With Nat at Joy Macy’s farm, West Nyack, New York, 2015. Background photo by Paolo Destefanis for my book, Veneto (Chronicle Books, 2002).
Hello good people everywhere,
I hope you are well. As you know, I’ve been away from my blog for a long while—nearly three years. My adored husband, Nathan Charles Benedict Hoyt, passed over to the other side on August 25, 2019. Savant and genius, graphic designer, world-class architect, my partner in photojournalism, the light and love of my life and kindest man I ever knew, he left this world too soon, at 66 years. But he accomplished more in one lifetime that few ever do, even as he lent a hand to others along the way and lifted them up when he could.
If the graphic background on this page is still a winter scene (new image in progress), spring has returned to my life. Many things have changed––a move from New York to Massachusetts to be near my two daughters, living part of the year in Sardinia, the birth of my first grandchild, Eliodoro (Elio, or “LiLi,” as I call him), and more. I’m back to work, with Nat’s spirit at my back, writing a book that has been humming in the background nearly all my life, a novel based on a true story––mine. Set in Sardinia and Puglia, the Italian regions of my forebears, it’s about a family secret I uncovered recently and how I have come to realize it shaped my life.
Onwards, fork in hand… I wish to look back on my journey when I am 105 and still spry (if my Sardinian genes prevail), and be able to say, “It was a life well-lived,” as I know Nat could. Come with me, my friends.
With love,
Julia
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