Typewriting (aka Typing) War Stories (1/30/26)

I just communicated with a GHS60 Alumnus about my typewriting journey, started in HS at the insistence of my mother who was a secretary. Here is the communication, somewhat pared down:

I took typing in HS, I believe it was called personal typing. I got reasonably proficient. 

After HS, I went in the Army and had one other opportunity to develop my typing skills. I joined the Army Reserve with 12 classmates from GHS. We were offered the opportunity to stay together for the six months of active duty for training (Basic and some advanced) if we agreed to go into Advanced Infantry Training (AIT). So, my mother responded to a Colonel who wrote a serial form-type letter to all parents about what training we were getting. She responded on Office of the President stationery because she was the secretary for the President of Abney Mills. (Not only did the stationery say that, but in fact my mother shared the same physical office as the President and did that for the 20+ years she was there.) In any event, the Colonel must have thought I was important, because he came out into the field to meet me during Basic Training. I had no idea why he did that, but he did ask whether I might prefer going into some other Army specialty such as clerk typist rather than AIT. I declined, saying that I wanted to stay with my buddies in AIT. If I had accepted that offer, I would have honed my typing skills beyond the high school experience.

I also took typing in college in the business school at USC (after going on active duty in the Army in 1960). Just one semester. As I recall, I was the only male in the class, so that was a positive. I may have marginally increased my typing skills in that class.

So, I came out of college as a reasonable typist. 

While in college, I did Army Reserve duty in Columbia with a JAG unit. About the only typing I did was to type up the paperwork for my promotions for the Colonel to sign. 

I also received court reporter training at the Naval Justice School in Rhode Island. Although we used "monkey masks" to repeat into a recorder everything that went on in the mock courtroom, we then had to type up the recording in standard transcript format. Given the rigor of that training, good typing skills were required.

One college anecdote. At USC, I was a history major requiring a senior thesis. In the history department, the senior thesis was a big deal. I consulted with my favorite history teacher about the topic; that teacher then reviewed the thesis, including three or maybe four rounds of drafts. (He was a very exacting professor who worked hard and expected his students to work hard as well.) I turned in my first draft in handwriting. I went to his office for the review. I knocked on the door. He asked me to come in, close the door, and sit down. As I was closing the door and sitting down, he asked me “Mr. Townsend, do you know what I think of when I see sloppy handwriting?” I responded “No, sir.” He said “A sloppy mind.” I got the point.  (Actually given the tone of his question, I could have made a good guess; but as a side note, he had already graded me A on two examinations I took in handwriting, so he must have gotten over my horrible handwriting.) My later drafts were typewritten. My thesis won the outstanding senior thesis award for that year. That award was based on the content, rather than the typewritten presentation, but the typewritten presentation may have helped at the margins.

GHS 60 Alumni Project (5/18/25)

 I have started a project to gather and present data on Greenwood High School Class of '60 Alumni ("GHS 60 Alumni"). The project is described with appropriate links in the page at the right of this blog entry that can be accessed here.

On the Bible and Poetry (12/5/23)

Many years ago, I taught a course on poetry in the Hebrew Bible. The course was inspired by Jim Kugel's The Great Poems of the Bible: A Reader's Companion with New Translations (Free Press 2012), Amazon here, but I drew on other sources as well.

For those who may be interested, I refer readers to Michael Edwards, The Bible and Poetry (The Paris Review 6/12/23), here, where the author discusses poetry in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible (consisting of the Old Testament which is close to the Hebrew Bible, although interpreted differently, and the New Testament).  

First of all, a caveat, that the following quote may indicate a Christian bias: "There are fewer poems in the New Testament, but they give even more food for thought."

With that caveat, here are some good excerpts that may whet readers' appetite to read the whole article:

It is true that the border between verse and a cadenced prose is not easy to determine in either the Hebrew of the Old Testament or the Greek of the New: translators judge it differently. It may also be that the poems spoken by Jacob, Simeon, and many others come not from them but from the authors of the books in which they appear. The result is the same. We find ourselves constantly in the presence of writings that invite us into the joy of words, into a well-shaped language, in a form that demands from us the attention that we give to poetry and awakens us to expectation.

