I have put together one of the most positive podcasts I have done for this—my special Christmas edition of Streets of Your Town for you my wonderful Wandering Journo tribe!
With all that is going on around the world, I thought a ray of positivity in the midst of the confusion was just the tonic that was needed. Hope you can kick back and have a listen while wrapping those last minute presents, or perhaps in that beautiful lazy week between Christmas and New Year which I am so looking forward to!
I am keeping this edition short so you can get to your Christmas festivities!
Which brings me to Karen Jacobsen.
Karen's voice is familiar to the users of more than a billion devices worldwide, as the voice of Siri.
But her movements in the past year are less well known than her voice, which has directed people to their destination through GPS devices around the globe.
The pandemic meant she picked up from her home of 20 years in New York, and returned to Australia. She tells us on Streets of Your Town podcast, that she thought this would be a short sojourn.
“This worldwide pandemic crisis…had us literally pick up and leave with a day’s notice thinking, ‘Well—we will come to Australia for a few weeks while it blows over,” Karen says.
“That has led to an extremely unexpected relocation but when you mention the Whitsundays, there was the thinking that if we’re going to be displaced from our home of 20 years in New York, we’ll do it in paradise thank you very much!”
Karen and her family are still Down Under.
More than 18 months down the track, they are still living in the Whitsundays, and Karen has just released her latest album “Ready for What I Came Here For”, which she started recording in New York before Covid-19 hit, and finished by recording remotely from her island home.
“At the age of 52 I have some things to say in a different way to when I was 17,” she says.
“It’s really been incredibly moving, because there are people out there who want to hear what somebody with a little life experience has to say through music with a message.
“I feel like I’m just at the start of a very exciting period of my life.”
Karen knows this positive attitude is counter to the predominant assumptions that still abound for women “of a certain age”.
“I openly just shared my age because I think it is very important that something that I know I’ve hidden for years and years and years because in the music business you’re washed up if you’re 22, nobody’s going to work if you’re over 35. I am so done with that. I am so over it,” she says.
“Anybody listening who is that type of environment where people make judgements about your age and whatever status you have, I mean truly I feel so liberated from that.
“And if somebody like me who felt so trapped in that entertainment industry thinking for so long can decide, and I have, I’ve just decided I am running my own race.
“I am not a part of the traditional music business and I will liaise with it when welcomed and whenever required but truly I am independent artist creating beautiful music, I’m here to share beauty and love in the world, and I’m going to keep doing it.”
While Karen’s voice is familiar to many listeners as the voice of Siri, she says that opportunity has opened up so many doors since.
“When I was first over there in New York a client was doing auditions and they were looking for a native Australian VoiceOver artist living in the north-east of the United States and I saw that brief and I thought that is a description of me!,” she says.
“I went to the audition and I got the job.”
From the vault
Being Christmas and all makes us all a bit sentimental, and so I thought I’d share a couple of my favourite old episodes of Streets of Your Town which is now 86 episodes strong! Thanks for opening your listening ears to me and supporting me on my travels in Mildred the Cantankerous Kombi—I couldn’t fill my petrol tank and find my next great Australian yarn to tell you all without your subscriptions and support.
One of my favourite chapters of the Streets of Your Town journey was the Journo Project. One of my favourite episodes was my interview with Trent Dalton, who has now just released his third book—“Love Stories”!
In this interview he did with me for The Journo Project, Trent explains how his journalism background was so crucial to his success as an author with his worldwide smash hit first novel Boy Swallows Universe.
One of my most popular editions of this newsletter funnily enough was the only one that didn’t have a podcast in it! It was about me and my brother Ashley. I called it Life with My Bro.
I was and continue to be so touched that my reflections on life with my brother Ashley who has a severe intellectual disability, really resonated with so many of you. It was shared more than 800 times!
I know many of you were worried about the outcome for Ashley after his operations and his tough time in and out of hospital.
Well I am so glad to bring a bit more Christmas cheer to your world, because this is the first time in a couple of years that Ashley has felt up to celebrating Christmas, because of the health challenges he faced.
But this year he told me that he was ready to get back into Christmas, and so I hit Facebook marketplace with a vengeance and found what I thought was a pretty cool tree and sparkly lights.
Anyone doubting the magic of Christmas only has to look at the happiness in these pics—taken by his beloved support worker Greg.
It makes all the hard times worthwhile.
Behind the Scenes
Thank you to all of you my Wandering Journo tribe for supporting me to bring this podcast to you!
And if you’re looking for a VERY last minute Christmas present…what better way to do it than support Press Freedom and diversity in Australia through supporting indie podcasters like myself—and buy a subscription to this newsletter? Support your indie podcasters today by pressing on the button below.
All the people who get a new subscription or renew their subscription will receive my eternal gratitude, and more importantly—merch! You will get one Wandering Journo magnet and one Wandering Journo pen. And if you renew your subscription for a year, I will send you a one of a kind Wandering Journo thermos style water bottle too that keeps your drinks hot or cold! What a great deal is that!
I hope you and yours all have the merriest of Christmases!
Nance
Streets of your Town podcast would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians on whose land this story was gathered.
I acknowledge that for tens of thousand of years Our First Nations people have walked this country and shared stories on this great land down under, and I walk in their footsteps today.
I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.
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