Garage sales are curious public showcases. Today was the first of three days to sell off the accumulated, unused, or outgrown household things in conjunction with the annual town festival that brings people from far away and from the surrounding towns, as well. Driving across this city of 7,000 it seems that 1 in 20 or 25 houses has covered their streetside lawn with clothing, appliances, decorative things, books & movies & music, etc. Everything is priced for easy tally between the several families joining together in this large example shown, above. Perhaps the lowly galoshes in the foreground is one extreme (utilitarian, not overly laden with personal significance), while the wedding gown hanging among the other clothing in the background is the other extreme (tied to a specific date in history when two people and their families intersected with ritual, music, vows, gift giving, speech making, and feasting). And yet, whether it is because of storage limitations, moving house, downshifting and downsizing, or to raise cash, all these things have been brought out into public view with a price affixed to identify the contributing household. In the eyes of strangers it all has equally low meaning beyond use value or functional purpose. Knowing this gap between high personal meaning of seller and low meaning of buyer can lead to pangs of remorse, a sense of abandoning one’s memories or cherished times, or simply a mild feeling of disorientation and disorganization as one’s previous accumulated markers or life come to be sold on the public market, gone forever from the closet or shelf they once occupied. And yet so it must be; “you can’t take it with you,” as they say of life’s transitions and eventual ending of one’s own life path. So, farewell to all you treasures big and small of life happily lived. Let us hope there is some secondary value in the new owner’s hands before ultimately being recycled or added to landfill layers.