Summer is here, the blog is back

It's been a few months since the last post, since then I updated the blog with a fresh layout, joined Patreon (but so far, I did not even bother to launch it), created a newsletter and took some time out for my Portuguese language projects and a brand-new personal project: purchasing a tiny piece of land and turning it into an off grid(ish) homestead over the course of the next 12 months.

I mean, I’m no stranger to both survivalism (I was a non-doomsday prepper up to 2015) and green anarchism here in Portugal, I lived in my family´s homestead for 23 years in the Azores and having turned 42 and inspired by projects such as Project Kamp and The Prepared, just seems like the smart thing to do – my wife has been dreaming about it for years, I just surrendered to it in late 2019, but only now did we find a suitable land that we can actually afford and it’s not too far from an hospital. Covid-19 tripled the homestead prices here in Portugal, not sure if the same happened abroad.

Covid-19 took my best friend away

We had a rough blow on April 11 as my best friend, closest associate and main sponsor of my journal and book publishing ventures suddenly died of Covid-19. We spoke on Thursday, he stopped answering on Friday, Saturday morning I got the news that he was hospitalized, later that day an update that he got worse, Sunday there was no vacancy for a ventilator (he was visiting his family in Lima, Peru) and friends and family were planning to ask for help at the Portuguese embassy, sadly he died that same day just a couple hours later. Gone in 3 days!

He was pretty much family, spending holidays like Christmas with us whenever his family could not visit Portugal or he could not visit Peru, so the first days were tough, I wandered around Portugal with my wife trying to coup with it with only my ATM card and the clothing on our bodies, I’ll write a note on it later, as talking about grieve seems to be rather therapeutic – according to my corporate psychologist.

Journal publishing ventures

Libertária #4

With our main sponsor gone, we created a crowdfunding for the 4th issue of Libertária and it was a surprising success, as I mentioned before we were planning on killing the print edition. This is also a ground-breaking issue as we took ourselves further away from the Socialist Party and fully embraced our Libertarian Socialist views, we recruited a few new writers, renewed the website and a podcast will follow shortly.

We also started a second journal, titled Prontidão & Sobrevivência (Prepping & Survival - and yes, being a lazy bastard I used the same layout), focusing strongly on permaculture, ecovillages, and back to the land/homesteading with a hint of green anarchy here and there, not your average doomsday prepper publication and surprisingly one of main punk stars of the tiny Portuguese punk rock underground, that also moved to the country a couple of years ago, was one of the first people joining our Patreon account created solely for that project. 

The first issue was planned for September, but we will be delaying it a bit to October given that Jorge Matias, my partner in crime acting as the layout designer on both journals, had a mini-stroke 3 weeks ago, he is on sick leave and doing physiotherapy, recovering at good pace, already busting my balls to start sending him work. There seems to be no permanent damage and his left arm and leg are already functioning properly. 

Relaunching the blog

I'm relaunching my English language blog for news about Portugal, comment on international politics plus punk rock news, book reviews, tiny interviews and becoming an off grid(ish) homesteader in Portugal, and just in time for the Summer.

I’ll do my best not to focus so much on news and comment about the far right, as I’ve grown rather tired of the subject, and I want to focus more on promoting the politics I want instead of attacking the politics I dislike. But hey, the far right here is so deranged and hilarious that occasionally I’ll just won’t be able to help myself and report on it, I just don’t want it to be the core issue of this blog.

Stay tuned, join the newsletter so you’ll know what’s happening as I plan on sending it out every 15 days, do send all your hate mail through my Twitter account.