In Rome, July, 1973, John Paul Getty III, the 16-year-old grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, was kidnapped by a group linked to the Italian mafia. The kidnappers initially demanded that the young man's grandfather pay $17 million, but the senior Getty was notoriously frugal (errr, cheap). So despite his tremendous wealth, he refused to pay the ransom. He highly suspected that the kidnapping might have been staged to extort money from him. He justified his decision to withhold payment by saying, “If I pay one penny now, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”

Over the next five months, with negotiations at a stand still, the teenager continued to be held captive. In November, to prove they weren't fooling around, the kidnappers sent a package to a Rome newspaper containing a lock of the boy's hair and his severed ear. The message was clear: Pay up, or death is imminent.

Public image finally won out over greed and/or frugality, and Getty finally agreed to pay -- not the full $17 million, but rather a mere $3 million. Getty himself would contribute $2.2 million, the maximum amount that was tax deductible. The remaining $800,000 he lent to his son, the boy's father, at a rate of 4 percent interest. The boy was released on December 15, 1973.

A story is told of a master potter known for her exquisite clay vessels. One day, while carrying her finest creation—a delicate vase—to the market, she tripped, and it shattered on the ground. Heartbroken, she gathered the pieces, but instead of discarding them, she took them back to her workshop.

Carefully, she ground the shards into dust, mixed them with fresh clay, and shaped a new vessel. When she fired it in the kiln, the vase emerged with stunning colors and patterns, more beautiful than before—strengthened by its brokenness.

A young apprentice, watching in awe, asked, "Why didn’t you throw it away?" The master potter smiled and said, "Brokenness is not the end. In the hands of the Potter, even shattered pieces can become something new."

It's a lovely story, but it doesn't begin to describe the actual process a potter must go through to redeem and repurpose the value of a broken vessel. AI describes the entire process this way ...

Reusing clay from broken pottery is a sustainable practice, though it does require some effort. Here’s how you can do it:

• Gather and Crush: Collect the broken pottery pieces and break them down into small fragments. If the pottery was glazed, you’ll need to scrape off the glaze, as it doesn’t easily blend back into clay.
• Soak and Slake: Place the broken pieces into a container and cover them with water. Let them soak for a day or two. This process, called "slaking," helps rehydrate the clay.
• Remove Impurities: Once the clay becomes soft, you can mix it into a slurry and strain it through a fine mesh to remove impurities, like bits of glaze or other materials.
• Dry and Knead: Spread the wet clay onto a plaster surface to dry until it reaches a workable consistency. Then knead it thoroughly to eliminate air bubbles and ensure a smooth texture.
• After these steps, the clay should be ready to reuse for new projects! It’s a great way to reduce waste and create something fresh out of old materials. 

There’s a great tv show called I Shouldn’t Be Alive. Have any of you seen it?

In every episode of the show, a person or group of people end up in some dangerous situation and struggle to survive, whether in a desert, or an ocean, or a jungle, or the like. And in every episode, the situation gets so bleak that the viewer would fully expect the person or group of people to die. There appears to be no hope at all. But then, against all odds, the person is either rescued or they somehow find their way back to civilization, and survive.

There were six whole season of these heart pounding, nail biting survival stories. Here are the synopses of some of the shows just from the first season:

• - Traveling to Idaho to attend a funeral, a family from California becomes trapped in a blizzard; while trekking off to find help, a wrong turn leads them deep into the unforgiving wilderness.
• - A crew of five aboard a luxury yacht sailing from Maine to Florida that sank in a storm, leaving the crew adrift on a lifeboat with no food or water and menaced by sharks.
• - Three adventurers are captured by the Khmer Rouge and must either negotiate their release or take their chances escaping into the jungle.
• - A Hollywood camera crew in a helicopter crash into an active volcano they were filming. Rescue attempts are hampered by lava, toxic gases and bad weather ...
• - A plane crash in the Kalahari Desert leaves survivors without food or water, and two of them try to find help for other passengers who are injured.