I’m back from Portland! The ABA’s Winter Institute was all it was cracked up to be, a fantastic opportunity to get a little perspective, meet some hard-working booksellers, and learn a lot of new things and some old ones, too. Some highlights include a panel discussion on new media and VP Al Gore’s former speechwriter and contributing editor at Wired magazine Daniel Pink, who spoke about his book A Whole New Mind, a call to arms for all right-brain thinkers to take their place in the new post-industry economy of the future. You may not believe me, but I attended some truly interesting seminars on the business of bookselling. Yes, I said truly interesting.

Milling around, learning, and socializing with 499 other booksellers can be pretty exhausting so I took the opportunity to spend the weekend in Portland by myself. I checked into another hotel, which was far swankier than the Doubletree and set out by foot. With the advice of a few friends familiar with Portland I mapped out a few routes and successfully exhausted myself in two days time. But, I sure ate well along the way. I don’t think I’d ever really heard about Portland as a food mecca, but there’s got to be like a 2 to 1 human to restaurant ratio there and I am not complaining. Except that I missed a lot if dining opportunities, so maybe I am complaining a little.

Portland is pretty well known for its seemingly bottomless well of musical talent mostly in the indie way, a sort of a blending of the harder, ‘grunge’ elements from further north in Seattle, with a hippie, crunchy sensibility gurgling up from the south. I ventured out to a place called Slabtown, which used to be owned by the hipster darlings The Dandy Warhols, and saw a friend’s band (The Bugs) play.

All told, I had a great time and relaxed a little. The weather was unseasonably beautiful, with only one day of the standard issue cold and rain. But most of all, I got some serious, uninterrupted reading time in. Time which I will go into greater detail about next week when I’ve snapped back to reality.