About

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 work for a podcast hosting and analytics provider, explore my adopted home (sometimes in a camper van), and try to read and write in my spare time.

Home is in the middle of the Ribeira Sacra e Serras do Oribio e Courel Biosphere Reserve (about the size of Yosemite National Park) in Galicia, Spain, with 75,000 neighbors along with 1,200 species of flora and 277 species of fauna:

I eat vegetarian, overuse commas, and support the reorganization of 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 Sierra Leone. It’s also apt in Galicia. Among the Stones is about a few things:

  • journal updates on what I’m up to and working on
  • remote work at home or on the road
  • podcasting, WordPress, and community, both offline and on.
  • Galicia’s history, cultural heritage, geography, and relationship to Spain
  • spirituality: particularly “heterodox” Islam, perennial philosophy, entheogens, Sufism, belief, conversion, and being skeptical of religious orthodoxies
  • 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 the #vanlife, 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 future.

All opinions, annotations, and photos are mine, unless otherwise indicated. You can also contact me here.