Two more cool dudes

Well, first of all, before I get off the topic of saints, I should mention that yesterday, May 19, was the Feast Day of my favorite one: St. Dunstan. I learned about him from my literary hero Robertson Davies, who writes about St. Dunstan in the Deptford trilogy. Which you should all go out and buy right now. Normally I'd say check it out of the library, but I know you will want to read this fifty times so you might as well buy it. Anyway, Saint Dunstan, a 10th century British monk, is famous for having tweaked the Devil's nose with a pair of tongs. Because of the tongs—tongs!—he is the patron saint of smiths and jewellers. Oh, the mental image! And it's played out very nicely in the third book of the trilogy, which is World of Wonders. And while you're in the Robertson Davies section of the bookstore, you might as well get yourself copies of the Salterton and Cornish trilogies.

I came across another very interesting guy while reading Freakonomics. This guy is Stetson Kennedy. I can't believe I'd never heard of him before. This story is so cool. Stetson Kennedy was born in the deep South to a very old, established deep South family. Stetson hats and Stetson University came from his family. Unlike his family, Stetson was hard-core liberal. He hung out with people like Woody Guthrie. One day he decided to infiltrate the KKK and write an exposé. At that time, not much was known about the inner workings of the KKK. So he joined, and very quickly learned all the secret handshakes and passwords, the real identities of the guys, their plans, everything. The next question for Stetson was what to do with the information. He wanted to Bring. Them. Down. Well, he had a stroke of genius. He leaked the information to the producers of the Superman radio show. Yes, you read it right. The Superman radio show. Superman had already fought Hitler and Mussolini; now he would take on the KKK. Within days every kid in the country was playing Superman vs. KKK, doing the goofy handshakes, etc. The KKK became an object of ridicule, and according to the author of the book, it has never really recovered from this, uh, setback.