Meet Me in St. Louis

This week’s title has nothing to do with Judy Garland, Christmas musicals, or the World’s Fair.

Next week (Feb 22-26) I’ll be in St. Louis to give a keynote speech and host Open-Source Learning workshops at the EdPlus Innovate Conference. I’ve never been to St. Louis and I love exploring, especially with friends I never see because they’re somewhere in the midwest – so if you’re in the area or if you have any recommendations please let me know!

Here is my itinerary so far:

I get in Saturday night and I’m going to find food. All suggestions are welcome. (At some point during my stay I’m headed to FUFU n’ Sauce, but that and punk rock pinball Korean – see below – are all I’ve decided on so far).
Sunday is my “get to know the audience’s home court” day. (Read: I’m gonna be a tourist.) In the morning I’ll go for a long run through town (the best way to see a new city is on foot) en route to a 10:00a trip to the top of the Gateway Arch (which I’m pretty sure is mandatory for a first-time visitor). I’ll catch the beginning of the conference, and then I plan to visit the Walls on Washington murals in the Grand Center Arts District and the National Blues Museum for Soulful Sunday.
Sunday evening I’ll be at the Silver Ballroom, a “punk rock pinball bar” that apparently serves some of America’s best Korean food out of a window in the back. I’m already in love.
Monday I’ll be teaching about Open-Source Learning’s mental fitness and giving a keynote about my new book-in-progress, The Sixth Fitness.
Tuesday I’ll be reporting live here about physical, civic, and technological fitness of Open-Source Learning, and announcing an early reader opportunity for the book.
Wednesday morning I’ll fly home with new experiences, friends, memories, and opportunities to share.

What is your favorite thing to do and/or eat in St. Louis? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription.

Here is a taste of what I’m reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Listening To –

DUCK! Sorry, I know we’re all walking around half-traumatized and I didn’t mean to scare you. But my favorite DJs this week are actually real ducks. Six of them, to be precise, who control a radio station website in a garden somewhere.

Like many of you, I love that I can stream just about anything on a variety of devices without dedicating an entire room of my house to owning the same tracks on cassettes, CDs, vinyl, 8-track tape, etc. etc.

But our brains are really good at predicting the future, especially in music, and I occasionally miss the surprise of a DJ on FM radio playing something I haven’t heard, or something that creates a theme or a sense of cognitive dissonance with the last song(s), or just is so awesome that I pay attention or sucks so badly that I can’t wait for it to be over, so I can be surprised all over again.

The ducks over at https://duckradio.com/ are the abstract expressionists of disc jockeys. The station changes whenever they peck the sensor. Halfway through a song you like? Ducks don’t care. You don’t even know if they’re listening or just passing through. All you can see is the station and when they last changed it. That’s it. Everything else is up to the ducks. Right now I’m listening to a segment on U.S. Treasury policy on KLCC. The station was last changed 22 minutes ago. I wonder if the ducks are asleep. 🦆🦆🦆

What I’m Reading –

At some point in my communication research at UCLA, I learned that you can guesstimate the phase of a relationship fairly accurately just by noticing how much the couple is talking to/at each other. More talk = new relationship; less talk = familiar couple. Now we have more evidence to suggest that silent moments in relationships can be “rich with love and closeness and connection.”

From Scientific American: “During these intrinsic silences, positive feelings were ‘low-arousal’ — they were relaxed and peaceful rather than happy or excited. Until now, researchers had reported that this kind of peacefulness could be achieved only in solitude, but it appears that couples who feel safe thinking their own thoughts while enjoying the pleasure of togetherness seem to experience it too. The findings show couples that they don’t have to separate to enjoy alone time.”

Quote I’m pondering —

There are things you know about, and things you don’t, the known and the unknown, and in between are The Doors – that’s us.
– Ray Manzarek (not William Blake or Aldous Huxley, although philosophical doffs of the cap are likely in order)

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