Lo! A philomath's field notes & yearnings
Andando pola terra, descubrín paisaxes coma bosques, densos de humidade, desertos dourados, sen fin, e montes e vales ondulantes. Os meus ollos enriqueceron. Mais sobre todo, descubrín as xentes desta terra, os seus sorrisos e as súas esperanzas, e que temos máis cousas en común e que debemos romper as que nos dividen.
On the three versions of my about page, I m running an experiment with dithering images using Bayer 8 8. I had an LLM make a tiny custom plugin for WordPress and the size results are below: Language Dithering Colors Size Original Full 428 KB English Bayer 8×8 4 263 KB Spanish Bayer 8×8 3 146 KB Continue reading Dithering Experiment
From Wikipedia s personalized Year in Review for me: You spent 22,629 minutes reading 12,427 articles in 2025. We estimate that puts you in the top 5% of Wikipedia readers globally. The average person reads 335 articles a year. Yeah, I m a fan. But my plan for next year is more emphasis on books and my Continue reading Wikireading 2025
The two-week heat wave brought extreme fire risk to Galicia and now Ourense province is on fire. 10% of it, 727 square kilometers, has already burned. The fires of Chandrexa and Maceda merged and is now the biggest fire ever on record. Neighbors are organizing volunteer groups via WhatsApp and some villages are left alone Continue reading Fire Season
Alqo s ola de calor ritual. We try to walk further in the mornings before the pavement heats up, but I make a point to pass this spot where he can get in to the river. Since my van is in the shop, we ve exploring the places just outside of town but still reachable on foot. Continue reading Hot Dog
Short trip to A Coruña to escape routine, walk aimlessly, and contemplate deeply.
While I ve really enjoyed the human, social aspect of my job, talking with podcasters all day, the web development itch returned a few weeks ago. I eventually want to learn more HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (and TypeScript) to migrate this blog over to something like Lume, but I think it s still beneficial for me to Continue reading Shifting Goal(post)s
é o que non se fala . Happy Galician Literature Day, Galicia and all the galegophiles. You ve given me another lifelong project in learning, studying, and speaking. You ve also shown me how a language can hold the culture, history, identity, and soul of a place. I don t feel that same connection to my language, English, which Continue reading O Único Galego Mal Falado
Israel asasina, a Xunta patrocina Israel murders, the Xunta sponsors No sur de Lugo e noutros lugares de Galicia, seguimos manifestando contra o xenocidio e apartheid israelí e apoiando a liberación de Palestina.
Seeing the storks return brings me a quiet joy. Besides being a link to Galicia and Upper Guinea, two places close to my heart, I love them for their grace. I enjoy the way they perch and build their massive nests on poles next to the railway and on old stone churches. The town has Continue reading Living Bridges
With my goal of prefiguring some changes in this new year of 2025, a few weeks ago I removed Instagram from my phone. It s been a long time coming; I found myself glued to the screen for a few reasons: keeping up with the unbearable horrors in Gaza, maintaining the vaguest awareness of what some Continue reading Farewell to the Scroll, Grateful for the Light
This Californian still struggles with winter. Instead of going inward, pressing pause on the outside world, and enjoying the slowness of things, I ve found myself dealing with big things over the last few years; a breakup, a new town and melancholy, existential dread while watching the warmongering, immigration bureaucracy, etc. This year isn t any different, Continue reading Edge of a Long…
Grant me surrender to embrace what You have woven, The strength to stir the waters where my hands may flow, And the vision to see through the veils of what is mine to sow.
Within and without. I m not sure what that means for this little blog (except an upcoming migration from WordPress → GitHub Pages). Enjoy the summer. 🤙🏼
Thank you, Elon, for all the chaos in your Twitter acquisition; I deactivated my (X?) account a few weeks ago after not being on there since December-ish. I don’t care about anything else you’ve done but you finally got me off that site. I d also like to thank myself for not having that much interest Continue reading Bird Brained
Years ago while in Latin America, I uploaded a few iPhone photos to Unsplash. While I ve kept up with one of Chichen Itza doing big numbers, I accidentally stumbled onto my photo of Tikal s Temple of the Masks on Smithsonian Magazine s website the other day.
Here’s to recognizing the changes and cycles in everything, to re-aligning with our differentiated authentic selves, and rediscovering my absolute lust for life.
Mi tío falleció inesperadamente anoche. Era duro, con un rasgo estoico/vaquero, difícil. También, amaba a su gente mucho; un buscador de conocimiento, en su manera, que lo llevó desde los campos de Oklahoma hasta el Río Jordán y de vuelta. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji un.
After four days of walking the Camino de Santiago, four days of enjoying being an awestruck pilgrim/tourist in Santiago de Compostela, and two days of traversing Galicia in train and van to get Alqo back from the residencia canina, I m finally back home in cold foggy Monforte and jumping back into the swing of things Continue reading Camiño Return
It s been quite the year. I m finally ready to start sharing a bit about what s happened and changed within me. This time, I plan to actually write and share with honesty; not the thing I was doing before — hiding behind some semi-curated veneer of who I actually am for the sake of ignoring some Continue reading Camiño de Inverno
Local artist Jesús Benavides carved this self-representation of what living with MS feels like. I think it belongs in a museum. He responded, It s already there, in my street museum.
