* Tweet Clamantis in Deserto

No one is more surprised than I am  to find myself running for the school board. A few weeks ago a friend called me to say there was a vacancy on the school board and asked if I would run for it.  I replied,
That's like asking a bull in a china shop to become a canary in a coal mine..  I don't know if I can TWEET."

When I started to think about that I googled "tweet" and discovred that 500 million tweets occur on Twitter every day including the Queen of England and Oprah, the two richest canarys in the world.

So even if I was able to stop knocking over shelves of china and become a caged bird sweetly tweeting a warning that the education system was filling up with poison gas from Washington or Montpelier or the Governor's Conferences, nobody would hear me.

To recoin Dartmouth's motto, I wouldn't be a Tweet clamantis in deserto.  Nobody would hear me not because I was the ONLY voice tweeting in the desert but because there were a zillion tweets drowning me out.

I want to tell you a story.  

A few weeks ago i was subbing for a class in Hartford High. One of the tenth grade girls was the daughter of a student I had 25 years ago.  When I told the class I had taught in this school for 25 years but retired 2 years ago, she asked "What did you teach?" I said, "English".  She shot back, "Why WOULD you come back?"


Without thinking I said words I had never said or thought before, "Because my heart is here."

And that's why I want to be on your school board. 

I'll try not to break any china, or tweet too loud or too often.  

But I want to be where my heart is.