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.

I was born at 345.48 ppm CO₂ and 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.

But I wasn’t satisfied staying in California, so I left. After studying linguistics in Oregon and leaving as a philomath in awe of everything, I moved to West Africa for most of my twenties. There, I taught primary and secondary school with the U.S. Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and at an international school in Nouakchott, Mauritania. From there, 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 the countryside of Galicia, a historical but stateless nation and autonomous community of northwestern Spain. It’s also the ancestral homeland of my better half’s family.

I eat vegetarian, overuse commas, and support the creation of 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. Among the Stones is about a few things:

• journal updates on what I’m up to and working on
• remote work, usually about 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
• brief posts and photos of my time in Upper Guinea, or of West African history in general
• commentaries on politics, usually of the American/Spanish anticapitalist left
• topical or 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, old 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.