Can You Hear the Drums, Fernando?

Humanities. My favorite definition is that humanities is the study of what it is to be human. There are things universal to all people, regardless of language, credo, nationality, and parentage. What changes really are the specifics.

Humanity has been around for oh, what, 200,000 years? Longer? Shorter? Still, that's an extremely long time. How we made it that long without coffee percolators is beyond mortal comprehension. Still, though, man has lasted a damn long time on this planet. Regardless of what impact we have on our place, we haven't really changed the fact that we are animals with the same basic needs. Sure, the specifics have changed. Hunting involves modern man going to the supermarket or drive-thru. Shelter of today required the advent of economics and bad mortgages to acquire and then have it foreclosed away from him.

2005 was a scary time. The housing bubble was going to burst and the world economy melt but people kept on living beyond their means anyway. Of course, that didn't affect everyday life then, nor was anyone really worried about it. So it wasn't really scary times. They were the best of times. In those best of times I was a new student at UHCL. I was focusing on my remaining core classes.

I had Humanities I. I wasn't thrilled at the prospect of reading a bunch of old books for a weekly 3-hour lecture class. My professor was Dr. Fernando Casas, recently of famed Rice University. Dr. Casas was originally from Spain. He spoke about 4 languages fluently and understood a handful more. He had an impressive knowledge of literature. He was also insane.

His English turned out to be very good. The first day we were less sure. He was stop mid-sentence ... AND SCREAM! BANGING on the board when necessary. He was a very passionate man and he managed to inspire the class to give a damn about a book written by someone who died about 3000 years ago.

The Greeks didn't have convection ovens but went through all the stupid crap that we whinge about on a daily basis. They just did so in a low-tech world and spoke Greek. He also stressed that we are not unique in our feelings. It was strangely comforting, that. Not my insignificance, no, but that things worked out well for those Greeks, at least for a little while. He also used the Romans as examples a lot, a group of people I like to identify with anyway. He would tell us personal stories of when he visited different cities and told of meeting the people there, seeing the ancient landmarks.

I took him again for Humanities II. It was an excellent class that really helped my writing and my worldview.

He told us he was working on a book on time. I keep looking for it. I would like to read it some day.