bob judd

A bear stopped by the Double Ditch Ranch for plums today

2016-09-18T18:45:00.001-07:00

He was pretty good size.

(click on pics to enlarge)

He ate a couple off the ground before deciding the best ones are still on the tree.

He broke off a branch

And took his time.

He ate some and then left. Probably thinking they'll be riper and better tomorrow.

Pterodactyls Ate our Bridge

2016-04-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

In the spring & summer, when the Low Line and the Keughan irrigation ditches give our homestead the name of The Double Ditch, they look like trout streams. For a while, they are. The ditches were dug by hand at the end of the 19th century and meander like a natural stream. When the ditches flow in the spring they fill up with trout from the Gallatin River. My brother Bill caught a 14" rainbow behind this barn. (Click on pics to enlarge.)

Pterodactyls showed up at 8 AM Monday morning and chewed on the old wood bridge that carried River Road over the Keughan Ditch. (just say Kew-in.)

By noon the 50 year old bridge was chomped, the road shut and we were cut off.

They swung a 8 x 12 x 16 foot steel culvert into the deep wound where the old bridge used to be.

By noon the next day, they were done.

Change happens real fast around here.

The River Has a Mind of Its Own (Cont.)

2016-04-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

Every spring the Gallatin River Floods. We're looking at the blowoff gate of the Gabriel Ditch which you can't see because it's 3 feet under water and clogged with logs. The idea is that the blowoff gate keeps the field below from flooding by acting as a safety valve. But if it's clogged with logs . . .

The logs float in and stick around. Last year we got some heavy equipment to clear it out. It took a few days

This year we may have some help. Beavers built this new dam a little ways upstream from the blowoff. Our neighbor, third generation rancher Joe Axtell who has watched the Gallatin flood since he was big enough to stand up, says he reckons the flood will run right over the beaver dam. He's probably right.

Last month we cleared out the logs with a winch and by hand, under the supervision of the dog. We hope it'll work.

We have a few more tricks up our sleeve. But you never know. Come May the Gallatin could slink down the middle of our pasture and carve off a new island for itself. (to be continued)

Wish you were here

2016-04-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

Our north pasture (elevation 4,770 feet) was so gorgeous yesterday evening I had to send you a postcard. Sacajawea Peak just right of the center, is the highest mountain in The Bridgers, 9,665 feet. You can walk to the top in the summer. Click on the picture to enlarge

The River Has a Mind of its Own

2016-03-31T09:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a shot from last summer of a bit of the south pasture with the Gallatin River running alongside and the Bridger Mountains in the distance. The lines in the pasture are flood irrigation ditches fed by the river.

Last spring. the Gallatin River suggested the possibility of sending a new branch of the river through the pasture and cutting off 20-40 acres

200 yards upstream there was a problem
(to be continued)

Montana Birds of Spring

2016-03-29T09:37:00.001-07:00

Hard to tell when spring arrives in Montana. Sunny and warm one day, blizzard the next. So we look to the birds to tell us when spring arrives. Old Gnarly here was 20 yards away and looked like he was waiting for the dog to come out the front door.

These ring-neck turtle doves beneath the eagle's tree were another possible target. Like so many recent arrivals, they are native to LA and their prospects are not good.

Always a good sign when the Sandhill Cranes arrive with their goofy dignified walk. Sandhill Cranes have been around longer than the Gallatin River and have a pre-historic call. Foxes fear them. This was a sunny yesterday . . .

today it's cold and snowing and the Sandhill Cranes don't care at all. They live on the edge of winter and dance.

They came by the busload

2014-05-10T19:01:00.002-07:00

They came by the busload

The Pioneer Museum of Bozeman had a barn tour today. Kathryn's fine old barn, some of it dating back to the 1860's, was first stop. MSU professor Maire O'Neill led the tour.

Kathryn explained the history of the old "dogtrot" hand hewn, cottonwood three bay barn. How the pioneers built with hand tools and dug the rock out of the side of the hill.

In her first public appearance for the Montana Land Reliance, she said you can save the old buildings

but if you don't save and protect the land they stand on, you've lost the building's time & place.

Moving In part 2

2014-03-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

After two twelve hour days we were ready to sleep in our heavenly bed.

All we had to do was unpack.

"Forget unpacking," the dog said. "It's spring, the creeks are high, the birds are singing and we should say hello to our new neighbors across the road.
I think they're Spanish."

