Photo by Leonard Nimoy

It was sad to lose Leonard Nimoy last week, but wonderful to look back on the man’s productive creative life and feel gratitude for his gifts. An interesting point of focus in many of the remembrances I’ve seen is Nimoy’s work as a photographer. Some of Nimoy’s photographs connect directly to his spiritual life, but so does the character of Spock. Nimoy’s photos aren’t as well known as his acting, but the fact is that whether he was on a television screen, in front of a movie camera or working behind the lens to create his own still images, Nimoy was a mystic who grounded his creativity in the sky. Here’s what art critic and poet Donald Kuspit had to say about Nimoy’s and his art…

Nimoy is a gnostic mystic—a radical spiritualist, indeed, a spiritual rebel…I am suggesting that Nimoy’s fascination with the female body involves an element of temptation as well as transcendence. I am suggestion that what is really unusual about his female figures is that they signify profane and sacred love simultaneously…The issue that Nimoy’s photographs subtly address is the transmutation of sexual desire into spiritual aspiration…It is Nimoy’s ability to convey woman’s many-sidedness—Shekhina and Succubus at once—that makes his photographs profound.

Here’s a great video about Nimoy’s spiritual path, his creative work, and his kabbalistic photography series, Shekhina…

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The television show In Search Of is a strange little chestnut from my childhood. I knew the show’s host, Leonard Nimoy from his turn as “Spock” in Star Trek repeats, and In Search Of’s focus on unexplained phenomena, missing persons and extraterrestrial encounters was right on target for a kid who already loved Sci-Fi.

I remember being terrified by the “Bigfoot” episode of the show and equally traumatized when the program took its cameras beneath the deep green waters of Loch Ness. But, not all of the show’s subjects were so “out there.” In 1980, their “Lee Harvey Oswald” episode dramatized the circumstances surrounding the assassination of JFK, including key evidence from authors and experts along the way.

The result is an insightful portrait of the self-proclaimed “patsy” that challenges the “lone gunman” contentions of the Warren Report. The centerpiece of the show is a Dallas police dictaphone recording that proves that there were four shots in Dealey Plaza that day in 1963. The recording confirmed a shot coming from the “Grassy Knoll” and the existence of a second shooter. The evidence was presented to the House Select Committee on Assassinations and published their findings in 1979. Among their conclusions:

Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at Kennedy. The second and third shots Oswald fired struck the President. The third shot he fired killed the President.
Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that at least two gunmen fired at the President. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Cuban Government was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency were not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
Agencies and departments of the U.S. Government performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfilment of their duties. President Kennedy did not receive adequate protection. A thorough and reliable investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination was conducted. The investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. The conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive.
The Committee further concluded that it was probable that:

four shots were fired
the third shot came from a second assassin located on the grassy knoll, but missed. They concluded that it missed due to the lack of physical evidence of an actual bullet, of course this investigation took place almost sixteen years after the crime.

Find out more. Watch “In Search Of: Lee Harvey Oswald”

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