This is a banding wheel, which is a turntable that I use for hand building ceramics. It allows me to access all sides of the piece I’m working on. I chose it, not only because I use it every day in my work, but because it references the original wheel, which has survived for millennia as the most important tool ever created. There are many lessons from the pandemic, and for me, they include the fact that the simplest things, the basics that are the foundations of our lives, are often the most important and sustaining. As a battery-powered, digitized world melts down, some tools will never fail us. When governments, technology and modern medicine falter, neighbors deliver food to each other; pursuits like drawing and reading enrich us; and things as simple as moving air, distance and homemade masks preserve us. In the face of isolation and loss and hopelessness, we can find solace in the same things that have connected us as human beings for millennia. Our resiliency is not dependent on complexity, but on simplicity.