If you were stuck in the garden doing chores you should have done last fall, or had to earn a living, you might have missed it, for a lot happened last week.

No, I am not referring to the new Taylor Swift double album that dropped the other night. I know that is a big deal for much of the population under 50, but not for me. Although, from what I gather, she seems to be a pretty woman, pretty talented, and, smart. Good for her and her fans.

Where to start?

Monday was Earth Day. It seems an appropriate time to ponder the climate. Last week, we saw a flood in Dubai. The folks in that desert nation got a year's worth of rain in a day or so. Climate scientists say the last 10 months were the hottest ever recorded on Mother Earth. On one side of the globe, the Antarctic sea ice was shrinking, while thousands of miles away, the Amazon River water level was the lowest ever.

Yes, something is going on with the climate. If you need convincing, remember the winter storms that sent the ocean into our towns up and down the coast, ripping out docks.

I start this thought with a collection of nature factoids to begin a discussion about our local schools. Now, do not expect me to preach about funding. I don’t know the answer, other than something seems to be a problem, and I am sure it will cost a lot to remedy. Things seem to be changing. And our kids and grandkids need an up-to-date education to cope with a world that seems different than when we were teenagers. Things are different today than yesterday.

For instance, we depend upon the smartphone in our back pockets and the smartwatch on our wrist. They give us more computer power than NASA had when they sent men to the moon.

Tim Hodgdon, heir to one of Maine’s great boatbuilding traditions, is now building high-end yacht tenders powered by electricity.

Our local fishermen no longer depend on dories and nets to round up sardines and cod. The lobster fishermen now journey further out to sea. They depend upon high-tech navigation gear to locate their traps and satellite weather data to bring them home safely.

Auto mechanics identify the strange sound coming from your faithful SUV using gadgets that probe the car’s computer.

Traditional thinking schools that turn out kids who just know reading, writing and arithmetic don’t cut it anymore.

To survive, we need educated kids, and that requires good teachers. We can’t expect them to do their best for our kids when the roof leaks every time it rains. What is the solution? I don’t know. But I do know we need to educate our kids.

We have a problem with the local school’s physical plant. We know it will cost a lot of money to make it right. How much? No one can predict, but the solution will be expensive. I know we won’t solve that problem by yelling at each other.

We won’t solve the problem by blaming this board or that board for doing this or that or not doing this or that. We won’t solve the problem when this board blames the other board. This community is blessed with a population of good, smart, caring citizens, who care about each other, their neighbors, their kids, and grandkids. Meanwhile, it is raining. It is your choice.

In other news, the former president of the United States is sitting at the defense table in a New York criminal court. It looks like he will spend much of the spring in that room.

On Saturday, the earth shook when Congressional Republicans and Democrats banded together to pass a bill to help fund the defense budget of the Ukrainians and the Israelis.

It seems to have been a remarkable political event in a Congress where the GOP and the Demos spend much of their time spewing invectives at each other. This time, old-guard Republicans pulled together with the Democrats to defeat the young GOP chaos caucus that threatened to oust the Republican speaker. His crime? He refused their bidding.

Meanwhile, on a personal note, my old newspaper home, The Indianapolis Star, where I toiled for 36 years, shut down the mighty presses. Those presses once sent 400,000 copies of a fat Sunday paper to subscribers. Then came the internet. It is a sad commentary on a vital business that seems to have lost its way. Now Hoosier customers who prefer a traditional printed newspaper will have to wait for their morning paper because it is printed somewhere away.