Woohoo, this website is finally updated! I will document my Drupal -> static site saga at some point, but first, a brief description of how to host a Hugo static site on Mayfirst.org.

Getting setup with Hugo generally

So, why Hugo? Well, it’s what Mayfirst uses for their own static site content. I just followed the Hugo docs to set it up locally first. This was great. Really easy to follow, ran out of the box easily and I just used the default theme. Then I searched for simple themes, and found some helpful posts. I eventually found one I liked and began adjusting things. Given my really incomplete styling knowledge, I eventually complained on Bluesky and got some extremely patient and kind and amazing help from María A. Matienzo (thanks again, María!!!).

I once tried to write a travel diary and it was the most boring writing I’ve ever seen in my life. Hopefully this won’t be quite so bad. In just over a month, I will be moving from the US to the UK. I realized it might be useful to document some parts of this process like:

• getting a visa
• getting ready socially
• oh my gosh, all the life admin stuff
• moving an 18-year-old cat across an ocean (some of the existing documentation pointed us in the direction of taking the cat over on a boat)
• how the hell you pack your stuff to take it on a boat
• how the hell you decide what, of the absurd amount of random things people have bought you and you yourself have accumulated over several decades, you actually take to another country
• and probably other, maybe even emotional (gasp) things about moving for the first time in nearly twenty years

Part of my preparation (/procrastination) appears to be re-watching both Slow Horses and Industry, and enjoying the Paralympics! We’ll see how this goes. If you have any advice, or requests of things to document, please reach out. (I had to turn off comments on this site years ago cause of runaway spam, but welcome conversation always!)

(originally published in JSK fellows)

In Philly’s activist circles, heading to the Allied Media Conference in Detroit was an annual tradition. I accompanied colleagues from the Media Mobilizing Project there one year and on one of the many field trips throughout Detroit, we visited an enormous abandoned factory. It was astonishing in its vastness and emptiness. We were the only ones there in the shell of a building that used to be part of what made Detroit Motor City. In our travels, we also learned about the unionization efforts at factories like that one and organizing efforts led by Grace Lee and James Boggs. It was a really formative trip for me, witnessing both the ravages of capitalism as well as the perseverance of the communities that remained.

(originally published in JSK fellows)

Change can be hard. This is not news, but I was shocked to learn that major change efforts in companies fail about 60–70% of the time. I actually found this to be a huge relief. It’s not just that journalists are uniquely terrible at change. Everyone is!

My JSK Journalism Fellowship itself is an experience in embracing change: like many other fellows, I moved thousands of miles and returned to a college campus for the first time in decades. In such an unfamiliar setting, I’m always looking for commonalities.