Broomsticks

I was annoyed by Mormons this morning, who tried to suck me into their web of stupidity by pointing a Bible at me, open at a page of insane and potentially syphilitic ranting by some obscure Old Testament beardie. They persevered over Whisky's loud and frantic yapping, plus the wind whipping strands of dust right into the face of one of them, from the broom I had been using when they came along and interrupted me.
Witches ever had brooms.

'God has revealed Her purpose to me, and She wishes for more gender justice, please mind the steps on your way down,' I bade them.
They retreated with no further ado.

Across the road, the set of gardeners who insist on wearing coolie hats, were using a loud leaf blower to blow stuff, another job more efficiently done with a broom.

Yesterday, a kindly gent of my church proffered me a two page piece of tosh written by some unimaginative Irish priest about the King James Version of the Bible.

The tired old drivel followed the usual format, page 1, how important it was for people to have a Bible in English. Yes, yes, there is MAYBE some point to this, aside from the fact that at the time, a minuscule percentage of the populace could read. It could also be argued that had they not had the Bible in English, then perhaps the whole thing would have died a death and we'd all be happy Druids by now. It did, however, drive a nail into the coffin of compulsory Catholicism in Britain, so there is that positive.

Page two deals with how we would have missed out on such great works of the English language as Milton's 'Paradise Lost', 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and The Gettysburg Address.' Would we? Would we really? Methinks the Gettysburg Address would still have happened, it would simply have been different.
Had we never have had 'Paradise Lost' and 'The Pilgrim's Progress', would we be any the wiser? Would we be worse off? Were these works really worth the suppression of women, non-whites, homosexuals and Jews? Seriously?
It's easy peasy lemon squeezey to say, 'we wouldn't have had this or that,' but what about the things we MIGHT have had?

When the most phenomenal writing in the English language is now coming from women, who are, let us not forget, STILL oppressed, just not as totally as previous generations, might we not have had a Hilary Mantel, whose prose in my opinion is sublime, a Carol-Ann Duffy, a Margaret Atwood...I could write paragraphs of today's great English-language women writers, might we not have had them earlier? Of course, we'll never know, but it would seem to be a logical conclusion.

And this evening, this English-language woman writer will be attending writers' group after a couple of months' absence.
Tonight's venue is probably close enough for me to travel by broomstick.