Vera and a picture of the original score]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/59073695Sat, 16 Mar 2024 23:49:15 +0000Julie BonnerIn 1971, my paternal grandmother, Vera Dors (Harper) Bonner, wrote a song with her niece, Norma (Bonner) Elmore. Norma wrote the music, and Vera wrote the lyrics. Later, the song was recorded as a birthday present to me. You will hear about the...
You will hear about the technology I used to pull the audio together and the history passed to me. 

I used Zoom to record the audio introduction
The music was on a cassette I pulled off using a USB cassette to digital recorder
I used MixPad to combine the files to preserve it for family history!
If you want to see the video: https://youtu.be/G4WlB2YnhxQ - in the video you can see a picture of Vera and a picture of the original score]]>219falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/episode-4-how-to-save-family-history-audio--28579600Julie@coeurbridge.com. Please find Keep the Dash Alive on Youtube for videos.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/28579600Fri, 29 May 2020 02:24:29 +0000Julie BonnerWelcome to Keep the Dash Alive. I’m your host, Julie Bonner, and today we explore recording family voices. These are some of the coolest family history assets you will ever produce! If you have any questions about this episode, you can email me at...Julie@coeurbridge.com. Please find Keep the Dash Alive on Youtube for videos.]]>460archive,family-recordings,preserving-audio,voice-recordingsfalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/episode-3-how-dna-helped-identify-a-half-sibling--23306054https://api.spreaker.com/episode/23306054Sat, 29 Feb 2020 00:58:22 +0000Julie BonnerThis the Keep the Dash Alive Podcast. This episode explores how DNA analysis helped me connect to a previously unknown half sibling in my extended family!428acestory,dna,family,geneology,historyfalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/episode-2-how-to-use-gps-technology-for-family-history--22974210https://api.spreaker.com/episode/22974210Thu, 20 Feb 2020 01:15:54 +0000Julie BonnerGPS applications on your smartphone can be a great boost to your family history research. Along with this podcast episode, I also have a video about GPS technology and family research on the Keep The Dash Alive YouTube channel. Also, on Amazon, you...417family,genealogy,gps,historyfalsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/episode-1-boots-on-the-ground-family-research--22930176https://api.spreaker.com/episode/22930176Tue, 18 Feb 2020 23:19:43 +0000Julie BonnerTechnology has brought us great online resources, but, you never know what you might find with your boots on the ground. Follow in your family footsteps to sometimes discover a nugget that would have never have been found in an online database. We...415family,geneaology,historyfalsefull