centre of the universe

Category: education

  • Taking an Aeroplane Across the World

    I have been peeling glue from my fingers for a week. This, too, is strangely cathartic. Insert long-winded, slightly purple prose about shedding the old skin and leaving troubles behind, blah-blah-blah. In reality, there are little fingerprint flakes all over my favourite spot on the chesterfield. Don’t tell His Nibs. The Captain and I cut…

  • I don’t need no arms around me

    It occurred to me that in putting together this aeroplane methodically, piece by piece, painstakingly gluing one tiny piece of balsa wood to the next, that this has become my therapy. It wasn’t a huge revelation. I didn’t fly through the streets of the greater metropolitan valley centre area shouting that I’d discovered the next…

  • Take these broken wings and learn to fly

    This is a balsa and tissue paper model of the Nieuport 17 aeroplane flown by Billy Bishop during WWI. Well. Technically, this is the completed fuselage of said aeroplane. In the top left corner of this photograph are the parts for a Sopwith Camel, which Bishop also flew, although only a handful of times. The…

  • Sage Words of Advice

    “I really really wish that it wasn’t just expected that boys are supposed to ask girls out on a date. Because all of the guys I know are super shy and are terrified of asking girls out on a date. I mean, girls are pretty comfortable telling people that they like someone. “Most of the…

  • I owe you. All of you.

    You want to know what teachers make? If you haven’t heard yet, teachers in SK are looking at job action because their union’s negotiations are not going well. Teachers in the province have been without a contract for a shameful amount of time, and while the action on Thursday is not specifically a strike (it…

  • Some things do surprise me

    Do you realise it’s been fewer than twenty years since Apartheid was officially abolished in South Africa? For a social studies project in elementary school in the 80s, I did a report about Apartheid. No one in my class had heard of it. I talked about what it was, its historical roots in colonialism, its…