Certain scholars of the Bible have long known that the poetry is not there simply to add a dash of nobility, or sublimity, or emotive force to what the author could have said in prose. They learned from literary critics what the critics had learned from poets: poetry is in itself a way of thinking and of imagining the world; it discovers with precision what it had to say only by saying it; the meaning of a poem awaits us in its manner of being, and meaning in the customary sense of the word is not what is most important about it.

Should we not ask ourselves if the presence of so many poems changes not only the way in which the Bible speaks to us, but also the kind of message, announcement, or call that it conveys? How must faith perceive biblical speech? What does this continual turn to poetry imply about the very nature of Christianity?

Balaam and the Talking Donkey - a Lesson for Us (7/15/22)

We covered the story of Balaam and the talking donkey last week in Torah Study. (The Balaam and talking donkey episode is in Numbers 22, here.  A Torah.com offering, Do Animals Feel Pain? Balaam’s Donkey vs. Descartes (thetorah.com  here) is wonderful midrash (in an expansive sense) on that story. Remember that Balaam rebukes the donkey for no appropriate reason.  Then, according to this midrash, The Angel Sides with the Donkey, here.  That is a comforting thought for all of us metaphorical and real donkeys.  Some snippets.

Just how appropriately it [the donkey] has behaved and spoken is confirmed when the angel rebukes Balaam. First, he repeats the animal’s complaint, in the same words the donkey uses, thereby validating it (v. 32).

Second, he makes Balaam aware that everything the donkey has done was for his own good and that he owes the animal his life (vv. 32–33).

Balaam is forced to apologize and admit his sinful behavior, pleading that the reason he erred was because, unlike his donkey, he did not know the angel was there (לֹא יָדַעְתִּי כִּי אַתָּה נִצָּב לִקְרָאתִי).

How often do we act inappropriate when we do not recognize that the Angel or God is there?

Also,

Animal Suffering in the Torah

The story of Balaam’s donkey is an extreme instance of something we see elsewhere in the Torah, that animals have feelings and it is incumbent upon humans to take this into consideration. In contrast to Descartes’ notion, which circulated widely and had a detrimental influence on the treatment of animals (as can be seen in Solomon Maimon’s story),[6] the Torah never doubts that animals feel pain and that a goat is most certainly not a drum.

A wonderful lesson.

More on Midrash - On Pharaoh and Egyptians as God's Creatures Too (8/2/21)

In my Torah Study Book Study group, we are currently reading (finishing this week), Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's Moses: A Human Life, here.  Zornberg has a particularly interest in midrash, and continues that interest in this book.  I have other postings on midrash on this blog, so those wanting more on midrash can click the link at the bottom of this blog entry.

I recently sent this email to our group:

You may be interested in this offering from TheTorah.com: Prof.Edward L. Greenstein, Where Are God’s Tears in Lamentations?, here:

The opening sets it up nicely:

Tears abound in Lamentations: the poet cries, the people cry, even the city cries, but God does not. In contrast, the gods and goddesses of ancient Near Eastern city laments, cry along with their people. Midrash Eichah Rabbah, seemingly uncomfortable with such a callous depiction of God, rereads Lamentations to include God weeping.

That is just the opening.  A really good read.

This reminds me of the midrash I mentioned that I got from Avivah Zornberg about God rebuking the angels who were celebrating the death of the Egyptians by drowning.  I originally heard this in a Krista Tippett interview of Zornberg back in 2005.  The audio and transcript of that interview, titled The Transformation of Pharaoh, Moses, and God, is here.  Here is the relevant excerpt:

Midrash Similar to Jesus’ Separation of Sheep from Goats in Matthew (5/23/21)

The WPC community will undoubtedly recall the Jesus statement quote in Matthew 25:31-46, here, about how he separates the sheep from the goats—by determining who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, etc.  This episode says, in effect, the separation will be made by what a person did in life.  Significantly, what is not stated in this episode is any role for "belief" whatever exactly that is.

I think this is a very Jewish way of thinking.  That should not be surprising because Jesus was a Jew.

