Today I found out about my nephew.
He is already a month ahead of me in our game
To understand each other and
I will probably never catch him.

My sister was breathless with fear and pride
When she told me.
It’s been some week, she said.
Walking down a slushy street in the
Cold Chicago winter, considering my uncle-ness,
I noted that the baby would be born in August,
Most probably in Austin, Texas,
Quite possibly with wisteria and honeysuckle in the air.

The blood, sweat, stink, and scream
Will not start for another 8 months.
Strange to think about another creature
Taking over your body, my sister said.
Strange to think that this new one,
Blood-born and burnt into my breast already,
Will be silent all that time.
I will not speak to him by phone, I’ll say,
But wait until the day he drinks his first breath
And pipes into the air his original cry.

Nephew, I’ll reply, if we get a moment alone,
You may be a niece, and either way,
You can count on me like
You can count on no one.

What else can you say to a child on its first day?
There is no love without hurt will have to wait
Til the first time the child, no longer young,
Turns to me and says:
Uncle, I did not know it would be this way.

And in that moment, wherever I am,
Quite possibly some place I’ve never been,
I’ll tell this fresh blossom on my family’s tree
What I tell myself:

Nephew dear, or niece as it may be,
There’s nothing to fear.
Our team is strong.
You belong here.

Westing Family Press is founded on three basic notions. First, you have to care about people to want them to succeed as artists. Second, the editorial voice must be intimate to have value. Third, families grow and prosper as a result of the connections that each member cultivates. Please ask us for a company summary if you are interested in becoming part of the Westing Family Press.

The Light of the World is Giles' thesis project from Harvard Divinity School

 

Introduction: Ones, Twos, and Threes


In 2003, I walked into a graduate level plant physiology class on the first day of school, and, by looking around, I knew right away I had stepped into an unfamiliar world. My initial foray into plant science, the semester before, had been an undergraduate course on botany-general plant science-and it was populated with the same cross-section of people you would get in an undergraduate anthropology class-faded ball caps, practical backpacks, jeans. This was different. I could tell, almost by smell, that I was surrounded by scientists, and by that I mean people who could draw molecular structures and solve physics equations that involved multivariable calculus. I can do neither of those things. I am a theology student. The fact that the teacher, Missy Holbrook, had become a friend of mine during my struggle through the previous semester, was a comfort, but not one that alleviated my nerves about my ability to understand what was going on in the class. When Missy-- a sandy-haired plant physiologist whose muted, baggy clothes contradict both her professional stature and her pulsing intensity as a teacher-- spoke for the first time, my fears were both confirmed and partially mitigated. She confirmed that the class would involve a lot of chemistry, because it is an indispensable language of description when dealing with plants at a cellular level. But she also said-- pointing at me-- that her main concern was neither that we solved the physics equations perfectly nor that we nailed the chemistry, but that we learned to "think like plants". That innocuous little phrase stuck with me.

 

Born in suburban Detroit in 1969, Hugh grew up in Washington DC and attended St. Albans prep school. After graduating from Duke University in 1991, he went to work in corporate finance for a top tier investment bank. He became interested in art after attending an open life drawing class in New York in 1998, and began his formal art education at Otis College of Art and Design in 2001. Hugh has been painting in Algeria and Niger since early 2006. In 2008, he began painting the faces of America's working people. You can see all of his work here .