Dorothy Day was a most ordinary woman. If you encountered her on the streets of New York or any other city, you would likely not have cast a second glance. Soft spoken, she seemed to me to walk through the world simultaneously resolutely and cautiously – as if she always knew just where she was going, while always sensitive to whatever or whomever she might encounter. She had a strong, firm handshake, which matched the steady gaze from her kind eyes when she looked at you.

My mother was fortunate to live the last year of her life at the 1st Street Catholic Worker in lower Manhattan, in Dorothy Day’s own quarters. I’d gotten to know Dorothy in the previous couple of years, through my friendship with Daniel Berrigan, and I had visited many times. I also had three friends (Bonnie, Barbara and Dale) from Oklahoma who had moved to New York and were now regular volunteers at the Worker.

Of course I was aware of Dorothy’s history and her importance to so many people. I knew how her Catholic Worker “House of Hospitality” had been replicated in more than a hundred communities around the world. I knew how simply she herself lived.

Still, when I think back on it, I must not have appreciated fully the gift I had been given – to spend time in her presence, to engage her in quiet conversation, to break bread with her at the 1st Street soup kitchen where my mother volunteered.

I was not surprised that this Pope honored Dorothy Day by acknowledging her words and her life in his address before Congress yesterday. Pope Francis is after all a Jesuit, and it always seemed that the Jesuits “got” Dorothy Day, more than other Catholics especially the various Popes in Rome during her lifetime, to whom Dorothy was often a thorn in their side.

So here’s to you, Dorothy Day, for some long-overdue ray of recognition for your service and your example.

And thank you, for being so good to my mom.

This afternoon I attended a one hour talk-back session with our state representative, Todd Novak. The topic was the egregious education policy changes written into the proposed Wisconsin state budget, poised for approval by the state legislature. This budget will effectively transfer millions of dollars of tax dollars from public to private education, stripping public schools of desperately needed funds, and filling the coffers of for-profit private enterprises that are currently universally religious in nature.

Approximately thirty concerned citizens attended, including parents and administrators and school board members from a number of schools in this legislative district. Not one person spoke in favor of the proposed changes. The attendees came armed with facts and figures, detailing exactly how much money each school in the district stood to lose as public funds, collected locally, flow to private schools located outside our district. These private schools will also, according to the policy written into the ‘budget’, not have to answer to any standards or tests, which are required of the public schools. They can teach anything they want. They can teach nothing at all. They have to follow no standards.

Add to this the unimaginable proposal to eliminate even minimal requirements for teachers, and you have a clusterfuck of major proportion. The current proposal before the legislature would allow anyone to teach, without any teacher training, without a bachelor degree, hell – even without a high school degree. This proposal has made Wisconsin the laughing stock of the country, even the world. Rep. Novak said that the language for this section of the budget is being ‘pulled back’ because there has been some outrage over it – but it’s only being pulled back in part.

It was a wretched way to spend an hour – tormenting oneself with the harsh realities of what a Republican governor and a Republican State Senate and a Republican State Assembly want to do to public education in this state.

But the worst of it was not the endless list of calamities that this legislation will inflict, bad as they are. What offended me the most was Rep. Novak saying, no less than eighteen times in one hour: “Unfortunately, the train has left the station …” And then he would shrug, and smile and pretend to commiserate with the parents and educators who universally – to the very last person in the room – opposed the proposed changes that promise to eviserate public education in this state.

The train has left the station.

And with this glib statement, Rep. Novak washed his hands, again and again and again, of the problem. When an attendee challenged his hiding behind this phrase toward the end of the hour long meeting, he intoned that he only meant to say that the move toward privatization in education started before he was elected to the Assembly, and that it’s not going to be stopped now. His response was hardly a response at all. It doesn’t matter whether this travesty was initiated ten years ago or ten minutes ago – shrugging your shoulders and meekly smiling is not an acceptable answer to a constituency that is outraged by the back-door dealings of private school profiteers and legislators in Madison.

We deserve a better answer. We deserve a better state representative – one who will represent us and not simply vote the party line. We deserve (our children deserve) better schools.