CCI Press
has two main areas of specialization: educational
materials,
particularly those suited to using the newspaper as a learning tool, and travel and culture.
At
first glance, the two appear to be disparate interests, although the genesis of CCI might explain how the two coincide.
For many years, I have enjoyed the south of France, particularly the area around Cannes, Nice, and St. Tropez.
In
the mid-1990s, my good friend, Guy Furet, the director of the Cours Cannois Guy Furet, and I decided that
students from the United
States might benefit
from spending part of the summer studying French on the Riviera. Mornings in the classroom would be supplemented with
afternoon and weekend trips to Avignon, Saint Tropez, Les Baux de Provence, Nice, Monaco, and Juan Les Pins. Toward that end, we formed Cours Cannois
International, a non-profit educational corporation. After one of my friends from the Fredericksburg Freelance-Star
pointed out that Cours Cannois was like a foreign language to most Americans, we shortened the name to CCI, Ltd.
CCI,
Ltd. has offered a wide range of educational services, from testing homeschooling students to creating learning materials,
and when I left teaching for full-time journalism, I stumbled happily into feature-writing, mostly about education, but increasingly
about travel. More than writing a travelogue, I enjoyed learning about the history of the locales I visited. I wanted to know
what it was like to live there, what the local culture was like.
When
I was offered a full-time newspaper job, I reduced the amount of freelance writing and editing I was doing, and I started
writing weekly education pages for the newspaper. We focused on materials for Newspaper in Education Programs.
When I
left the newspaper business to join a magazine as the education editor, I began writing travel stories in addition to articles
about education. For example, while watching the Harry Potter movies, I wondered
where those marvelous backgrounds were. With a little research, I found most of the sites and drove 1,300 miles around England
to find what would be published as Fact, Film, and Fantasy:
Harry Potter and the Magically Transmuted Country in The
World & I magazine,
and Harry
Potter and the Magical Kingdom on Travellady.com, where I got to use some
of my favorite pictures and bits of history that didnt make it into the
World & I. For me, the history behind the settings
was the most exciting aspect of the story.
That's
the idea behind CCI articles: a village had existed on the site now known as Saint Tropez for more than two thousand years
before the decapitated saint washed up on the beach. The story behind Saint Tropez and its annual celebration of its historic
legacy was one of my favorites, even if I had to return to Saint Tropez several
times to get the story.
So,
there you have it: CCI has two divisions, one focused on Newspaper in Education materials that, I am thrilled to say, are
being used by newspapers across the country, and the other emphasizing travel stories driven by their historic or cultural
Legacy.
On these pages, you will
synopses of some of the articles that are available for purchase, some of my favorite accompanying photos, and a complete
article or two that will be rotated.
Enjoy your visit and feel
free to pass the word to the travel editors in your card file or neighborhood.
Craig Lancto.
