Diana was born during WWII in England after her father, an RAF member of Bomber Command, was shot down and killed in May 1944 while flying a Halifax bomber with 640 RAAF Squadron. Her Mother, Mary Fairbairn Macintyre, a mental nurse, raised Diana alone.
In 1957 they emigrated to Saskatchewan then British Columbia. Mary continued in her mental nurse profession while Diana earned a PhD and took a position with the University of Hawaii where she rose to a top spot. After her husband died, she moved to Colorado where I met her as she was making several trips to Trenton, Ontario, where a Halifax bomber, like the one her Dad flew, was being restored. She also flew to Belgium to stand on her Father’s grave, lamenting “This is the closest I have ever been to my Dad.”
In 2007 Diana published “Extraordinary Things” supposedly a novel but actually the story of her Dad’s crew. She donated the proceeds from sales to the Trenton RCAF Museum. In 2016 she published “A Matter of Minds”, the story of her Mother’s career.
In 2009, it was Diana who started me blogging. Her own blog site: coololdtech.blogspot.com is well worth your visits.
This is the poem she composed as a result of my blog:
The Semites, the Hittites, the Hurians,
Anatolians, Myceneans, Dorians,
Pouring like lava out of the East
Pushing people before them.
We no longer know their names,
But they are here in our genes,
Restless children of a restless planet.
The Celts and the Angles and Jutes,
The Norse, and the Franks, and the Picts,
Hungry bellies flooding the plains
Hurling those earlier
Over the cliffs and into the sea.
Restless children of a restless planet.
Their descendants, like whirlwinds,
Driving before them the Huron, the Sioux,
The Navaho, and Apache.
Always moving, always spreading,
Always dispossessing.
Restless children of a restless planet.
They are here in our souls,
These restless children
Of a restless planet
Balancing on the back
Of a dog scratching to shake off its fleas.
I love this poem. Its source is a good read too! Nice to see two authors in such productive dialogue. It's encouraging when our most difficult questions find their answers in words...on a page. Truth be told, it's Sublime. But oh, the pain of life rises from between the lines, as well it should.
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