It has been almost three years. You would have every reason to have forgotten us. The fact that so many of you did not, is something we have been sitting with, and part of why I am writing this letter, which is really not so much about the magazine, and much more about the man who was stewarding it. His name was Hugh Weber.
Hugh passed away in 2023. Suddenly, and far too early, with the next issue of The Great Discontent well underway. Since then, our team made a conscious decision not to move too quickly past what Hugh left behind. To really consider what’s next, carry his legacy forward, and honor it.
Hugh thought a lot about legacy.
Every time he went back to his childhood home in Milbank, South Dakota, his father would drive him through town in his work truck. His dad was an electrician with four kids, a high school education, not much money, and no particular access to power. But everywhere they drove, he could point to something his hands had touched: a light on a flagpole, a cross hung on a tree, a sandbox he had filled, an athletic facility built while he served on the school board.
Small things. But they were everywhere.
It was during one of these trips that Hugh first noticed another small thing, a welded piece of folk art outside his family’s house. It was rough-edged and beautifully made, and he asked who the artist was. The answer surprised him.
It was his grandfather.
A man Hugh had thought of as practical had also been an artist. Hugh had walked past the evidence his entire life without seeing it.
And at that moment, something sparked in him.
When his grandfather welded that piece of art, he was making something for himself, in a shop, with nobody watching. It sat there long enough for a grandson to walk past it a thousand times and then finally see it. That realization redirected Hugh’s path. And Hugh’s path subsequently redirected the lives of hundreds of other people, most of whom will never know his grandfather’s name. Hugh called these moments the invisible threads.
He spent the next decade of his life making sure other people did not walk past those who were easy to miss. He started a nonprofit aimed at proving that the middle of the country was full of creative people nobody had thought to look for. He hosted conferences and seminars, potlucks and barbecues, and bubble parades. Yes, bubble parades.
He also bought a sky-blue 1968 International Harvester delivery truck for no reason other than to drive around, spark a conversation, and “hand out possibilities.”
His father’s truck carried tools to jobs that would still be standing forty years later. Hugh’s truck carried whatever he thought someone might need. Books. Coffee. A folding table. Once, an entire sound system for a block party he was not technically hosting.
On the surface, it may have looked like a man with too much time. But it was one of the most deliberate things he ever did. Just like his stewardship of The Great Discontent.
Hugh came to the magazine as a reader first, and never stopped. He was not a designer or a photographer or a filmmaker, and he said so often. What he was, in his own words, was a story discoverer, a people connector. And for me, he was a possibility hander-outer.
He pointed The Great Discontent exactly where you would expect: toward creatives whose work had been overlooked. I still remember when he told me he had set aside more than a thousand copies of the magazine to donate to HBCUs and rural colleges. He believed the people who most needed to see themselves in a magazine like this one, were often the least likely to ever be handed one.
Hugh said something in what would be his last talk at the Y Conference in San Diego that I’d like to share with you. He told the packed room: If you want to feel celebrated, celebrate. If you want to feel loved, love. And if you want to belong, reach out, and connect.
For fifteen years, The Great Discontent has been a connector of your stories. On September 27th, on what would have been Hugh’s 49th birthday, we are going to connect you with ours. And ask you to be part of what comes next. To be a possibility hander-outer. To see if the invisible threads that Hugh weaved are still out there. And ready to come back.
Sheharazad
Editor in Chief
The Great Discontent