I didn’t know he had a master’s degree in Spanish. Quite the well-rounded man. And a poet too:
He also found his voice as a writer. Besides his autobiographies, he published “A Lifetime of Love: Poems on the Passages of Life” in 2002. Typical of Mr. Nimoy’s simple free verse are these lines: “In my heart/Is the seed of the tree/Which will be me.”
He did “live long,” and enriched the lives of my generation of humans … and of the generations that came along after me. Much love to Mr. Nimoy.
This comes just a couple of days after I stumbled across some fan art for his Mission: Impossible character Paris on Deviantart. Paris replaced Martin Landau’s character Rollin Hand, which was oddly ironic in that Landau had supposedly been considered for the roll of Spock.
My folks came to U.S. as immigrants, aliens, and became citizens. I was born in Boston, a citizen, went to Hollywood and became an alien. – Leonard Nimoy
I recall Nimoy as a fairly credulous host (in contrast to Arthur C. Clarke in Mysterious World). I may be wrong, and I don’t really hold it against him. I think those kinds of shows are a lot of fun, and probably promote skepticism as much as belief.
The only irritating thing is how Nimoy somehow carried Spock’s credibility with him. Nimoy was, I think, a very smart guy, but he was not the science officer of a starship.
drstsays
PaulBC @15 – we loved “In Search Of” watched it faithfully every week.
Gregory Greenwoodsays
A good person who lived a meaningful life; none of us can aspire to any more than that. He also made a great green blooded space goblin, as Dr McCoy would say.
A sad day, and in many ways the end of an era.
Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thoughtsays
PaulBC, I used to watch In Search of… all the time as a kid. In a way I still have fond memories of it, despite it being really silly and credulous. I am not sure how it influenced me. When I was younger I was very interested in paranormal stuff, UFOs, cryptozoology and such, and maybe watching it helped push me down that path, but my the time I was a teenager I had discovered Carl Sagan and realized how silly and credulous I was. I still find those topics to be really interesting, just from a different perspective.
PaulBCsays
When I was younger I was very interested in paranormal stuff, UFOs, cryptozoology and such, and maybe watching it helped push me down that path, but my the time I was a teenager I had discovered Carl Sagan and realized how silly and credulous I was.
Couldn’t agree more. I don’t know if that was just a 70s thing or if kids today are also introduced to science by way of pseudoscience.
AlexanderZsays
He indeed was a good human being. When nobody in Hollywood would hire Grace Lee Whitney (after she was raped by an executive on Star Trek and had to become a porn actress to support her substance addiction), he would make sure that she’d at least have a cameo in his movies (the only The Original Series movies she hadn’t appeared in were Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek 5, fully directed by Gene Roddenberry and William Shatner, respectively). Not only it gave her income, but also allowed her to stay in touch with her fans, which she enjoyed. She often talked about him as a dear friend and supporter.
carliesays
Seconding praise for the Full Body Project.
Also, if you haven’t seen him in the Bruno Mars video, go watch it now.
caselowerazsays
To paraphrase Spock’s line from “Requiem for Methusalah,” “On this day I shall mourn.”
Ragutissays
In Search Of… was credulous, and in my grade school years, I suppose I was too. Don’t know how much the show had to do with my having that “I want to believe” mindset, but one thing that I will gladly credit the show and Mr. Nimoy with (in part at least) was sparking my curiosity. I spent hours and hours and hours at the library and home reading about Bigfoot, ESP, Nessie, etc, This in turn led me to more fact-based interests and credible sources such as Cousteau and Sagan. Being fascinated by UFO stories made me want to learn about space and prepped me for Cosmos. Planes and ships disappearing just over the horizon of the Atlantic that I saw everyday from my living room, the waters where I spent so much time swimming, fishing, and learning to surf, made me wonder what was down there, and were a part of drew me to The Undersea World.
I’m among the millions that will miss him. I hope his family finds consolation in the fullness of the life he lived and the influence he had on so many.
lornsays
Damn.
One of the very few widely known examples of what it means to be a good man, gone.
The Summer before last i put together an experimental photo class called ‘Photographing the Feminine’ that i structured to tackle the problematic issues concerning the traditional/acceptable female nude, the male gaze and the re-infusing of agency back to women as subject/self rather than as object as it pertains to images of the female body.
The I arranged the class so that we would have a speaker and readings on one day, and we would have studio time the other.