"You ever run with the bulls, Bob?"

Dr. Debora Phillips 1938-2014

2014-03-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

One of America’s most important and innovative therapists, Dr. Debora Phillips, died Wednesday in San Francisco.

Best known for her book, still in print 36 years after its first publication, “How to Fall Out of Love,” her many appearances on Oprah, and her hundreds of academic articles, lectures, and for her famous patients, Dr. Phillips insisted that therapy should be held to the same standards as medicine; that therapy should be fast, specific, and effective. Many of her innovations are used by therapists around the world today.

Dr. Phillips was born and grew up in Brooklyn where she won her first beauty contest at age 3. The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper commented at the time that “she was the first 3 year old we’ve met who could discuss Corot’s use of green.”

Dr. Phillips was educated at Barnard, with a masters from Rutgers and a doctorate from San Francisco’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She was six months short of finishing her Ph. D. thesis in Princeton, frustrated with the inefficiency of conventional therapy, she left to do a residency under Joseph Wolpe, the “father” of Behavior Therapy at Temple University Medical School.

Despite a prolific and productive career as an academic, a therapist, an author and a teacher, the center of Dr. Phillips life was always her family. “Nothing,” she said, “is as intellectually challenging, physically demanding or as emotionally rewarding as raising a child.”

Her deep compassion led her to become a therapist, to heal the anguish and suffering in, as she said, “the problems of being human.” She treated friends (and they remained friends) and it was not unusual for a patient at the conclusion of therapy to ask if they might become friends.

Dr. Phillips began her academic career as Assistant Clinical Professor at the Temple University School of Medicine and was the Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at USC’s medical school, and the Assistant Clinical Professor of Child Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.

She was a Director of the Princeton Center for Behavior Therapy, a Director of Clinical Training at Temple University School of Medicine, a Director of Princeton's student counseling program and a director of Temple University School of Medicine’s sex therapy program and a director of the Beverly Hills Center for Anxiety and Depression. Most recently, she was the Director of End Teen Cruelty in New York City, a program she developed to end bullying after the shootings at Columbine.

She had a private practice in New York City, Beverly Hills, San Francisco and Paris.

Dr. Phillips wrote three books, How to Fall Out of Love, Sexual Confidence, and How to Give your Child a Great Self Image.

How to Fall Out of Love with Robert Judd, first published in 1978 and re-issued in a revised 2^nd edition last year, and How to Give your Child a Great Self Image, 1989, are both still in print. As Oprah said, “I love your stuff because I know it works. If I had a broken heart I know you could fix it.”

Dr. Phillips also published widely in academic journals, published articles in Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Redbook, Glamour, and The New York Times. She was a consultant to NBC-TV Children’s Television Workshop, the Wesley-Westminster Foundation at Princeton, and Charles of the Ritz. Her invited lectures (for IBM, American Bar Association, R. F. Kennedy Foundation, American Psychiatric Foundation, etc. etc.), her papers presented, courses developed, and her popular workshops (for Princeton, The Kinsey Institute, Temple University, University of North Carolina, etc. etc.) filled sixteen pages of her C. V.

She has also appeared on Today, Oprah, Good Morning America, the Phil Donohue Show etc. etc. and has been the subject of innumerable radio interviews.

Her first marriage to Physicist William Phillips, Ph.D., ended in divorce. Her second husband, Psychiatrist Dennis Munjack, Ph.D., died of cancer in 2008 after of 24 years of marriage.

Dr. Phillips is survived by her son Ronald Phillips, his wife Frances and their children Lily, Lenora, and Berry. And by her daughter, Wendy Phillips. And by her brother Michael Phillips and his wife, Karen

Moving In

2014-03-13T16:15:00.001-07:00

We had professional help moving in last weekend. Zach Willis, a former running back at MSU, and his buddy, former MSU offensive tackle Walt Glover, both huge and powerful men with a delightful sense of humor, loaded up the truck at the trailer where we were living and drove a quarter mile to our new house.

Unfortunately as they were backing in . . .

They got stuck.

Really stuck. The U-Haul had bald tires. Zach and Walt wailed on the ice with sledge hammers and a pick axe for an hour but

it was still blocking the road.

Then, Brad Visser, who lives in the stone house on the ranch and did our beautiful new oak floors came along in his 1 ton diesel pickup. After a couple of violent yanks . . .

