My sweetie figmentj is in Portland for a visit. Because I am a mean and evil person whose sole goal is to make everyone fall in love with the Pacific Northwest, I introduced her to Powell’s Books.

Powell’s Books is a bookstore, in the sense that the Great Pyramid of Cheops is a pile of stones, or the Taj Mahal is a collection of assorted bits of marble. It is the soaring pinnacle of bookstores, a temple of the printed word so magnificent as to make grown men weep. Pilgrims have been lost in its sacred halls for years.

We didn’t have years (more’s the pity), so she got only the quick, two-hour overview. Afterward, there was tea in the store’s coffee shop.