Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) June 24, 2025: As I write the present wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal review of my life and work, including many of my recent OEN articles, and of Walter J. Ong's life and work today, the headline news is still dominated by President Donald Trump's recent bombing of Iran and by Iran's retaliation. Iran and Israel have now agreed to a cease fire - which is good news. Stay tuned.
In any event, a more pretentious-sounding title for the present article would be "The Adventures of Thomas J. Farrell" - you know, like Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1991). Yes, for me, my long life has been filled with adventures, including my adventures in writing 678 OEN articles since October 2009. But in the present OEN article, I also discuss the life and work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter Jackson Ong, Jr. (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University - where, over the years, I took five course from Father Ong, whose life and work I also survey in the present OEN article.
Now, over the years since I started writing op-ed articles at OpEdNews (October 2009 to the present), I have often discussed Trump in my various OEN articles. For example, when the American psychiatrist and Kleinian psychoanalyst Justin A. Frank published the book Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (2018), I published my OEN article "His Majesty, Baby Donald!" (dated October 1, 2018) about it. In other OEN articles that I have published since then, I have regularly criticized Trump for his misogyny. For example, because of the misogyny of Trump and his male MAGA supporters, I have argued that Trump and his male MAGA supporters are not yet ready to experience the liberation of endogamous kinship libido that is "married within" their psyches to their early childhood image of their moms (or mother-figures) in their psyches. (Links to my various OEN articles are included in the "References" at the end of the present essay.)
In the present OEN article, I discuss the experience of the liberation of endogamous kinship libido that is "married within" our psyches to our early childhood images of our moms (or mother-figures) and our dad (or our father-figures) in our psyches, but with no particular reference to Trump and his male MAGA supporters.
Now, in other recent news that is of interest to me, the Roman Catholic Church has a new pope, Pope Leo XIV, who appears to me to be as doctrinally conservative as the doctrinally conservative late Pope Francis (1936-2025) was, and this morning's news reports that former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. I contributed to the aging President Joe Biden's 2024 re-election campaign -- and like many other Americans, I have been shocked and disillusioned by recent revelations of his declining health in 2024. In addition, I was sadly disappointed that so many of my fellow Americans voted on November 5, 2024, to re-elect former President Donald Trump to a second term as president of the United States. Clearly, my fellow Americans who voted on November 5, 2024, to elect former President Trump to a second term made personal choices to vote for him - just as I and my fellow Americans who voted from Biden on November 5, 2024, made personal choices to vote for him.
Now, I profiled the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis in my OEN article titled "Pope Francis on Evil and Satan" (dated March 24, 2019; viewed 3,140 times as of June 21, 2025).
I said farewell to the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis in my OEN article "Pope Francis (1936-2025): In Memoriam" (dated April 22, 2025; viewed 1,080 times as of June 21, 2025).
However, I have not yet formulated any views of Pope Leo XIV worth writing up in an OEN article. Nevertheless, in according with my view of the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis in my OEN article "Pope Francis on Evil and Satan" (dated March 24, 2019), I would expect that Pope Leo XIV is also doctrinally conservative - because I see no way that the cardinal-electors would ever elect a new pope who is not doctrinally conservative. Of course, like everybody else, I recognize that Pope Leo XIV is the first American pope - and I never expected to see an American elected to be pope. Once again, his election highlights the personal choices that the cardinal electors who elected him made - and personal choices are one theme that I want to stress in the present OEN article.
Now, I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, my mother's hometown. But I was born on March 17, 1944, in Ossining, New York, my father's hometown. However, at the time of my birth, my father was serving in the U.S. Army in Dover, England; he was part of the build-up of troops there for the D-Day landing at Normandy, France. My father returned from the war as a decorated hero and entered my young life when I was eighteen months old.
Now, have I made big choices myself in my life that define my life? Yes, I certainly have. For example, when I was twenty years old, I made the choice to transfer in the fall semester of 1964 as a junior English major to Saint Louis University, the Jesuit university if the City of St. Louis, Missouri (USA). With 20/20 hindsight today, this was the biggest decision of my life. Because I planned to major in English, I reported to the head of the English department for academic counseling, Father Maurice B. McNamee, S.J. (1909-2007, Ph.D. in English, Saint Louis University, 1945 - with Marshall McLuhan as the director). Father McNamee advised me to take Father Walter Ong's course Practical Criticism: Poetry, which I did.
For further information about Father McNamee, see his book Recollections in Tranquility (2001). The present wide-ranging and, at times, deeply personal OEN article could also be titled "Thomas J. Farrell's Recollections in Tranquility."
In Father Ong's course "Practical Criticism: Poetry" in the fall semester of 1964 at Saint Louis University, I fell in love with Father Ong and his media-ecology thought. Over my lifetime (I am now 81 years old), I have written extensively about Ong's media-ecology work.
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 (1969-1975; and 1976-1979) and at the City College of the City University of New York (in 1975-1976). And I published articles about open admissions' students.
For example, see my articles "Open Admissions, Orality, and Literacy" in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence (1974) and "The Lessons of Open Admissions" in the Journal of General Education (1981). Incidentally, Ong was instrumental in getting my article "Open Admissions, Orality, and Literacy" published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence in 1974. That article was read by Mina P. Shaughnessy (1924-1978) of the City College of the City University of New York. As a result, she arranged for me to be invited to teach at the City College/CUNY in 1975-1976 - which in many respects turned out to be the most memorable year of my life.
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