Of impressive degrees from prestigious universities, my humble walls are barren. My name, a modest but a good one, is unadorned by such exalted combinations of letters as “JD”, “MD”, or “Ph.D”–honorifics of which none but the honorable can boast (and boast they most certainly will!) 

I speak to you not as an elite, but as an equal; not as an Ivy League pedant, but as an honest friend, one with whom you can, in the most agreeable and civilized fashion, feel comfortable to argue; from whom, on all subjects ranging from philosophy, to literature, to politics, to health, you can expect to receive a frank and thoughtful opinion; and, above all, in whom you can trust. 

Such is the promise of a simple man whose entire approach to life involves but two acts: “plain living and high thinking”–acts in which the great English Romantic poet, William Wordsworth, instructed me, whose reversal, to their equally great detriment, most people have adopted as their chosen way of life. 

I am, by and large, self-taught. This is no boast; an idle student, I stumbled into reading belatedly. Now, I’m captivated by books, caught in their thickets of words and ideas from which I find it impossible to disentangle myself. Knowledge has enriched my life in no small way, and I hope it will be an enrichment to yours as well. I hope to elevate the common discourse, to bring beauty back to words, to help educate the younger generation, to challenge the fixed notions of the elder, to play gracefully with all ideas, and, more than anything else, to seek and spread wisdom.

If you also want these things, you’re in the right place. Welcome to Finneran’s Wake.