The FIRST person i thought of to get as a speaker was Leonard Nimoy whose first artistic love was and always has been (by his own admission) photography. He was also one of the first, if not the first to portray fat women as subjects i.e. real people/real women and not as objects of disgust, or ridicule or scorn. The book is called The Full Body Project where he photographed members of a SF Dance Troupe (The Fat Bottom Revue) in situations and poses reflective of the traditional canon of beauty in fine art. It is and was a POWERFUL book way before it’s time.
I managed to get a hold of some sort of agent connected to him who sighed and said – “OK, i’ll pass on the info”
About a week later i got a cryptic email from a weird address that said merely “Yes, let’s do this – Nimoy”
That started a discussion, a bunch of emails (which being a fangirl i have kept) and ultimately a 2 hour Skype talk with me class with him showing his photographs, his discussion of his fear in taking on the whole cans of worms that is fat bodies, his wife challenging him to face that fear, and to come out with the triumphant photos of the FBP.
He took questions, and gave answers that brought us all to tears when he spoke about his wife Susan Bey, and how he gained such courage from her, how much he loved her and how she never failed to challenge him as an artist, as a man and as a person.
I owe the success of what turned out to be probably the most challenging class of my career as a professor to his contribution as well as those of the other speakers in the class that gave of their time and experience so magnificently, Laurie Toby Edison & Debbie Notkin, (Women En Large) Melissa McEwan, (Shakesville) and Carla Williams (The Black Female Body).
He seemed like a nice guy, and I know that his work gave joy to many. I think most of us could do worse. That’s something, isn’t it? We shall all die some day, then what? If this is all there is, if we are just here in a brief moment before ceasing to exist, then why not try to make the best of the journey? Bringing joy to your companions on this journey doesn’t sound like a bad way to play it.
So thank you Mr Nimoy for the joy you brought me.
Azuma Hazukisays
I was never a Star Trek fan, but Nimoy seemed like a genuinely good person to me. That’s where the real loss is: someone who could reach two or three generations at once and inspire them to better forms of humanity has died. I’ll miss his influence. He lived long (83) and mostly prospered.
It sounds like he lived long and prospered. A good life, worth emulating.
carliesays
Kathi, thank you so much for sharing – what a wonderful story, and a wonderful memory.
wsierichssays
I’m sad to hear it. I loved Star Trek from the first episode I saw and was, pardon the pun, fascinated by his character, not to mention the whole team.
As an FYI, Nimoy was in an episode of the original “Outer Limits,” in which he played a reporter (as I recall) in a story about an intelligent robot charged with murdering its maker. Shatner was in another episode, where he was an astronaut who went to Venus and came back … changed.
Menyambalsays
I grew up in a house without a TV, back when the original series was originally on. I have probably never seen a full show or movie with Leonard Nimoy as Spock. Still, even without that, Spock was a part of my culture, and Leonard Nimoy was a wonderful human being who influenced me toward science.
(Seriously, I thought the character was “Dr. Spock”, like the baby-book guy. And I have seen The Big Bang Theory and Simpsons episodes where he gave his great voice to a show. I just invoked Spock’s home planet in a class on vulcanology on Tuesday.)
He was a great actor and a grand human being. (I am doing the hand salute.)
teawithbertrandsays
First celebrity death to make me cry in a long, long time.
John Scalzi summed it up well: If you’re having trouble understanding the grief over @TheRealNimoy’s passing, here it is: Every geek just lost their favorite grandparent.
Although for some of us, he was more of a favorite uncle.
tbtabbysays
I only just heard about it last night before bed. We lost an icon, but at least he went peacefully.
Very sad news. Saw him recently as a bad guy on a Columbo episode. Very hard to think of him as anything *other* than a good guy, particularly Spock. There are so few people in the public eye who deserve to be thought of as heroes, but he qualifies.
cicelysays
:( :( :(
–
Trickster Goddesssays
“He’s dead, Jim.”
anastasiasays
A couple of years ago, he acted as a grumpy version of himself for Bruno Mars’ The Lazy Song.
David Marjanovićsays
but at least he went peacefully
Um. COPD means he suffocated. I hope he didn’t wake up or dream in the process.
♥ :(
I didn’t know he had a master’s degree in Spanish. Quite the well-rounded man. And a poet too:
He did “live long,” and enriched the lives of my generation of humans … and of the generations that came along after me. Much love to Mr. Nimoy.
He lived long and prospered. Farewell.
Here’s his very last tweet, from four days ago.
https://twitter.com/TheRealNimoy/status/569762773204217857
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP
This news makes me sad.
