Context for "The Professor"

When one reader of this blog noted, "...listening to your reading of The Professor was like walking in on someone else's conversation ..." I realized I should have provided more context. Here it is:

The Professor is the third of a three-part memoir about my experiences in Lebanon in 2000. I read the piece on the radio during an interview about Gone To Ground in December with David Kenly (KGGV-FM) on his show, Rivermouth. David was good enough to provide me with a digital recording of the reading and that is the clip that ended up here.

About The Professor: In 2000 I was the Director of International Programs and Services at California State University, Los Angeles. The Governor of our Rotary District, Garbis der Yeghian, invited me, an active member of the Rotary Club of East Los Angeles, to lead a delegation of three young non-Rotarian educators to Lebanon where we would spend one month, meeting with our vocational counterparts and living with local families. The program, called the Rotary Group Study Exchange, is one of Rotary's best. If you are under 30 and can get leave from your job for a month, check it out!

Over the course of the month, I lived in the homes of three Lebanese families; one in the north (Tripoli); one in the center (Beirut); and one in the South (Sidon). The three-part memoir in Gone to Ground is my attempt to show Lebanon as more than an international "hot spot" on the evening news, but rather a place where people make friends, fall in love, raise children, worry about the future and do their best to make their lives work.