We drove Holly down to Madrid a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time I had left Galicia/Portugal in two years. We were dropping her off to her new owner. We were selling her because we found this blue Smurf of a camper van online and were looking to upgrade. Although a few Continue reading A More Manageable Project
The Uninhabitable Earth author David Wallace-Wells interviewed ecologist and author Dave Goulson last month for his new book Silent Earth in New York Magazine. This part has been rattling around in my head for the last month: I think it’s entirely plausible that we are now living in the most comfortable conditions that people will Continue reading The Most Comfortable Conditions
I spent the weekend in O Grove and finally walked around the north shore of the peninsula. I thought Foxos and A Lanzada were nice, but passing the uncrowded Pipas, Reboredo, Mexiloeira, Piñeirón, Barreiriño, and Carreiro beaches with calm and turquoise water felt like I was on a different continent. Here s the laguna near to Continue reading Lagoa de Bodeiro
Galician Nationalist Bloc leader and national spokesperson Ana Pontón re-affirmed that her party is the only alternative to the People s Party austerity and the centralism of the Spanish state apparatus in Madrid in La Voz de Galicia today: The goal of politics is to improve people’s lives and it would be absurd to give up Continue reading O BNG, Always with Galicia
Although it’s not a recent photo, summer for me really begins when I catch a glimpse of the coast heading down the highway towards praia A Lanzada.
I started to get a little wordy about some great news over here, then realized I could sum it up with a few sentences in the /now page.
In late 2012 I was preparing to leave Sierra Leone. School was out for the holiday, the secondary school was almost finished, and I started taking my small digital camera around with me throughout the day. This is from Ali s family s worre: a Fula ranch where the extended family lives in circular thatch roofed huts Continue reading Flashback: Ali s Worre
Patricia gets a lot of ideas for cool permaculture projects from El Guardian de la Tierra, a YouTube channel created by Lander, a resident of Mallorca and self-professed adicto al permacultura. A few weeks ago, while I continued to plane and sand boards for the tool shed, she went over to the one of the Continue reading How to Make Ortiga Fertilizer
It doesn’t look like it now, but this puppy is a terremoto around the village. He’s a good dog, just a overly excited. Luckily the only other people around are a few neighbors on the weekends and folks passing through on the way to their viñas.
Much of our homestead progress is punctuated by half victories. Toilet installed, leak in the shower Kitchen sink working, still no tile or stovetop Filling in ditches in the yard, perimetrical fence will take another month and Alqo naps in the street. Both of us feeling exhausted, Patricia rightly suggested we take a break yesterday Continue reading Downriver Miño Near Cabo do Mundo
B’Tselem executive director Hagai El-Ad on Democracy Now and in The Washington Post: It’s not proportional. It’s not temporary. It’s not legal. It’s not equal. And it’s not complicated: Believe your eyes. Follow your conscience. The reason that it looks like apartheid is simply because it is apartheid. The bittersweet feeling of the West finally Continue reading It Looks Like Apartheid Because It…
This year will be the year that the world finally wakes up to the absolute reality of Israeli apartheid. But it is not a given. Governments still continue to fund Israel. Yesterday, in full view of the asymmetric warfare that kills massively more Palestinians, The Biden administration approved a $735 million deal for precision-guided weapons. Continue reading Galician-Palestinian Solidarity…
Happy Día das Letras Galegas! Poet, writer, and translator Xela Arias will be honored. Since I’m (currently) a non-Galician speaking galegophile and this blog is in English, here’s a section of her poem A de Quen Comprende translated courtesy of Canadian poet and translator Erín Moure. The 17th of May brings a new personality and Continue reading Letras Galegas: Xela Arias on Rosalía de Castro
I never thought I’d be as interested in Madrid politics as I have been for the last month. Basically, the Trumpian Madrid president, Isabel Ayuso, is trying to capitalize on some unstable political alliances throughout the country between her Partido Popular and the centrist/center-right neoliberal Ciudadanos. Ayuso handled the first wave of the pandemic terribly, Continue reading Spanish…
I’m sitting in two shipping containers converted into a small 30 square meter house. They’re installing drywall in what will be the bathroom. I’d like to be outside, but it’s raining off and on. I’ll use this time to share photos from the last eighteen months in Allariz. This was one of the first houses Continue reading Goodbye Nanín: Random Photos from 18 Months in Allariz
I would love to sit down and write a post about leaving Allariz as well as share news about our progress here, but there’s tons to do and I always have to push back writing. Let this photo of the valley of Lemos suffice for now.
La Región journalist Paula Palomanes wrote about my partner and yours truly last week: Lingüísta y profesora de inglés reconvertida a emprendedora y artesana -ha creado una firma que se llama Macramano- pero, sobre todo, trotamundos ambos, el viaje de Jimmy y Patricia para llegar a Nanín, un pequeño pueblo de Allariz, hace más de Continue reading Nanín Unió California y Madrid
I’ve been internet absent for a while but everything is good over here, all told. Our house search is finally over. A couple weeks ago, we bought a small late 18th-century stone house with some adjacent ruins. They sit on 1,800 square meters of land in a depopulated village close to Monforte de Lemos, a Continue reading Wednesdays At Home
I have no sage advice on dealing with what comes tonight and the days ahead. Any potential electoral result, and that includes a Biden blowout, will not be what America actually needs to improve the material conditions of its citizens, eradicate inequality and racism, and stave off climate catastrophe, much less govern in a way Continue reading What We Need
The change in weather has been a bit sudden. Though I loved wearing shorts, keeping the door open to hear the birds and feel the breeze, autumn has its own benefits. Walks in the monte are more pleasant without the bugs and heat. And of course, there are things to forage like boletus and castañas.