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.

Who could possibly forget the Miracle on the Hudson — the heart pounding story of 2009’s US Airways Flight 1549. Just after take off, on route from New York City's LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte, North Carolina, the aircraft was struck by a flock of birds which were sucked into its engines, causing the plane to lose all power. To avoid crashing, pilots  Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles were left to literally glide the plane to a belly landing on the Hudson River just off the coastline of Midtown Manhattan. Because of their cool heads, quick thinking, and incomparable skill, not one life was lost. All were rescued before the aircraft, already filling with water, sank to the bottom of the Hudson.

And who could possibly forget that iconic scene of those 155 souls on board, who climbed out of the fuselage of that plane, into the frigid cold of a NY winter, and onto the wings of the plane to await rescue.

There was no time to consider handbags or baggage, briefcases or cell phones, or even coats and hats. All had to be left behind in the mad dash to exit before the plane would be claimed by the icy waters of the Hudson.

“My coat! My purse!” thought passenger Karin Hill as she stepped out into the frigid air. She had no choice but to leave them back at her seat ,18E, never expecting to see them again.

Yet somehow, all those personal items have been returned to their rightful owners — fully cleaned up and restored, as if they’d never been lost in the first place.

ABC News reports:

After the accident, US Airways called Global-BMS, a Fort Worth-based company that specializes in disaster recoveries. When the jet was hauled out of the Hudson and placed on a barge for inspection by accident investigators, Global official Mark Rocco was there, walking the cabin to tag and remove personal items to return them. … 

"It looked like it had been in a dirty carwash," recalls Rocco. "A lot of the overhead bins were still closed, and a lot of things were still stored under the seats. I saw a wallet on the floor and wondered why it hadn't floated out of the plane."

Everything was soaked and smelled of jet fuel. But every item the Global workers found was tagged with a unique tracking number, bagged and placed on a refrigerated truck bound for a Texas warehouse.

"Freezing puts things into suspended animation," Rocco says.

Back in Texas, Global began defrosting, cleaning and restoring everything it could — including everything inside carry-ons and suitcases — and figuring out who owned what. 

While many items couldn’t be fully restored (e.g., many of the computer hard drives, cell phones, shrunken clothing, and the like), most items were meticulously spit shined, dry cleaned, reconstructed, and refurbished to at-or-near original condition.

Finally, many months later, Maryann Bruce, an executive from Charlotte, NC, got a visit from Deborah Thompson, US Airways' director of emergency response, who personally delivered back to her possession her briefcase, purse, mink coat, and a carry-on suitcase with all its contents, including a large diamond ring given to her by her husband for their 25th wedding anniversary.

Included in the stash of returned items was even her boarding pass for seat 5D. ”I plan on framing that," she says.