First, take the MAX at 6 PM from downtown and then the WES train from Beaverton to Wilsonville, where you can eat some sushi before biking to Champoeg (which is for some reason pronounced “Shampoo-ee”) in the rain. From there, pack up your tent and bike to Mount Angel, Oregon, and then bike to the top of a hill outside Mount Angel where there is a tiny seminary school famed not so much for its religious teachings as for being the home to a library designed by an architect so famous that he has his own bar on Belmont AND also the home to the (alleged) World’s Largest Pig Hairball.
The pig hairball is tucked into a tiny museum in the basement of one of the seminary buildings. Perhaps intentionally, you have to be really looking to find it. The museum has a bunch of strange cobbled-together collection of artifacts, few of which have to do with spirituality. There is a large collection of taxidermy. There is a small collection of Mexican artifacts. There is also a small glass case filled with freaks.
And by freaks, I mean two calves born with eight legs each, both stuffed into the glass box in the corner of the dusty museum in the basement of the seminary on the top of the hill. There is also an assortment of pig hairballs which, an informational plaque informs, were called “bezoars” by the ancients and thought to cure any poison.
Harry saved Ron with a bezoar when Ron drank that poisoned mead.
It’s pronounced that way because of the Native American history of our region. Way to be clueless! Bet you can’t pronounce Clatsop or Willamette without a guide either.
@nestchick: And why the hell is that street north of Burnside pronounched “cooch?”
@nestchick: the question is why pronounce something spelled “oeg” as “oo-ee”. Origins aside, that’s a weird way to spell it. Hardly worth getting snarky over.
Interestingly, wikipedia says the original pronunciation was “sham poo’ eg”. So maybe the “ee” sound is itself a corruption of the native pronunciation. Now THAT’S worth getting snarky over. How dare they!
I’m impressed by how @nestchick can be an ass without a guide.
Most pronunciations round here don’t make sense. NE Glisan may be pronounced “Gleesan”, but the guy it’s names after pronounced his own name as “Glisten”…
My theory has always been that Champoeg is a corruption of the Kalapuyan “apu i jik,” their term for the false caraway plant. Early records from the provisional government from the 1840s list it as “Champooick.” Some say Champoeg comes from the French “Campment du Sable, literally “camp of sand.” Others say it’s a mix of the French word “champ,” which means field, and the Kalapuyan “pooich,” or root. Still others attest that it comes from the Tualatin word “champoo,” meaning weed.
martin wins the comment of the week! Give him that star now!