Hey there. My name is Jimmy. I grew up in the suburbs outside of Los Angeles on originally Tongva land, just below the foothills of what we now call the San Gabriel mountains.
After studying functional linguistics in Oregon, I moved to West Africa for most of my twenties. There, I taught primary and secondary school in northern Sierra Leone with the Peace Corps and at an international school in Nouakchott, Mauritania.
These days, I live in the heart of the Ribeira Sacra e Serras do Oribio e Courel Biosphere Reserve, a region of steep river canyons, ancient monasteries, and wild mountain landscapes in Galicia, northwestern Spain.
I work remotely for a podcast hosting and analytics provider. I enjoy exploring my adopted home with my dog Alqo, sometimes in a camper van. I’m slowly renovating a little fixer-upper house. I host a language exchange and spend my time with friends and neighbors, on many dog walks, and probably browsing Wikipedia too much.
I also learn and practice Spanish and Galician everyday, and I love reading in those languages as well.
The title of this blog and expression among the stones is the translated Loko toponym of my host village in Sierra Leone. It’s also apt in Galicia. Among the Stones is about a few things:
- journal updates on what I’m up to, working on, thinking about
- Galicia’s history, language, cultural heritage, and geography
- spirituality; particularly “heterodox” Islam, belief, and skepticism of religious orthodoxies
- remote work at home or on the road
- posts and photos of my time in Upper Guinea and West African history
- interesting links about anything
I’m also interested in literacy, neurodiversity, Human Design, iOS, fantasy novels, gardening, poetry, podcasts, documentaries, meetups, camping and (temporary) van life, Romance and Mandé linguistics, Dungeons & Dragons, the enneagram, histories of Upper Guinea, woodcarving, maps, Murray Bookchin, notebooks, dub, folk, and electronic music, Rūmī and American transcendentalist poets, and a low-carbon, more human future.
All opinions, annotations, and photos are mine, unless otherwise indicated. You can also contact me here.