A similar story is told in the Jewish tradition by midrash.  Back in 2007, I found this offering in Reform Judaism’s Ten Minutes of Torah.  Unfortunately, I could not find the link today but I had copied the text of the offering and therefore offer it here:

April 12, 2007  

Week 177, Day 4

24 Nisan 5767 

Life after Death: Open the Gates of Righteousness 

Midrash, Thillim Rabbah 118:19 

Text: 

At the time of judgment in the future world everyone will be asked, What was your occupation? If the person answers, I used to feed the hungry, they will say to him, This is Gods gate; you who fed the hungry many enter. I used to give water to those who were thirsty-they will say to him, This is Gods gate; you who gave water to those who were thirsty may enter. I used to clothe the naked-they will say to him, This is Gods gate; you who clothed the naked may enter and similarly with those who raised orphans, and who performed the mitzvah of tzedakah, and who performed acts of caring, loving-kindness. 

Interpretation:

Kugel on Biblical Interpretation by the Ancient Interpreters and Current Jewish and Christian Interpretation (5/23/21)

In the book forming the basis for the WPC series (Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently), the authors offer (pp. 24-25) Professor James’ Kugel’s “four principles of ancient Jewish exegesis.”  I thought I would offer just a little more on that from the Kugel’s How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now.  Kugel says that these principles are “Four Assumptions” that ancient interpreters brought to interpreting the Hebrew Bible.

Kugel has a special expertise in interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (including Christian interpretations )of the Hebrew Bible and has placed particular focus on interpretations of the Hebrew Bible when the Jewish community canonized the text over many years.  He argues that the key interpretations were not what the original author(s) (or redactors) may have intended but the interpretations when the Jewish community accepted the text as interpreted as canon for their religion.  Thus, Song of Songs (Song of Solomon in the Christian Bible) is a love poem between woman and man.  By a process of interpretation, the Jewish community and then the Christian community made it about the love of God and community.  This interpretive process starts and then does not end.

Here is  how Kugel illustrates his focus on ancient interpreters (pp. 10-17, footnotes and endnotes omitted and bold-face supplied by JAT):

The Ancient Interpreters at Work

                        Who were the interpreters of these ancient writings? n14 For the most part, their names are unknown. From their writings and from their whole approach to interpreting Scripture, it would appear that most of them were teachers or professional sages of sorts; n15 is some were probably independently wealthy men (and, possibly, women) who had the leisure to pursue their subject. n16 Indeed, we know that a few, like the second-century BCE sage Ben Sira, belonged to the ruling class and were close to the political leadership (Sir. 39:4; 50:1-24); such figures no doubt strengthened the connection between reading Scripture and determining how community affairs were to be run in their own day. Their ideas about how Scripture is to be interpreted have survived in a number of texts belonging to the end of the biblical period—texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the biblical apocrypha and pseudepigraphas as well as in somewhat later writings such as those of early Christians and the founders of rabbinic Judaism.

[11]

            The manner in which ancient interpreters read and explained Scripture is at first likely to strike modern readers as a bit strange. They did not go about the job of interpreting the way we do nowadays. Take, for example, the famous biblical story of how God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on an altar:

And it came to pass, after these things, that God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" and he answered, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Then sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you." So Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took two of his servants with him, along with his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering and then set out for the place that God had told him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place from afar. Abraham told his servants, "You stay here with the donkey while the boy and I go up there, so that we can worship and then come back to you."

            Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac; then he took the fire and the knife, and the two of them walked together. But Isaac said to his father Abraham, "Father?" and he said, "Here I am, my son." And he said, "Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham said, "God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them walked together.

            When they came to the place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. He then tied up his son Isaac and put him on the altar on top of the wood. Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son. But an angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Do not harm the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." And Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.

                                                                                    Gen. 22:1-13

            The story itself is quite disturbing to modern readers — as it was to ancient readers. How could God, even as a test, order someone to kill his own son? And why would God ever need to test Abraham in this way? After all, God is supposed to know everything: presumably, He knew how the test would come out before it took place, and He certainly already knew that Abraham was one who "feared God," as the angel says after the test is over. Equally disturbing is the way Abraham deceives his son Isaac. He does not tell him  [12] what God has told him to do; Isaac is kept in the dark until the last minute. In fact, when Isaac asks the obvious question—I see all the accoutrements for the sacrifice, but where is the animal we're going to sacrifice? — Abraham gives him an evasive answer: "God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." This actually turns out to be true; God does provide a sacrificial animal — but Abraham had no way of knowing it at the time.