(to be continued tomorrow)

The Back Op

2013-11-27T10:02:00.000-08:00

They were in a hurry. I was flat on my back on a gurney, getting drowsy, wheeling down a long hall. Wearing a fetching little blue and white cotton cocktail dress open at the back for inspection and blue paper booties on my feet. Medics in front and behind with another alongside holding a drip bag, all of them serious behind gauze masks. The one with the drip bag asks “are you allergic to . . .”

And the next second I was flat on my back on another gurney, wheeling down another long hall. The medics have pulled down their masks and one of them is saying, “just an hour in the recovery room.” Ten seconds later I was rolling into a hospital room with electronic screens and tubes and wires drooling from the walls. Kathryn, God Bless Kathryn, patiently waiting. The Clock says 9 PM, the operation started at 3.

So I missed it. I missed the foot long incision, the high spurt of spinal fluid, the sawing of back bone, chipping away at the cysts and the slow lapidary build up of bone cement followed by the insertion of a titanium hinge fusing lower lumbar 3 and 4.

Just as well. If I’d been awake for the sawing, shaving, cutting drilling and stapling I’d have been saying hurry up, goddamnit I haven’t got all night.

Of course I did have all night and all day now and I am so happy to be able to walk again without the old nails and needles of pain. And oh joy, the strength coming back into my legs.

The first day after the op, leftover anesthetic made me feel good, kind of a hangover in reverse. I could walk, all by myself, down the hospital hall and back. The second day the pain kicked in. Not major league pain, more like minor league pain. Lifting a leg, for example, took planning. A giant razor- clawed centipede had its hooks in my back. Actually it was just staples instead of stitches. But since the only possible position was lying flat on the staples, that did command your attention.

The nurses were exceptional, kind, patient. And often beautiful. One, a blonde 26 year old absolute replica of my high school girlfriend, was so pretty and so solemn. She’d had kidney cancer the year before and wanted to write about her Airedale hound. The dog had gone on long walks with her during her treatment and was a great healer, she said. And the stunningly beautiful version of Cameron Diaz, a little taller, a little more voluptuous, said in the middle of the night that it would take a lot to make her unhappy. And after a pause, a lot to make her happy. I had a dozen answers to that but was asleep before I got to the first one.

Then there was Ali McCraw at 35. On duty as a night nurse, she answered my call for help at 2 AM. Who knew catheters could be so tricky. Or that they are anchored by a balloon that if you attempt to pull it out, it will feel like you are dragging a melon through your weenie. Fortunately I didn’t try that. But I did have a desperate need to pee, couldn’t pee, and was drooling blood out of my penis.

I’d met her the night before, and we’d talked like old friends. She is bent over me at 2 AM, wiping the blood away and pushing and prodding my little shriveled thing to see what helps. “Lucky I heard your call,” she said. “Always happy to see my handler,” I said as she prodded my shrunken pecker impaled on the catheter tube.

“That is offensive,” she said through clenched teeth.

I felt like a dog, a cur. How do you talk to a stranger when she has her hands on your willie? I was lucky she didn’t stab me with my own catheter.

Then there was my new friend, the lovely drug, Oxycodone, warm as a beach in Belize, bearer of tropical scents and dreams.

My first Oxycodone dream was a trip to London where a square mile of ugly brick buildings had been pulverized. The brick dust had been left in high mounds and valleys and instead of the old dark grim buildings there was a new soft and fluid architecture made of huge sheets (probably steel) of pastel blues and greens. London was a Magical Mystery Tour, enchanted innocence.

After a week, the warmth and calm of the Oxycodone dreams remain, but the dreams are getting darker and shot in black and white instead of color. It’s the old bait and switch of drugs, the promise of sweetness and delight fading as need rises into craving.

There is another dark side to Oxycodone; my new love, my passion, my new need. The drug contains “sphincterlock.” After a few days you are longing, dreaming of not a Ferrari and days of wine and roses in a daffy pastel London, that can wait. What you long for, dream of, crave is oh please, let me have a turd. Can we please just get things moving again.? After a week, you push and you try. And finally with the help of Draino, one finally appears oh joy, oh glory, how beautiful it is. Of course, to you, it’s just stinky ol’ poop. But to me, this little baby is my offspring. (offshoot?)

Other happinesses include having the drainpipe that drooled blood and cloudy fluids into a gallon baggie detached from the gash in my back. And even better, the 50 staples pulled out from the foot long cut. Pop pop pop of wasp stings. Oh joy.

