Mountain of Angels: The Strangeness Begins

Wandering the campus of Mount Angel Abbey, I found myself in their library designed by Alvar Aalto, wandering the stacks and looking throught the books they had for sale. Of course, I would find a text entitled Holiness of Sex. As far as I can tell, it doesn't have to do with any cool sex-cult-hedonistic stuff; instead, it focusses on making babies for Jesus, waiting until you're married, and not masturbating.

Go fig.

While the library and it's modern design, I really came here for one reason, and that was to see the abbey museum. I really had no idea what this would hold. But boy was I happy when I encountered a giant Bison! American Buffalo, yep, looking like it was going to charge. That is a good mount.

An entire wall was covered in trophies, mounts, and heads on a wall. It was quite interesting. Even if you're opposed to taxidermy, the way the original artist put these animals back together was pretty impressive.

And there were a number of photographs of the original brothers who came to school at this monastery. Some of whom later went on to parishes in the Pacific Northwest and Portland area.

But if sex and dead animals wasn't strange enough for what could be considered a Catholic uber-school. What other strange things could I find here?

Just wait...There are other weird things in Mount Angel. And they are awesome.