I’m sitting here this morning with a stack of photos from years past, mostly my own, but some from other sources, along with a few papers and documents that happened to be sitting in the same folders.

Scanning is the order of the day. I hope to scan several hundred snapshots and back them up online, then decide what to do with the originals.

But I can see I’ll be easily distracted.

For example, here’s a note that I believe was typed by my mother when she worked at the Hawaiian Historical Society back in the late 1960s and 1970s.

It’s an excerpt from a letter written by Valdemar Knudsen, an early sugar grower on Kauai, to Professor W.D. Alexander. Although the date is shown as “1854?”, it seems pretty clear that Knudsen was recollecting his 1954 conversations at a later date.

In the letter, Knudsen relates how he spoke to Hawaiians in 1854 and was told of “Hawaiians going on long journeys by sea but none mentioned any name of islands further than Kahiki.”

Then, almost immediately, I came across this undated photo of a celebration at Iolani Palace. There’s a large, decorated Christmas tree on the steps, and people gathered in front, as well as on the balconies. There’s no indication of the date.

Then a photo one of the nuns at St. Andrew’s Priory School, probably just before 1900. My mother guessed that this was Sister Albertina, who was a favorite of my grandmother (or perhaps my grandmother was one of her favorites).

I found a falling apart hard bound edition of Tennyson’s poems with Sister Albertina’s name handwritten on the front page. Apparently it had been given to my grandmother, either while she was at the Priory or afterwards.

Click on any photo to see a larger version.

If there are many more items like this in the pile I’m trying to scan, it’s going to be a long day.