Opinion

Beth and I have been spending countless hours during the past month cleaning out my parents’ house to get it ready to be sold. I have a few takeaways. Although I have been able to donate many items, some useful items had to be thrown away because of a lack of interest.

I have been going through papers and other items in my parents’ house now that they are both gone. There are things that I have found that I had heard about but never saw and other things that I did not even know about. One of the problems is trying to figure out who is in old photos. It would have been more productive if I had gone through the photos while my mother was still alive. My suggestion is that if you have elderly parents it would be a smart idea to ask them if you can go through their photos with them. I am also very impressed by how organized my mother was even in her nineties. I do not know what happened to me. I clearly did not inherit her organizational skills. It is also interesting to see what they saved. People save what they think is important to keep.

Many people need deadlines to do things that take a lot of effort or are time-consuming. I can identify with them, having had to spend so much time and effort clearing out my parents’ house. This includes going through old papers.  It is amazing what you find in places you never would have looked, like behind a drawer. If I had not taken the drawers out of my old desk, I never would have found the papers that had fallen and were lodged behind the drawer. I found things I thought I had lost and items I never remembered having.

Within an 8 -day period, an assassination attempt was made on a former president and Republican presidential candidate, there was a ruling dismissing the documents case, the Republican National Convention (RNC) took place, and President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Each event would warrant its own column.

Recently, there were many significant events that dominated the news. One story was about the hostage deal which brought home American hostages from Russia. Another was Trump’s appearance before a Black journalists’ organization that some called a dumpster fire, and Trump supporters thought that Trump was at his finest. However, I, like many, was fixated on whom Kamala Harris would select as her running mate.

There was supposed to be an event in Kew Gardens Hills this week featuring real estate for sale in Israel. This was the same type of event that caused problems in Los Angeles and Teaneck. The anti-Semites and anti-Israel crowd found out about it and planned a protest near the shul where it was supposed to be held. The advice given by community leaders, elected officials, and the police was to not show up and counterprotest.