Today I learned of the passing of Tony Hillerman.  Hillerman is best known for his mystery novels set in the American Southwest.  Featuring Navajo tribal policemen Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Sgt. Jim Chee, the novels paint vivid descriptions of tribal life in a starkly beautiful landscape.

I first learned of Hillerman from another Tony, my cousin and Laura’s colleague Tony Arrington.  The year was 1991 and we were preparing to move to Tucson, Arizona for a year’s study.  Tony had suggested Hillerman’s novels as a way of introduction to our new home.  The first book I read was “A Thief of Time,” and it remains my favorite of the Hillerman books.  We own most of the novels, including a signed first edition of “The Sinister Pig.”

Many writers who use a specific cast of characters often get into a rut.  I think of Martha Grimes, with her Richard Jury mysteries.  It often becomes a contrivence to get all of the familiar characters and situations together in every novel, as if that’s what the readers expect.  That was never the case with Hillerman.  The incidental characters were integral parts of the story, but it never seemed contrived.

I wondered how much longer Hillerman could continue the series.  The “Legendary Lieutenant” Leaphorn had finally retired from the force, and seemed to be aging along with Hillerman himself.  The last novel, “The Shape Shifter,” has Leaphorn becoming more forgetful.

Hillerman died Sunday in Phoenix at the age of 83.

I added yet another book to my growing collection of South Carolina ghost lore.  Tally Johnson has a book out entitled “Ghosts of the South Carolina Midlands.”  While the subject itself was of interest to me, what sealed the deal as far as my purchasing the book was the dedication in the Acknowledgments section:

To the public school teachers and media specialists in South Carolina, especially those at (the former) Lyman Elementary School, D. R. Hill Middle School, Dreher High School, Midland Valley High School, South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind, the Chester Park School of the Arts, and Oakdale Elementary School.

With three of my schools mentioned so prominently, how could I not buy the book?  Johnson goes on to say that he first became interested in ghosts as a child when folklorist and southern ghost expert Nancy Roberts visited his fifth grade class at Lyman Elementary.  I’ve learned from our current media specialists that Johnson has since made at least one visit to our district as a guest speaker.

In this newest book, as the name implies, Johnson explores ghost stories of the state’s Midlands.  He takes a county-by-county approach, first providing a history and description of famous people from the county, then describing any hauntings.  In some cases the history section far exceeds the list of hauntings.  In some cases, it seems like it was a real stretch just to come up with a haunting for that county.

Unlike John Boyonoski, who says he is a skeptic with it comes to matters of the paranormal, Johnson is a believer.  He claims to have personally experienced two “phantom hitchhikers.”  Who knows.  Johnson admits that phantom hitchhiker stories are as common as “crybaby bridges” and tend to follow a similar pattern.  That he experienced TWO of these – one in the first book and one in this one – makes me roll my eyes a bit.

Johnson also differs from Boyonoski in his visits to various locations.  Even though a skeptic, Boyonoski relied heavily on, and even participated in modern ghost investigations similar to those seen on Ghost Hunters.  There was discussion of EVPs, EMFs, cold spots, and other jargon of the field.  There was none of that in “Ghost of the South Carolina Midlands.”  Johnson relied on his own experiences.  If he didn’t see something, he says so.

I was a little disappointed in the brevity of some of these tales.  Apart from the history, Johnson gives very little adornment to the stories.  It can be a bit dry.  Still, it’s an interesting collection, and adds to the list of haunts in the state of which I’m aware.

From Lifehacker.com I stumbled across this post on the Google Operating System Blog about a method of embedding Google Books into blogs and web pages…

Google made it easy to embed in a site any book available at Google Book Search. You can add a fully-functional widget using this code:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://books.google.com/books/previewlib.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
GBS_insertEmbeddedViewer(‘GkCpLIk7aisC‘,600,500);
</script>

where you should replace GkCpLIk7aisC with the corresponding book ID, which can be obtained from the URL.

I can see this as a great way to site sources in blog posts, or to highlight reviews, etc.  For example, there have been several posts about John Boyanoski’s books on ghosts in upper South Carolina.  While I couldn’t find John’s books in Google Books, I was able to find Tally Johnson’s “Ghosts of the South Carolina Upcountry”, which is very similar to Boyanoski’s book.

The comments on the blog posts go into greater depth about how to link to specific pages and problems that might be encountered using this script on various sites. Most of those methods involve additional code that don’t work very well as embeds.

The other drawback is that you can really only embed one book per blog post. Correction – you can do more than one, but it puts them altogether in your post. You can’t have a book, then a bit of text, then another book. Something about the script joins the embeds.

Regardless, this looks pretty cool, and I may start adding more of them here.

While at the Open Book the other evening I picked up a copy of John Boyanoski’s More Ghosts of Upstate South Carolina.  I had enjoyed John’s first book immensely because it was one of the first to focus on hauntings of the Upstate area.  Most of the ghost books deal either with the state at large, or focus on the coastal areas.  I had even created a Google Earth KML file that maps out the locations in the first book.

While reading Boyanoski’s earlier book, I had made the comment that there didn’t seem to be many modern ghost stories.  Most of these tales seem to come from a time at least a century ago.  In More Ghosts, Boyanoski has included a few more modern stories.  He has also highlighted many more of the lesser-known haunts in the area.  Some of these are in private residences, so care is taken to protect the home owners’ identities.

Whether because of the popularity of TV shows like Ghost Hunters, or because it’s hard to find these places without some help, the book makes many more references to local paranormal research groups.  There was lots of discussion about orbs, EVP’s, EMF readings, and all the other techno-babble that ghost hunting groups like to use.  Personally, I could do without the techno-babble and paranormal research.  The “scientific” methods these groups aren’t scientific in the least.  Perhaps Boyanoski wanted to inject some air of legitimacy to these stories, but I think they detract from them.  To me, these stories work best as tall tales – something to stretch the imagination and make you wander.  So, perhaps I’m not as interested in “modern” ghost stories after all.

Today author Ron Rash visited Byrnes High School and spoke with students in the media center. Ron is the author of three of my favorite novels – One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight. He has also published several books of poetry and short stories.

Ron lives in Clemson and grew up in the Upstate of South Carolina. His novels are set in this area, and each has sparked moments of deep recognition of places I have known and experienced.

Ron’s easy mannerisms and colloquial nature really went over well with the students. The Byrnes Media Center was crowded, but the kids were well-behaved and listened attentively. Since the BHS prom was this past weekend, Ron began by reading one of his short stories about a prom date disaster. He then talked about the writing process, and about his new novel, Serena, which will be coming out in October. Afterwards he took questions from the students, who asked some very well-thought out questions.

I purchased a copy of Eureka Mills, a book of poetry, and had the author autograph it. We only had a few minutes to chat before the next group came in, but it was as if we had been friends for the longest time. This was a welcome diversion to my normal day, and I appreciate media specialist Judy Parham arranging the visit and allowing me to take part.

[tags]Ron Rash, author [/tags]