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Dr. Allen Finkelstein, writing since 2006 under the penname “O’finky,” was born in New York, where he attended the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County as a boy. He continued his religious training in South Florida until his family, needlessly fearing that he would become a Rabbi, transferred him to public school. It was in the Hebrew day school where the young O’finky was strongly encouraged to write and exercise his imagination. Later, he managed to weather a stormy academic career at the University of Florida, where writing creatively was strongly discouraged. As an undergraduate, majoring in pre-med, English, and philosophy, each department strongly “advising” him to switch to another, he finally graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in education. After teaching math and science at various primary school levels for a few years, despite some fond regrets, O’finky left teaching for osteopathic medical school in West Virginia. After graduating as a D.O. in 1981, he moved back to the Tampa Bay area where he completed his internship and still practices and teaches family medicine. As a physician, the author became very active in the early ‘90’s desperately promoting to his largely deaf colleagues and to his patients the idea of rescuing Medicare from the hands of the greedy lobbies. In 2006, at the urging of his imaginative physician assistant, he started publishing a political blog, “The O’finky Factor.” Writing as “O’finky,” the honorary name bestowed upon him by his Irish friend and the wonderful people he met in Ireland, the author’s articles have always been marked by great controversy and some have been republished in places as far away as Russia and South America. As Allen Finkelstein, O’finky has published some forty five articles in OpEdNews. A lifelong liberal Democrat, nonetheless his writing tends to decry the party’s penchant for trying to promote a righteous agenda far too quickly for acceptance by a moderate public, thus impeding the very progress which they so desperately seek. Ironically, it is the painstaking revelation that people would rather believe the truth hidden in fiction rather than in facts that was the inspiration for his first novel, The President’s Ledger, published in 2013. OpEd News Member for 852 week(s) and 1 day(s) 125 Articles, 0 Quick Links, 59 Comments, 3 Diaries, 0 Polls Please Note: If you want to contact one of our OpEd News writers, we ask that you login to your OpEd News account. If you don't yet have an account, you can signup, free. PLUS post comments and maybe even submit articles or blog diaries. We would be delighted to welcome you. |