In addition, in the fall semester of 1964, I decided to attend the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's lecture on campus on Monday afternoon, October 12, 1964. Subsequently, I took a bus to Montgomery, Alabama, to join Dr. King's march on Montgomery on March 25, 1965. Subsequently, I taught about one thousand black inner-city youth in the context of open admissions over a period of ten years (1969-1979) at Forest Park Community College and at the City College of the City University of New York (in 1975-1976). And I published articles about open admissions' students.
Subsequently, I made the decision to join the Jesuits in 1979, but I also subsequently made the decision to leave the Jesuits early in 1987.
Yes, these and certain other decisions that I have made over the years have defined my adult life.
Now, on a considerably smaller scale. Each time that I have written one of the 670 OEN articles that I have published since October 2009, I have decided to write up my relevant thoughts for publication (o spell out the obvious). By publishing my 670 OEN articles, I have further defined the character of my adult life, especially the public dimension of my adult life. Occasionally, in certain wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal OEN articles, I have further defined my character by discussing certain personal matters publicly - most notably in my 28,800-word 665th OEN article titled "Fareed Zakaria and Ezra Klein on President Trump's Foreign Policy" (dated March 24, 2025; viewed 1,811 times as of May 22, 2025):
Even though I am grateful that my OEN article dated March 24, 2024, has been viewed 1,811 times as of May 22, 2025, I also have to note here that 1,811 views would not put it in the "Top 20" of my OEN articles over the years. See my OEN article titled "Thomas J. Farrell 'Top 20' OEN Articles, and Walter J. Ong's Thought" (dated April 22, 2025; viewed 534 times):
So, I would sum up my adult life as one of teaching, research, and publishing in service to my country and fellow Americans. Yes, as a young high school student in Kansas City, Kansas, I wrote my first op-ed commentary in support of President John F. Kennedy's challenge to us not to ask what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country. Yes, subsequently, in my adult life, I thought of myself as asking what I can do for my country when I taught about one thousand black inner-city youth in the City of St. Louis (1969-1975; 1976-1979) and in New York City (in 1975-1976) in the context of open admissions, and I also thought of myself as asking what I can do for my country when I began publishing article about open-admissions students and Ong's media-ecology thought
Now, Ong's first major book in media-ecology studies was his massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (as in the Age of Reason) (Harvard University Press). In it, Ong delineates what he refers to as the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing over the centuries in our Western cultural history from Aristotle's formal studies of the verbal art of logic (also known as dialectic) down to the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572) (for specific page references to the aural-to-visual shift in Ong's 1958 book, see the "Index," p. 396).
But Ong's massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue was written for specialists. It was not the kind of book that would ever be widely read by ordinary college-educated people in the English-speaking world.
But Ong's second major book in media-ecology studies was more accessible to ordinary college-educated people in the English-speaking world: The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press, 1967), the expanded version of Ong's 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University.
Ong's third major book in media-ecology studies was Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Cornell University Press, 1971).
Ong's fourth major book in media-ecology studies was Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, 1977).
Ong's 1982 book titled Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen) is his most accessible book in media-ecology studies, and his most widely read and his most widely translated book.
Now, in the 1960s, the Canadian Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media-ecology theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980; Ph.D. in English, Cambridge University, 1943) of the University of Toronto published two important books in media-ecology studies:
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