Rick Dancer Media, 314 sandhill Lane, Townsend, MT (2026)

06/02/2026

Living Is A Forward Motion

When Kathy and I come back to Oregon, we understand this is our past, and our present is in the land of Montana.
Our future? Only God Knows.

As soon as we cross the border to our former home state, we start running into people who remember when I was on television or our media life after KEZI.

Many still follow us on social media.
They always have nice things to say.
At WINCO in Bend the other day, an employee said hi and then helped me find my wife, who had walked away while I was talking with a guy I used to swim with in Springfield.
As we get closer to Eugene, where we are headed today, it gets crazy.
Crazy in a good way.

Visiting is like tiptoeing into the past.
I will meet up with some of my dear friends.
I talk with them online, but there is nothing like a face-to-face.
I’ll run the old Doris Ranch trail, a run I did twice a week for years.
A buddy I often ran with will join me tomorrow.

I’ll get to see Mario, my Eugene Barber, for a haircut.
Kathy will go on a bike ride with her former riding partner and visit her brother, who lives in Eugene.

Oh, and we’ll go have lunch at our favorite spot, Mucho Guisto, at least two times.

It is so much fun to dip our toes into the past.
A big part of us was made here, with the help of many of you.
The biggest question we get is, “Are you moving back?”

Living is a forward motion.
You can go back to what you were to visit, but life is not about reliving our past or “going back.”
We have met some outstanding people in Montana.
We are in the process of selling our house as we close another chapter in our story and begin to think about writing the next one.

I believe God introduces us to every person for a reason.
He wants us to imprint on the lives of others and take a little piece of them with us when we leave.
One day, when we stand before our Father, He will show us how each person we met was part of this puzzle we call life.
Stagnation is a breeding ground for boredom.
Boredom is the highway to disappointment and despair.
Settling is not in our nature.
God created us to be nomads.
We only have so many years on this planet; I don’t want to miss out on meeting any of you.

I’m excited to see each one of you. (unless you are one of those people who says mean crap) LOL
Push ahead.

06/01/2026

We Need A Standard Upgrade

I believe people can be better.
I believe we can be better.
When one gets off the internet and deals with folks face-to-face, something happens.

Kathy and I are back in Oregon for another week.
Part of it’s visiting family and friends, mixed with a little business.

Because I was on television most of my life, we meet a lot of people who remember those days.
Almost every place we’ve been, grocery stores, restaurants, the resort, people walk up and just start chatting.

They notice how knarly people are online and mention it.
Social media seems to erase some of the cultural and ethical boundaries that make us human, or should I say humane.
I saw these games at a toy store in Sunriver.
Sure, it’s funny, sort of.
But it’s also odd that canceling and making poor decisions are the foundation for entertainment in a game.

I haven’t been writing as much or paying as much attention to the world around me.
It’s clear the media machine is toying with us.
Chaos and winning are the goals.
Human interaction and how we treat one another don’t seem to matter to the machine.

People care about one another as long as their needs are met first.
When you are selling your home, you hear stories.
Tales of horror from others in the same position.
I heard a story of a family who wanted to buy a home in a neighborhood with CCR’s.
They didn’t like the rules, so before they owned the home, with the consent of two of the three neighbors, they went behind neighbor number three's back, hired two attorneys, and changed the rules.

They didn’t care about assimilation or the fact that the rules clearly stated the ground rules for living in the neighborhood; they just changed the rules to suit themselves.
Who does that?

In our own situation, we’ve been negotiating with a potential buyer for the last week.
It’s been ridiculous.
We’re on vacation, dealing with amendment after amendment.
I understand the art of negotiation.
At some point, you realize this is no longer negotiation but manipulation, so we cut bait.

I believe it’s time to upgrade our lives by unloading some of the B.S.
The other day, while heading into Costco, I heard myself say, “What do we need?”
Looking back, I chuckle.
Do I really NEED anything, or would the more pertinent question be, what is it I want, and do I really need it?

What our world does NEED is less.
Less B.S.
Fewer people are willing to change a neighborhood to suit their needs while saying, “to Hell with everyone who disagrees with us.”
We need more people willing to negotiate, in “GOOD FAITH.”
We need a standards upgrade.
And it starts with, as Michael Jackson said, “ It starts with the man in the mirror.”

05/29/2026

Twice a month, Steven Nye, your "Furniture Guy," sponsors a podcast showcasing Oregon's Bay Area. So much is changing, from the economy to timber to tourism and local businesses. It's a chance for us to discover this amazing place.

