Sheep May Safely Graze: A Personal Essay on Tradition and a Contemporary Sheep Ranch by Louie W. Attebery (review)

Reviews 379 hilarious essay entitled “Pendejismo.” This adaptable word—which literally means pubic hair—can be used to signifyanything; it can be a harsh insult, or a friendly epithet. To suggest the meanings ofthis valuable term, Burciaga, a ResidentFellow at Stanford University, provides a series of proverbs; “Dogs open their eyes in fifteen days, pendejosnever do.”“Love from afar, love for pendejos." “There is no pain that lasts twentyyears norpendejothatwill endure it.’’Finally, “ Nacespendejo, muerespendejo! (Youwere born a pendejo, you will die a pendejo).” In a time ofdesperate hyperbole, the tone of Burciaga’s book sets it apart. Although he isclearlycommitted to a realistic acceptance ofreality, he does not find it necessary to attack. Instead he writeswith balance about two nations that frequently function as one. “Mexico never left the Southwest, itjust learned English.” Burciaga, a founder of the Chicano comedy troupe Culture Clash, often sugar coats sharp observations with humor: He and his wife have a mixed marriage, he tells us: “She’sfrom California, I’m from Texas.”And from there he goes on to show how internallyvaried Chicano culture is. The book is also deep, and suggests considerable thought has gone into its contents. Burciaga points out, “Our bilingual, bicultural, binational experience isaform ofschizophrenia, rich and poor, sun and shadow, between realism and surrealism. To live on the border is to live in the center.” This readable volume will entertain and inform Chicanos and nonChicanos alike. The author is likely to displease narrow-minded readers of all kinds when he suggests that where Mexico and America meet, ‘These cultures cross each other, not to assimilate but to transculturate.” Burciaga’swriting well demonstrates that “transculturation.” GERALD W. HASLAM Sonoma State University Sheep May Safely Graze: A Personal Essay on Tradition and a Contemporary Sheep Ranch. By Louie W. Attebery. (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1992. 132 pages, $15.95.) When the Idaho Folk Life Association disbanded, Louie W. Attebery, the heir to be named later, was bequeathed a field study project. The “topic was transhumance, the movement of men and livestock across the landscape in cycles determined by the availability of pasture”—specifically as it applied to a “long lived, still operating sheep ranch.” Phil Soulen’s sheep operation had been selected, and Attebery’s field research skills, acumen, and instinct told him Soulen’swas the right Livestock 380 Western American Literature Company. He proceeded, researching the literature on sheep ranching in southwestern Idaho and eastern Oregon, intermingling stints in the library and trips to various Soulen ranches. He caught up with the numerous bands of sheep and the men who worked them as they moved from lambing quarters at Letha to spring pasture, summer pasture above McCall, fall pasture, and winter pasture near Caldwell. SheepMay Safely Grazecovers the history ofthe Soulen sheep operation, sets forth the pattern of transhumance exemplified by sheep ranchers, and dis­ cusses “the business of sheep ranching”—from shearing and tending, to mar­ keting and land use planning. In the final chapter, Attebery concludes: “Tech­ nologies, instrumentalities of the operations, change, but those are externali­ ties.”Sheep are still managed in the “traditional”fashion. Accompanying the text are sixty black-and-white photographs of sheep wagons, ranges, sheep, shearing facilities, castration practices, camps, food preparation, and pack strings. Additionally, there are five appendixes; one, written by Jennifer Eastman Attebery, contains photographs of the Soulen summer headquarters (log house) in McCall. Attebery demonstrates his skills as a folklorist and scholar, citing historical and contemporarybooks and articles, quoting from interviewswith the Soulens, ranch hands, elders of the dwindling community of sheepmen, and his own assiduously taken notes. Information isabundant, but this book is a pleasure to read because ofAttebery’sunassuming posture as essayist. SheepMay Safely Grazeis informative and amusing. Attebery has a knack for punctuating information with humorous but complex anecdotes that establish setting, delineate character, and expound philosophy. For anyone interested in the mystique of the West or the life of the wandering herdsmen, this book is essential reading. WILLIAM STUDEBAKER CollegeofSouthernIdaho They MarriedAdventure: The WanderingLives ofMartin and OsaJohnson. ByPascal James Imperato and Eleanor M. Imperato. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992. 313 pages, $27.95.) They Married Adventure is a well-researched and extensively...