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WELCOMEWelcome to our Chuckling Chimes Website. We have a passion for lifelong learning. This website is our way of sharing our experiences and our ideas. Here we are in 2009 in Big Bend National Park in Texas. We are standing under a Century Plant which takes a very long time - maybe even 100 years - to produce flower. We think this plant is a great metaphor for lifelong learning. It's never to late to bloom. 
Some people think that we should do most of our learning when we are young - while our brains and bodies are clearly in learning mode. Young people seem to learn so quickly and they think that is how learning is supposed to be. These folks believe that, once we have learned all that we need to know, we can get on with our careers and raising a family. When retirement comes, we no longer need to learn. It's time for a well-earned rest. Other people see things differently. They think that we need to keep learning all through our lives. We are never to young or too old to learn. In fact, our brains and bodies are constantly adapting and learning every day of our lives. We belong to the second group. We have been learners all our lives. Our parents were lifelong learners and they set us a great example. Now that we are retired from fulltime paid work, we have the opportunity to focus our energy on learning. |
WHY CHUCKLING CHIMES?Our house on Vancouver Island overlooks the Strait of Georgia . When the wind blows in from the strait, our wind chimes chuckle and clang. We both spent many years at school and in university. School bells and buzzers organized our days. They told us when to go to class and when to leave. While we were working in education and librarianship, our days were highly structured to meet the demands of our jobs. Now that we're retired from full-time paid work, there are no more school bells and no more buzzers. Instead, the chuckling of our wind chimes reminds us that every day is another opportunity to learn something new. We both believe strongly in formal education - but we love the freedom of being full-time lifelong learners. While we are both still interested in the work we did for so many years, we have time to learn new things. We can learn new skills, new sports, new technology, new languages, new ways of being in touch with our environment and new ways of understanding our place in the cosmos. We have time to reflect on what we are learning, to challenge our old ideas, and to think about how learning makes us feel. We wake up each morning knowing that we are going to learn something new today. We take our lifelong learning seriously but we can't stop chuckling because we're having so much fun. 
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