In the early days of Covid, when nobody knew anything—when we washed our mail, when everything seemed dangerous, when nothing was available—I made masks. Hundreds of them, a sewing machine permanent on the only table in our small house. I'd bag them and take them to friends and neighbors, tossing them onto their porches and stoops. Eventually, when I felt OK going into the post office, I'd mail them to groups that needed them. The Navajo Nation got packs from me, an org in Chicago for homeless LGBTQA+ youth, a teen mental health facility in Minneapolis. Anywhere I could find, I sent.

Because back then—back in those uncertain, frightening, early days—we were all we had.

As I write this, my freezing-cold basement is filled with the chipper hum of a 3d printer making whistles. Hundreds of whistles now, thousands. All bright oranges and pinks and greens and blues, a full spectrum rainbow, tiny and loud. At the beginning of the year I got jumped into a crew printing whistles at a remarkable clip. They've shipped nearly 100,000 this month. 2500 of those printed by me over the course of the last few weeks, sent coast to coast in packets of 100, 200. The thousand I sent to Minneapolis with folks from Chicago who went up took three days to finish. Five hours to make a hundred, I run the printer 15 hours a day.

Because right now, like back then, we are all we have.

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