We’ll always have The ballad of Bilbo Baggins
:(
;-(
;-(
;-(
;-(
;-(
;-(
;-(
I got nuthin to say; so sad.
Leonard Nimoy in an episode of “Combat!”
http://youtu.be/b4PSh3thSx4
The same observation could be made for Mr. Nimoy. He was a decent human being, and he will be missed, even by those who never knew him.
Leonard Nimoy speaking Yiddish, talking about his childhood and the origin of the hand sign. (The informative parts are in English)
I found this while enrolled in a Yiddish course at UC Berkeley.
Leonard Nimoy’s Mameloshn: A Yiddish Story: http://youtu.be/9QAYvI5CC5s
This comes just a couple of days after I stumbled across some fan art for his Mission: Impossible character Paris on Deviantart. Paris replaced Martin Landau’s character Rollin Hand, which was oddly ironic in that Landau had supposedly been considered for the roll of Spock.
My folks came to U.S. as immigrants, aliens, and became citizens. I was born in Boston, a citizen, went to Hollywood and became an alien. – Leonard Nimoy
Also, The Full Body Project: http://wineandbowties.com/art/the-full-body-project-by-leonard-nimoy/
Anyone remember In Search Of, the TV series?
I recall Nimoy as a fairly credulous host (in contrast to Arthur C. Clarke in Mysterious World). I may be wrong, and I don’t really hold it against him. I think those kinds of shows are a lot of fun, and probably promote skepticism as much as belief.
The only irritating thing is how Nimoy somehow carried Spock’s credibility with him. Nimoy was, I think, a very smart guy, but he was not the science officer of a starship.
PaulBC @15 – we loved “In Search Of” watched it faithfully every week.
A good person who lived a meaningful life; none of us can aspire to any more than that. He also made a great green blooded space goblin, as Dr McCoy would say.
A sad day, and in many ways the end of an era.
Farewell Mr. Nimoy. You will be missed.
My condolences to family and friends.
I haven’t yet watched much that Nimoy was involved with, but he seemed like a fantastic actor and a wonderful person.
This is very sad indeed.
PaulBC, I used to watch In Search of… all the time as a kid. In a way I still have fond memories of it, despite it being really silly and credulous. I am not sure how it influenced me. When I was younger I was very interested in paranormal stuff, UFOs, cryptozoology and such, and maybe watching it helped push me down that path, but my the time I was a teenager I had discovered Carl Sagan and realized how silly and credulous I was. I still find those topics to be really interesting, just from a different perspective.
Couldn’t agree more. I don’t know if that was just a 70s thing or if kids today are also introduced to science by way of pseudoscience.
He indeed was a good human being. When nobody in Hollywood would hire Grace Lee Whitney (after she was raped by an executive on Star Trek and had to become a porn actress to support her substance addiction), he would make sure that she’d at least have a cameo in his movies (the only The Original Series movies she hadn’t appeared in were Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek 5, fully directed by Gene Roddenberry and William Shatner, respectively). Not only it gave her income, but also allowed her to stay in touch with her fans, which she enjoyed. She often talked about him as a dear friend and supporter.
Seconding praise for the Full Body Project.
Also, if you haven’t seen him in the Bruno Mars video, go watch it now.
To paraphrase Spock’s line from “Requiem for Methusalah,” “On this day I shall mourn.”
In Search Of… was credulous, and in my grade school years, I suppose I was too. Don’t know how much the show had to do with my having that “I want to believe” mindset, but one thing that I will gladly credit the show and Mr. Nimoy with (in part at least) was sparking my curiosity. I spent hours and hours and hours at the library and home reading about Bigfoot, ESP, Nessie, etc, This in turn led me to more fact-based interests and credible sources such as Cousteau and Sagan. Being fascinated by UFO stories made me want to learn about space and prepped me for Cosmos. Planes and ships disappearing just over the horizon of the Atlantic that I saw everyday from my living room, the waters where I spent so much time swimming, fishing, and learning to surf, made me wonder what was down there, and were a part of drew me to The Undersea World.
I’m among the millions that will miss him. I hope his family finds consolation in the fullness of the life he lived and the influence he had on so many.
Damn.
One of the very few widely known examples of what it means to be a good man, gone.
I feel old, and a bit colder.
I think I shall go for a walk, and think.
A sad day indeed. Mr. Nimoy enriched a great many lives, and he leaves a great legacy.
Here is my Leonard Nimoy story.
