Has been around the blogosphere since 2009. It has been written in Ithaca, Lahore, Khartoum, Beijing and from my island pile on the coast of Maine. Against my better judgement but by my editors’ insistence it has recently become rjosepohhoffmann.com. I cannot hide.

The essays (some of then anyway) have been commissioned for publication and two of my best (unpaid) friends and I are indexing them by subject for an essay collection to be published in 2024. I was thinking of calling the collection “Tales of Hoffmann” but superficial research reveals the title has been taken.

Because they are stitches in time, no editing will be done. They speak for when they were written–passing fancies, issues and [people no longer relevant, some dead, some like those characters ion the Beatles’ “In My Life,” people I once loved, ex-presidents on their way to prion.

Here you will find digressions and polemic, analysis and poetry, essays and assessment. My current gripe is good Pope Francis, the enemy of aesthetics and cultural heritage, who actually had the nerve to follow Professor Ratzinger to Peter’s chair and sit in it. The eternal Jesuit. The moral nimby, enemy of smart and sarcastic people like Voltaire and James Joyce, for all time.

Please read the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes before you come to the lecture.

A Poem Rumi Never Wrote