Letters to Chelle
McCann, Kristin

>>SPEAKER: Alright, would you say your name?

>>KRISTIN: Kristin McCann.

>>SPEAKER: Ok, and what's your story about?

>>KRISTIN: My story is about sending audio cassette tapes to my aunt kind of in the late 80's. When I was about three or four my mom and my younger brother and I, he was probably about two and I was like three, to my aunt when she was living in Sacramento, California. I should say that my aunt is my mom's sister and she was and still is blind, fully blind at the time. So we would send her these audio tapes as a way to stay in touch with her. You could sort of think of it as a low-tech Skype or something like that because it was in the days before high uses of email or cheap cell phone long distance calling. It was a way to stay connected with my aunt through our voices but then also a way to sort of get around her having to mediate our letters that we would have hand-written, to mediate that through other readers so she could be in touch with us directly rather than having to have a reader read our thoughts and things like that. Also it was because none of us knew braille, we didn't know the language that she was most accustomed to for writing and reading. It sort of - I don't know - it makes me sort of upset because to this day no one in our family knows braille still and so it is my goal this summer to learn braille and to be someone who she can contact in that way rather than it always having to be on site of people's terms. So that's my story.