Salzburg, 'Cause It's Cool'

Is It 'Cause It's Cool? Affective Encounters with American Culture - Conference Button

The Sound of Music was in the air

Over the weekend, Mr. Druthers attended a conference in Salzburg on Is It 'Cause It's Cool?' organized by University of Vienna & Saarland University, put together by the Austrian Association of American Studies.

"Salzburg is just so charming, and especially at this time of the year… You should have seen the colors of the changing leaves..."

All day he spoke like this around the office in a soft, faraway voice. He went around the office sneaking behind people, jokingly poking with his index finger, and telling each one of us, individually, for 30 minutes, how much fun he had speaking on the panels about pop culture, and how we should go and see the landscape with our own eyes.

The rest of the team that went - Jay Laramie of Acquisitions, Louis Smeedley of Archives - were also full of praise for the conference. They left Mozart Chocolates on all of our desks, even Margie's. (Her desk had an entire box, and she actually went with them.)

It has been a pleasure seeing Mr Druthers so up-beat, but we hope that tomorrow we can get some work done around the office.

(Oh, and they stayed at Schloss Leopoldskron, once owned by Max Reinhardt and also where Robert Wise filmed some of the key scenes from The Sound of Music (1965) with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, and of course we had to hear the soundtrack of the movie the whole day.)