Even better, the strength in my legs is coming back. “You won’t get better lying on your back,” the surgeon said. “The way to get better is to get off your back and walk.”

And the dog is here now, feet up on my chair, tail wagging, saying “get off your butt Bob, we got a lot of ground to cover.”

Good Grief, Kathryn, What Have You Done to Our Car?

2013-11-12T07:31:00.003-08:00

Kathryn was driving home from work last Friday evening when another car came out of a cross street and drove right in front of her. The air bag blew up and saved Kathryn from serious injury. Still, she took a whack. She has some neck pain, as Fox Evening News reported, but she's getting better. Suzy Lipstick, our ol Turbo Subaru is unlikely to recover.

Meanwhile our new house is coming right along. And tomorrow, I'll have back surgery.

We'll have more news after this . . .

The Cows Come Home

2013-09-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

You know it's the end of summer when the cows come down from the south and high pasture

and into our pasture behind us.

The calves have weening plates stuck in their noses. In a week they'll be separated from their mothers and there will be an awful mooing and bawling.

In another week the calves are willing to listen to reason.
"If you are going to make a break for it," I said, "now's the time."

Showdown In Chicken

2013-09-06T14:23:00.001-07:00

My Uncle, John Logan (left) and Slim Williams, lost and starving, stumbled into Chicken, Alaska in July 1939. This photo was taken after their first real breakfast in a month. "Too stuffed to move," John wrote on the back of the photograph. They thought Chicken was paradise. Compared to starving to death in the wilderness, it was.

Chicken looks more like an industrial dump now. I was stuck in Chicken for 5 days this spring. It felt like a month.

Yesterday, my good friend Bill Freeman pointed out that Chicken, (pop. 17) was raided. The Feds charged in to inspect federal land for pollution. The miners screamed bloody murder. We picture the gold miners as guys with beards bent over a stream with a pan in their hands.

That was a hundred years ago. 70 years ago, this machine helped make Chicken the dirt pile it is today. (There's a lot of this junk lying around Chicken.) This 3 story barge lumbered down the riverbed and chewed it all up. All of it. Modern gold mining equipment is smaller and equally destructive.

The backside of the barge. (click pic to enlarge)

Picture these buckets, bolted to the conveyer belt sticking out of the front of the barge above, 20 wheelbarrows a scoop, whirling through a river, turning everything from fish and birds nests to reeds and rocks into a muddy stone soup with a wee pile of gold on the side. Gold mining ranks right up there alongside fracking for trashing a landscape. This particular dredge was owned by a company owned by the Guggenhiems of New York City. Go gettem, Feds, I say.

Iva for me wins the sneakers

2013-08-31T08:25:00.002-07:00

Last night was Bobcat night at the Riverside Country Club, a fundraiser for the Montana State tennis teams, organized by newlywed and 2012 Big Sky Tennis Coach of the Year, Jared Burnham, and 2007 Big Sky Tennis Coach of the Year, Denise Albrecht.

My partner; Iva Parapunova, Montana State Women's Tennis Team No. 1 singles player.

The Bobcat men and women played baby tennis with us fumblers and bumblers, giving us soft serves and easy returns. Thanks to Iva, who is bright, beautiful and gracious as well as a whacking great tennis player, we came in second and I won a new pair of tennis shoes. Iva is a sophomore from New Zealand and Bulgaria studying art and architecture. Like an old man beating a drum as the parade goes by, I will always be her fan.

Historic Gateway Tour of Historic Porportions

2013-08-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday the ranch was on the "Historic Gateway Tour." Over 300 people showed up to see the old stone house, the log barn, the old Indian Trail and the buffalo jump.
Sally Broughton, President of the Gallatin Valley Historic Preservation Board, directs traffic at the top of the driveway while Kathryn in the straw hat, holds forth in front of her log barn.

Kathryn loves to talk about her ranch. She talked so much her jaw hurt.

Our friend, Wendy Marquis, and her art looked right at home in the barn

After the tour ended, we threw a party for the docents

Former County Commissoner and "great, great, grand-nephew of the founder of Salesville," (now called Gallatin Gateway) Walter Sales, 86, was there

After it was over, the ranch went back to same ol' used to be.

An Announcement of STAGgering Importance

2013-08-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

Heads up. Next Saturday

there will be an historic tour

of the ranch including the old stone house

the log barn, the Indian Trail, and the Buffalo Jump.

