My course materials are "published" ahead of time--classes start Wednesday, although I don't need to meet with in-person students until Friday. I'm trying to spend as much time as possible before then working through some George Kerr correspondence as a contribution to a chapter on Kerr's later years. Lots of uplifting talk of his trials and tribulations with getting Licensed Revolution published; getting Asian art objects sold to keep body and soul together; dealing with aging and being robbed and becoming more and more cantankerous; trying to finish a book about Hawai'ian King Kalākaua, about whom Kerr was becoming less and less enamored the more he wrote about him (how well I know the feeling...).
Speaking of King Kalākaua, I recently bought a copy of Tiffany Lani Ing's book, Reclaiming Kalākaua: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives on a Hawaiian Sovereign (2019), which promised a more sympathetic evaluation of the man than he has traditionally received. Kerr isn't cited in the book, but that is not surprising, considering that he never published his manuscript on Kalākaua. Ing's book relies more on Hawai'ian-language sources than many of the other books written about Kalākaua. Like the writers of these other books, Kerr did not have access to (i.e., couldn't read) the Hawai'ian language.
For an introduction to Ing's book--by the author herself--you can watch this video (I need to watch it later because I need to get back to the Kerr correspondence now!):