05/24/2026

Hold On, It’s On Its Way

I’m in my thirties.
I’m seeing a counselor, my life is torn to pieces, and I’m sitting in a church pew.
The woman in front of me turns around and says, “Rick, I have a word for you.”

As someone who lives in the public eye, I get a lot of people who have “Words” for me.
Many of them are just crazy thoughts. Thank you, Lord, that you give us discernment to know the difference.
One time, a woman told me my dad was going to die soon.
She was partially correct; he did eventually pass on, but it was a decade later. LOL

But the church pew story turned out to be true.
That woman had no idea what I was going through at the time.
She said, “God is pruning things out of your life so that you can produce more fruit.”

I remember a friend of mine was growing a tomato plant.
She showed me this huge, out-of-control plant, but wondered why it had no tomatoes on it.
I said, “I can fix that, but you aren’t going to like it.”

I proceeded to prune the plant back by about 50%.
She was cringing.
The plant was out of control, and all the energy to produce fruit was going into the stems.

Our lives are like that, too.
On the outside, they look healthy, green, and ready to produce, but nothing is happening.
There is no fruit.

God has used our move to Montana to prune some things out of our lives.
Another pruning is in the works.
We’ve gotten better at giving up control of the garden snippers.
The hands-off approach seems to work best.

We look around and see stuff, stuff we don’t need.
Instead of it being a comfort, as we used to falsely believe, stuff has become a ball-and-chain.
We don’t know what the next season of our lives will look like, and that is both discomforting and exciting at the same time.
The average American life is like a trip to Costco.
We truly need one or two things, but you know you’d better take the cart because by the time you get out of there, you will have bought much more than you need.

Abraham and Sarah waited 30 years for a child.
Job suffered for years and was finally made whole by the end of his story.
Pruning is individual and doesn’t involve moving for everyone.
But it does involve leaving things, patterns, and ideas behind.

Climbing to over 8k feet yesterday, scrounging through brush, rocks, and snow, I am reminded that each of our paths is designed by God and individualized to our needs.
The pruning is to help us see what we are truly capable of.
We had some difficult moments yesterday, but we stayed focused on the plan, followed the directions given, and didn’t give up.

God’s timing is perfect.
Hold on, it’s on its way.

05/23/2026

People tell us to "Trust The Process."
Really?
The process is flawed.
Elections don't work.
The process is only as good as the integrity of those running the process.
Congress is a cluster screw.
Big-dollar donors buy our elections.
"Trust the Process?"
Dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Trust your ability to research.
Trust that still small voice that tells you something is very wrong.
God gives us discernment; use it.
Wisdom is a gift.
Speak out loudly, often, and as long as it takes to make a change.

"Trust the Process?"
Hell No.

This Memorial Day, remember those who fought and those who died for our country.
They didn't fight for process; they fought for your freedom.
Use it.

05/22/2026

Time For Us To Push Back.

A new America is just around the corner.
The left lost its way, and now the right is doing the same thing.
The best part is that neither of them sees what you and I see.
And they aren’t listening, as the foundation of this house of cards they’ve created is crumbling before their very eyes.

Young people are fed up.
Unfortunately, they aren’t even voting, not all, but a lot of them.
I get it.
The system is rigged, the “Boomers” own the process, and the cheating is over the top.
Well, we “Boomers” are dying off, and someone is going to grab the steering wheel and drive our culture in a better direction.

The Democrats and the Republicans are basically the same screwed-up party.
Democrats were the saviors of free speech and fought censorship.
Then COVID happened, and they switched.
To fill the void, Republicans took up the mantle and now look at them.
They are as bad, if not worse than, the Democrats were.

We complained when Biden and his goons used lawfare and the courts to keep Trump busy.
They totally bullied him.
Now, Trump has given bully a whole new meaning.
He is ousting people he doesn’t like, and what makes it reprehensible is that he enjoys it and has made what is clearly evil, somehow acceptable to his followers.
They make up excuses for horribly bad behavior.
If your kids acted as he acts, would you ignore it?
He didn’t like it done to him, but it’s okay when he does it to others? NO

The good in all of this is that God is exposing the cracks in our culture.
The system is so messed up that it almost has to be destroyed to clean it up.
Think of it as the Noah’s Ark Syndrome.
It will not be fun, facing sin and repenting, never is.
I think it’s time you and I push back harder.
Let people who hold office know how you feel about the war, gas prices, the border, amnesty for those here illegally, and the ballroom if you don’t like it.

