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Richard Webb: The Man Who Played Captain Midnight
Actor Richard Webb (1915-1993) was born on September 9. Webb was best known for starring in the serial The Invisible Monster (1950), and for playing the title character in the television version of Captain Midnight (1954-56, later syndicated as Jet Jackson: The Flying Commando), then the lead in the tv series Border Patrol (1959), and Lt. Commander Ben Finney in the 1967 Star Trek episode “The…
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A mystery I found on a $1 cart in a local used bookshop. This was printed in 1986, but signed on August 29th 1994.
At the time Ben Finney was a professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and it seems like he'd be teaching. This was a Monday, after all, and most universities start fall semesters before September.
It's also "for Catherine" - maybe a student who took the class just to meet the professor? Or worse, maybe he had a giant stack of these and taught out of them, and signed one for each student as a memento. But the upper-right corner seems a bit like he had to start over, like someone asked for his signature and then said "oh, actually, could you dedicate this to Catherine?"
That's the crux of it for me, who Catherine was. If she was a fan of the book, and kept it for eight years, it shows almost no signs of being read by someone other than me. If she had multiple copies like a comic collector, or read one copy to death and procured another to get this signature, then why did it wind up in a second-hand bookstore on the U.S. mainland?
My best guess at this point is that Catherine was the daughter of the person who had the book signed, who was possibly a friend or acquaintance on good terms with Finney. "May you tour the regions of space" does seem like a message to a younger generation (though he was about 60 at the time he signed, so even a twenty- or thirtysomething might count...).
I wish I could read the word above the date, if only to confirm that it isn't hiding key information. My eyes keep trying to complete it as Barcelona, but it looks more like Boucelance to me.
Tweets of the Week: Swear Trek Edition
I’m often impressed at how well the captions sync with the lip movements on Swear Trek gifs derived from the original Star Trek. Especially so for the ones featuring James Doohan or DeForest Kelley, those guys just looked like great cussers. I can hardly remember that this wasn’t the actual line: pic.twitter.com/2wP3nsDihF— Swear Trek (@swear_trek) January 22, 2021 All three of these look…
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S1-E20 Lt. Comdr. Ben Finney by TenkaraStudios
The many moods of Ben Finney
This past Saturday was the memorial service for Ben Finney (in yellow), an anthropologist and one of the three founders of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. Ben and the crew members of the Hōkūle‘a sailed from Hawai‘i to Tahiti in 1976 without an engine or map using traditional sailing techniques. This picture is via the PVS website which has a great selection of photos of Ben and other PVS members.
Ben Finney, Anthropologist Who Debunked Theory on Island Settlement, Dies at 83 by WILLIAM GRIMES
By WILLIAM GRIMES Mr. Finney supervised the building of the Hokulea, which sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti and discredited the “accidental settlement” theory of Polynesia. Published: June 16, 2017 at 08:00PM from NYT U.S. http://nyti.ms/2sFSNeE from Ben Finney, Anthropologist Who Debunked Theory on Island Settlement, Dies at 83 by WILLIAM GRIMES
Mr. Finney supervised the building of the Hokulea, which sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti and discredited the “accidental settlement” theory of Polynesia.
