Beltane Moon of the Summer Solstice
Pushing myself. Up to 10,000 steps on the four days I don’t do resistance work, 5,000 on those days. Feels good, so I’ll probably stay at it. The resistance work is helping, too. Less knee pain, less stiffness, better balance.
Looked at lilacs on Monday. After reading some material online, it looks like Syringa vulgaris (guess what? common lilac) and Syringa x prestonia, a Canadian cultivar, work well at our altitude. Gonna put in two bushes this year and see how they do. If they do well, I’ll add more next year. Cautionary note: don’t add fuel where it might feed a fire in the trees. They both need full sun and at least some amended soil. That we can provide.
Vulcan salute
Last night I went to an interesting session, Star Trek and Judaism at Beth Evergreen. Several original cast members were Jewish, most prominent among them William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
A fascinating take away was the origin of the Vulcan salute. Nimoy, as the sole Vulcan in the main cast, got to have a lot of say about developing Vulcan culture. He attended a service in which the shekinah, the feminine aspect of God, gets invited in. She’s so powerful that everyone shields their eyes and a group of men upfront were wailing, according to Nimoy in a video clip. He decided to peek and noticed that they were holding their fingers in what you would immediately recognize as the familiar Vulcan greeting. It’s the Hebrew letter shin, the first letter of shekinah, shalom, sabbath.
