“Leonard Nimoy helped me with my atheism,” recalls a friend of mine who grew up in West Texas, which seems about as far away as Vulcan. We were chatting as I drew this image yesterday, after hearing of the actor’s death.

It is well known that Gene Roddenberry built the original Star Trek series around the Greek archetypes. Pathos and Ethos (Bones and Kirk) have inhabited countless screen heroes, but its hard to find a greater celebration of Logos anywhere in the cultural landscape than in our beloved Spock. My mother used to remind me that while people can be inconstant, music and reason are “the friends we can rely on for life.” Another piece of wisdom she dispensed: “Don’t smoke.”