Tag: yard sale

Letter to Elon — have you abandoned us?!

Lucy Moore

May 5, 2025

Dear Elon –

What’s this I hear? You’ve told all those federal employees to stop writing the 5-things-I-did email to you every week? Well, where does that leave me and my jolly band of do-gooder postcard writers? There are hundreds of us ordinary citizens around the country, sending you our weekly cards and letters with the 5 things we each did. What am I to tell them? That our carefully crafted messages to you will be tossed in the trash, that you care more about cars than you do about us? Or – heaven forbid – have we let you down? If we have, I ask you, what more can we do?! We are supporting food depots, human rights organizations, immigrant support groups, candidates running to save democracy; we are protesting, making signs that are very clever, spreading the word and educating people; we are taking care of our neighbors and we are making our communities stronger.

So, Elon, please let us know how you would like us to proceed. We would prefer to keep doing our 5 things each week – some of us are actually addicted and might have a hard time giving it up — but if you want us to stop just let me know. In the meantime, we will just keep chugging along. 

And here are my 5-things from last week — 4 actually, but they are good ones:

  • In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I sent a letter of support to Lalo Alcaraz, the cartoonist of La Cucaracha comic strip. I enjoy it every morning with my coffee. La Cucaracha means cockroach and often there are characters that remind me of you. You should check it out.
  • I wrote a thank you letter – it’s really easy and very satisfying, you should try it. I wanted Harvard University to know how pleased I am by their refusal to cooperate with some crazy extortionists that are threatening them with the loss of billions of dollars. Really, these people that are attacking universities are too much!  They will bring down our democracy! It seems as if your power is unlimited, so if you see any of them in the halls, please handcuff them and send them straight to El Salvador.  
  • I organized a community-wide yard sale. Fifteen households participated, isn’t that great? We had fun, recycled probably a ton of used goods, which is good for the environment and the soul. I guess it’s not good for tycoons of industry who would like us to buy new stuff and toss the old in the landfill. Just imagining those dumps full of perfectly good stuff turns my stomach…although a landfill of Tesla trucks might be a pretty sight, all that glistening tin. But, Elon, think of the recycling possibilities – millions of beautiful cookie sheets.  
  • I met with our 5-things-I-did group here in town for a rousing session. We decided to get trained as” legal observers,” people who know the constitution and local laws and ordinances and can make sure that everyone at rallies, protests, and other gatherings is safe from abuse and unwarranted arrests. Legal observers can serve as witnesses, like a friend who saw some men in masks and camo stop a car, take the driver out and kidnap him, leaving his shocked wife and children in the car. My friend recorded it all on her cell phone and sent it to a local human rights organization. The men tried to stop her and shouted it was illegal to record, but she knew it was her right and she kept on doing it. Isn’t that courageous? I want to be ready to do the same thing.

OK, Elon, that’s it for now. Please let me know if you want me to stop doing my five things each week. If I don’t hear from you, we’re carrying on!

Have a nice Cinco de Mayo!

Lucy

such beautiful cookie sheets….
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Mountains of Stuff

Lucy Moore

Every year our community has a giant, multi-household yard sale. It has developed a following in the greater Santa Fe area and we have many repeat customers, hovering before the 8:00 am start, hoping for early bird specials. There was the usual assortment of yard sale items, but there are always treasures to be found. This year my neighbor sold her grandmother’s hats from the 40s – fantastic, elaborate, elegant, mostly black, many with sparkly beads, a feather or two, beautifully crafted. An artist neighbor made themed packets of collage materials. We sold a monster aloe vera plant that was consuming the kitchen and a Danish wooden hanging lamp that I’d had since the 70s. Hundreds came and that is why this blog post is late. I needed a little recovery time.

Sold!

This is the good news – I divested myself of many things. The bad news is that there is so much more… stuff. How to deal with a lifetime’s collection of material goods, and in my case, not only my lifetime but my parents and grandparents and beyond. For decades I have been custodian of dishes, vases, tarnished maybe-silver baby dishes, yearbooks, report cards, letters, clippings and handmade cards and crafts that seemed to be very important to someone long ago. I have my grandmother’s wedding dress from 1900, my great grandfather’s Civil War medal, my mother’s drawings from her college years, my father’s award from the Seattle Food Lifeline which he helped found – and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I have felt it was my responsibility to save and protect this collection of family lore. These things meant enough to my ancestors to pass down to the next generation. Heaven forbid I would break the chain and fail to do my duty. And, of course, like a good ancestor I am adding my own lore, imagining that someday some descendant will be happy that I saved the little clay penguin I made in nursery school.

my grandmother’s wedding dress, 1900, Webster, SD
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The Girl at the Yard Sale

Lucy Moore

The great thing about yard sales is the element of surprise. Will you sell that top-of-the-line jig saw made in Switzerland, only used a couple of times, still in its fancy case? Will someone not be

able to resist that shawl in beautiful earth tones from Bali? What about the Japanese vase made out of a fat section of bamboo, so simple and elegant?We had a yardsale today and none of the above sold. No matter. It was a great day, and I’ll tell you why.

I was selling a dozen or so Easton Press books. They are the classics, leather bound with fancy gold (real gold, they say) lettering and designs on the covers, gold edged pages and elegant illustrations. I inherited them and although they are handsome on a bookshelf, they just didn’t look comfortable on our bookshelves. They needed another home where they would be loved.

Two sisters came along, shorts, pierced ears, cute purses and ball caps. The younger one saw the books. “Ohhhh. I love books!  These are so great! I just love them!” and she picked up one, petting the cover, fingering the gold embossing. She opened it lovingly, cooing over the print, the illustrations, and generally being a really enthusiastic teenager.

“Do you have Of Mice and Men?” She was almost afraid to ask. It was a long shot that it would be one of the dozen in the box. (more…)

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