About

Hey there. My name is Jimmy. I work for podcast hosting and analytics provider Castos, rehabilitate an 18th-century stone house, and try to read and blog in my spare time. Sometimes, I build websites with WordPress. I also make a podcast called Left Abroad.

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.

I studied linguistics in Oregon and left as a philomath in awe of everything. I taught primary and secondary school in West Africa for most of my 20s, first with the U.S. Peace Corps in Sierra Leone then at an international school in Nouakchott, Mauritania. After that, I took a yearlong sabbatical to backpack through Latin America with my wife, where we found and adopted our Peruvian pup Alqo.

Now, I live in rural Galicia, a historical but stateless nation and autonomous community in northwestern Spain. It’s also the ancestral home of my better half’s family.

I eat vegetarian, overuse commas, and politely argue for an eco-socialist society that prioritizes the planet and its inhabitants over the accumulation and consolidation of capital.

The title of this blog and expression among the stones is the translated Loko toponym of my host village in northern Sierra Leone. It’s also a fitting name here in Galicia with the abundance of stone like granite, slate, and quartz. Among the Stones is about a few things:

• quotidian life as an immigrant and digital village nomad
• Remote work, specifically WordPress and its community
• Galicia’s history, cultural heritage, geography, and relationship to Spain
• Islam and spirituality, from the perspective of a believer and convert skeptical of religious orthodoxies
• commentaries on politics, usually of the American/Spanish anticapitalist left
• interesting links about anything

I’m also interested in literacy, iOS, fantasy novels, gardening, podcasts, nature documentaries, camping and the #vanlife, Romance and Mandé linguistics, Dungeons & Dragons, histories of Upper Guinea, woodcarving, maps, Murray Bookchin, notebooks, dub, folk, and electronic music, Rūmī and American transcendentalist poets, and a low-carbon future.

All opinions, annotations, and photos are mine, unless otherwise indicated. Among the Stones does not run ads or trackers. If you’re able, you could help support hosting fees for the price of a coffee over at ko-fi.com. You can also contact me here.

Updated: Monday, 29 May 2021 from Monforte de Lemos.