Tickets $10

(at the Pioneer Museum, Gallatin County Courthouse, etc. etc.)

The Orchard Report

2013-08-16T09:41:00.001-07:00

Last night, a juvenile golden eagle said there's a lot going on in the orchard, Bob. You need to check it out.

The orchard had been abandoned for years. We started revival last year. The old apple trees are coming back to life.

The Wayne Crowell Memorial Honey Crisp we planted last year has 4 apples.

And this is really interesting. Fresh bear poop.

The bear said this is gonna be a great year for apples, Bob. I get first pick. You got a problem with that?

On top of the Buffalo Jump

2013-08-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

When our urban friends come to visit we like to take them up to the top of the buffalo jump for a glass of wine

a walk

and a fresh perspective

We Live A Parade

2013-07-27T10:26:00.002-07:00

Last Saturday, our friend, Lisa Sabena, who runs the best motels in Three Forks and Bozeman, asked us if we'd lend our old ranch truck to the Lewis & Clark Motel float in the annual Three Forks Rodeo Parade.

Three Forks is where the Gallatin, Jefferson and Madison Rivers come together to form the headwaters of the Missouri. It's a ranch town. Kathryn and the truck looked perfect.

Even with a Colt six shooter in my holster, I felt like a department store dummy. Three Forkers are real cowboys. They ride in rodeos.

I did my best. I beaned the urchins with salt water taffy like a real cowboy

and the float won first prize.

Good Evening Deer

2013-07-26T12:58:00.002-07:00

The deer stroll onstage at dusk

to graze (there are two deer here)

fly

schmooze

and stare at us

Swimming Down the Waterfall

2013-07-08T11:41:00.002-07:00

Our friends Tana & Don in the bow, their son Josh behind me and Kathryn alongside. River guide, Patrick in the stern

We live on the Gallatin, the river that runs through the movie. So when our visiting friends Don and Tana Fowler said "let's go whitewater rafting on the river", we said "sure." It was raining, there was some hail, and the water was 45 degrees. It was great.

The fastest, roughest part was a flume alongside House Rock.

Where we hit a boulder sideways and I flew out of the boat. That's me, 10 yards downstream.

Another boat ran into ours while I tried to swim to shore and kept banging into rocks. It was like swimming down a waterfall, it didn't matter much how hard I swam, I went where the current went. I slammed into a big boulder, turned over and came up a twenty yards downstream. Breathing was beginning to be a problem. Someone threw a rope but I missed it. Another boat turned sideways downstream. As I swept by they held out a paddle and I missed that too. They held out another paddle but I was drifting away. I thought this is my last chance. It probably was. The sky and the water were the same grey and swimming two yards upstream grab that paddle took everything I had. They hauled me in and I collapsed on the bottom of the boat until I could sit up.

Back home, I was still shaken It hurt to walk and sitting down was painful, but I was OK. Everybody was watching Madmen but I could not stand the flickering TV. I sat on the back porch and watched a couple of bucks in the back pasture. . .

and the light in the sky, glad to be alive.

Good Grief, Kathryn. What have you done to our house????

2013-07-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

Kathryn smushed our old ranch house while I was in Maine.

The dog said his dish used to be right here

It used to look a lot better.

What Alaskans Won't Tell you

2013-06-06T11:18:00.001-07:00

Alaskans will tell you that Alaska is beautiful. And it is. Drive down almost any road and mountains rise up before you with lakes shimmering at their feet.

What Alaskans won't tell you is that an impressive number of Alaskans are deeply religious.

Yes, many Alaskans worship Detritus, God of Junk. Yard after yard proudly displays rusting dishwashers, delaminating campers, burial mounds of tires, cadavers that were once cars, junker pickups, fractured toilets and mushroom farms of upholstery.

And if your Alaskan neighbor has more junk in his yard than you have in yours, no problem. Go down to your local friendly neighborhood junk store and buy more junk.

The Road to Telegraph Creek

2013-06-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

There's just one road into Telegraph Creek. Towards the end of its 70 miles it runs high above the Stikine River. For scale, the lodge pole pines along the edge are 50 to 70 feet high.

Telegraph Creek has more ghosts than inhabitants. Its rich history, of which my Uncle was a part, hides behind locked doors

The only road out is the 70 mile road you rode in on. 500 feet below, The Stikine has a Niagara roar. Think of Arizona with Seattle's rain.

Back on the highway, my rear tire was shot.