What would Congress and the president do if “We the People” actually demanded the truth and ignored their propaganda?
I say it’s time to find out.

05/22/2026

Many Oregonians Are Fed Up

The political machine in Oregon is broken.
Sure, there are some hardcore Democrats who want to believe everything is fine, but a good portion of the state is fed up with high taxes, schools that are in shambles, and politicians who represent one ideology, not the diversity that makes up Oregon.

The more populated areas run the show and seem to be fine, ignoring the rest of the state.
Oregonians just put Christine Drazan in the general election, hoping Republican leadership can turn the ship.
Many see Drazan as the old guard, and, while they will vote for her, they didn’t hear a lot of new, fresh ideas coming out of her campaign.

If I still lived in Oregon, I would fight to get her in the Governor’s office.
Even though she’ll have a tough time, because the Democrats probably won’t lose control of either chamber, having someone at the top who is not a Democrat may inspire people to have some hope.

I’m afraid many Oregonians are giving up.
After forty years of crazy, after four decades of gradual decay, reviving a beaten-up bunch of people takes more than campaign slogans; it takes action.

Even many of my Democrat friends are fed up.
The problem is we’ve become such a territorial society that conservatives and liberals are afraid to build a new camp.
We stick to what we know and build walls to keep us from seeking common solutions.
When one group of people has controlled another for so long, it’s hard to trust.

This isn’t just happening in Oregon.
This is a plague on our entire culture.

I wonder if God isn’t allowing us as a nation to see how corrupt our government really is.
In the past, we were able to blame the other side, but not anymore.
Conservatives, Liberals, we are all the same.
What happens when our side is just as ugly, corrupt, dirty, and manipulative as those we seem to hate?
Maybe God is forcing us all to look in the mirror and see the sin in our national life.
Oh, we will fight it because people always do.
Perhaps this is a house cleaning, you know, like building an ark to save what is good and destroy what keeps us from finding the truth.

The great reset is underway.
We can fight it.
We can resist it.
We can deny it.
But everything points to a time when God is going to stop coddling us, give us a chance to clean it up, or He will do it for us.

05/21/2026

Public education is beginning to understand that not every student needs to go to college. The trades are so important. We learned during COVID that we needed more people skilled in things like plumbing, electrical work, and so on. Idaho is doing some amazing things with forestry programs, welding, agriculture, and in this interview, you will hear from the state school superintendent as to why it's so important.

05/21/2026

I Need To Remember Her

Today she would have been 27 years old, if my math is correct.
Her name is Jenessa “Boey” Byers.
In 2007 she had her moment of fame on ABC’s Home Improvement show.

Boey had a rare cancer that was slowly killing her.
She was only eight at the time.

KEZI sent me to do a story on her to promote the upcoming Home Improvement show.
She was in so much pain.
I could tell she didn’t have the energy or desire to talk with me.
Without the camera’s rolling we talked and I said, “how about if you just say a couple of things and I’ll leave you alone.”
A huge smiled showed up on her face.

The story lead to a special where she talked with me more.
As we got to know each other, we fell in like.
She had no problem setting me in my place.
She was in charge and she knew it.

One time, I was shooting a story at her school.
She got a little better and got to go back and be with her friends.
Boey was so happy.
She had a wig on.
I’d only seen Boey, bald.
I went up to her, in front of her friends and said “Boey, I love the wig.”
I’ll never forget the glare she gave me.
She pulled me aside and whispered in my ear “They don’t know it’s a wig, Rick.”

Her condition got worse.
In December of 2007 she left this world for a better place without pain.
I spoke at her memorial.
There was her little pink coffin, all the flowers and the whole town of Corvallis, it seemed, there to say goodbye.

Two years later, I was diagnosed with cancer.
Mine was not painful.
Mine was mild and easy to treat.
Watching Boey battle for her life produced a courage in me that has never left.

I’ll never forget you Boey Byers.
You and I had a connection and I’m so thankful I got to meet you.
When I’m standing before God asking who are the people you put in my life to show me the way, you will be near the top of the list.
Happy Birthday Boey Byers.

I will post the three video stories we did with her in the comment section.
Go watch and remember life is good even when things don’t work out the way you plan them.

05/21/2026

When a forest isn't managed well, it takes a toll not just on the forest's health but on the health of the communities that surround it. This is so evident in small timber-dependent communities like Stevenson, Washington.

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