The Summer before last i put together an experimental photo class called ‘Photographing the Feminine’ that i structured to tackle the problematic issues concerning the traditional/acceptable female nude, the male gaze and the re-infusing of agency back to women as subject/self rather than as object as it pertains to images of the female body.
The I arranged the class so that we would have a speaker and readings on one day, and we would have studio time the other.
The FIRST person i thought of to get as a speaker was Leonard Nimoy whose first artistic love was and always has been (by his own admission) photography. He was also one of the first, if not the first to portray fat women as subjects i.e. real people/real women and not as objects of disgust, or ridicule or scorn. The book is called The Full Body Project where he photographed members of a SF Dance Troupe (The Fat Bottom Revue) in situations and poses reflective of the traditional canon of beauty in fine art. It is and was a POWERFUL book way before it’s time.
I managed to get a hold of some sort of agent connected to him who sighed and said – “OK, i’ll pass on the info”
About a week later i got a cryptic email from a weird address that said merely “Yes, let’s do this – Nimoy”
That started a discussion, a bunch of emails (which being a fangirl i have kept) and ultimately a 2 hour Skype talk with me class with him showing his photographs, his discussion of his fear in taking on the whole cans of worms that is fat bodies, his wife challenging him to face that fear, and to come out with the triumphant photos of the FBP.
He took questions, and gave answers that brought us all to tears when he spoke about his wife Susan Bey, and how he gained such courage from her, how much he loved her and how she never failed to challenge him as an artist, as a man and as a person.
I owe the success of what turned out to be probably the most challenging class of my career as a professor to his contribution as well as those of the other speakers in the class that gave of their time and experience so magnificently, Laurie Toby Edison & Debbie Notkin, (Women En Large) Melissa McEwan, (Shakesville) and Carla Williams (The Black Female Body).
LLAP!
Sad day.
He seemed like a nice guy, and I know that his work gave joy to many. I think most of us could do worse. That’s something, isn’t it? We shall all die some day, then what? If this is all there is, if we are just here in a brief moment before ceasing to exist, then why not try to make the best of the journey? Bringing joy to your companions on this journey doesn’t sound like a bad way to play it.
So thank you Mr Nimoy for the joy you brought me.
I was never a Star Trek fan, but Nimoy seemed like a genuinely good person to me. That’s where the real loss is: someone who could reach two or three generations at once and inspire them to better forms of humanity has died. I’ll miss his influence. He lived long (83) and mostly prospered.
:(
He will be missed.
It sounds like he lived long and prospered. A good life, worth emulating.
Kathi, thank you so much for sharing – what a wonderful story, and a wonderful memory.
I’m sad to hear it. I loved Star Trek from the first episode I saw and was, pardon the pun, fascinated by his character, not to mention the whole team.
As an FYI, Nimoy was in an episode of the original “Outer Limits,” in which he played a reporter (as I recall) in a story about an intelligent robot charged with murdering its maker. Shatner was in another episode, where he was an astronaut who went to Venus and came back … changed.
I grew up in a house without a TV, back when the original series was originally on. I have probably never seen a full show or movie with Leonard Nimoy as Spock. Still, even without that, Spock was a part of my culture, and Leonard Nimoy was a wonderful human being who influenced me toward science.
(Seriously, I thought the character was “Dr. Spock”, like the baby-book guy. And I have seen The Big Bang Theory and Simpsons episodes where he gave his great voice to a show. I just invoked Spock’s home planet in a class on vulcanology on Tuesday.)
He was a great actor and a grand human being. (I am doing the hand salute.)
First celebrity death to make me cry in a long, long time.
The cosmic ballet…goes on.
He also narrated this classic biopic.
And he showed up on Spitting Images – sort of.
\\//
<3
John Scalzi summed it up well: If you’re having trouble understanding the grief over @TheRealNimoy’s passing, here it is: Every geek just lost their favorite grandparent.
Although for some of us, he was more of a favorite uncle.
I only just heard about it last night before bed. We lost an icon, but at least he went peacefully.
Well, I guess his work is done here… :-(
Very sad news. Saw him recently as a bad guy on a Columbo episode. Very hard to think of him as anything *other* than a good guy, particularly Spock. There are so few people in the public eye who deserve to be thought of as heroes, but he qualifies.
:( :( :(
–
“He’s dead, Jim.”
A couple of years ago, he acted as a grumpy version of himself for Bruno Mars’ The Lazy Song.
Um. COPD means he suffocated. I hope he didn’t wake up or dream in the process.
That is wonderful.
Link doesn’t work. :-(