Jim is a poet, writer, and painter. He lives “Upcountry” on the Island of Maui in Hawai’i. He is also a lawyer, past life regressionist, father, and grandfather. As early as he can remember, Jim was writing poetry. In grade school, he was lucky enough to have a tutor who recognized his affinity for the natural world and its many creatures, and who encouraged him to focus his attempts at sentence structure, grammar, and spelling on what he loved. And so it was that Jim’s love of writing about the natural world began. Jim has been fortunate to have lived a life of great adventure, with a broad range of diverse experiences in the wilds of nature, on land, rivers, and many oceans. They were all made possible by the love bestowed upon him by his mentors in his early days of learning how to hunt for a living on Northeast Florida’s open range. See Growing Up With Wild Things: Formative Years on the Last Days of Florida's Open Range: Lynch, Jim: 9798548665096: Amazon.com: Bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Growing-Up-Wild-Things-Formative-ebook/dp/B09BQ623ST/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Growing+Up+With+Wild+Things&qid=1628803397&sr=8-1Jim’s next step towards improving his writing skills occurred when his family moved to Fort Lauderdale when Jim was in the 10th grade. There, he was determined to get good grades and took his first typing class. From then on, his academic achievements soared, finishing in the top percentiles of the state and nation. It was a far cry from the C’s and D’s of his volatile life in grade school. The next leap forward came when Jim entered a Latin school at Saint Benedict’s Abbey in Benet Lake, Wisconsin. There, under the instruction of Father James Sweeney, a priest and Latin scholar from the south side of Chicago, he learned how to diagram Latin sentences and their English translations to read, write and speak Latin. Jim was a quick learner, as Sweeney used the ribald poetry of the Roman catacombs to inspire his students. That skill and the overall philosophical and theological classes at the Monastery, which included logic and syllogistic reasoning, allowed Jim to answer his college exams in Latin and land his first writing job in law school. He did this by creating syllogisms for a Wall Street editor who drafted questions for the law school admissions test under contract with Princeton University. Then, before starting law school at Fordham University in Manhattan, Jim took a year and a half off to travel the world on tramp steamers as a merchant seaman. He simply refused to believe the parochial view of the world he was taught in college, that Americans are wiser and superior to other races and nations of the world. Instead, this rich, real-world education contributed depth and understanding to his formal education and dispelled any notions of American-worldwide superiority. Over the next few years, those travels to over 54 countries also supplied Jim with enough adventures to write about for a lifetime.After his last year at Fordham, Jim published two law books for Blackstone Publications in New York City. His book on Real Estate Transactions guided him to work for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington DC, where his job was to write the construction contracts for the Martin extension to the Boards original building, constructed in 1913. It was a vast building that extended from Constitution and 14th Street all the way to the State Department, over a city block. Prior to the building's completion, but after the major construction contracts were executed, Jim moved to San Francisco, CA, where he took and passed the California Bar Exam. When he was invited to be an Examiner, he declined and became counsel to Crocker Bank, where he and the General Counsel, Almond McCallum, wrote the "Truth in Lending" forms for the State of California. While still at Crocker, he was hired by Reed Hunt, Chairman of the Presidents' Commission on Financial Structure and Regulation, to write legislative law recommendations and advise the Commission on the banking and securities laws of the United States that their recommendation would impact. It was here that Jim helped two well-known economists draft the Presidential Report and deliver it to the President.Before the ink had dried on the report, Bill Casey, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Chairman of the Republican Party, hired Jim as special counsel. At the SEC, Jim wrote many of Casey's speeches, kept Ralph Nader at bay, and wrote The Oil and Gas Investment Act and the Real Estate Investment Report to the Chairman of the SEC. Three days after Bill and Jim resigned from the SEC, "Watergate" broke in the papers. Jim took a two-year hiatus as a farmer in Kentucky during the congressional investigation and hearings. Then, Jim went into private practice as a trial lawyer. While a trial lawyer, Jim added three more state bars to his resume: Florida, New Mexico, and Hawaii, where he still practices business and estate planning law today.Jim is also a painter. He began showing his paintings when he was in Law school. In 1993 he moved to Santa Fe, NM to continue his formal study and painting. While in Santa Fe, he began writing articles on art and artist for American Artist Magazine. Throughout his life Jim has written poetry. His next books on Amazon will include some of these poems. "Mountains Always Pray" and "Words from the Well" should be out by the end of the year. In addition, several short stories, including "Guns, Knives and Legends" and "Gunfight at Moonday Farm and Merchandise Store" that introduce Zeb Clancy, Jim's avatar, are also headed to press.Read more about this authorRead less about this author