Dear Family and Friends,

We are happy to report that recently completed tests and scans confirm that Rich is in good health and the cancer we fought last year is not detectable. Of course, we are enormously relieved and grateful for this result and for your support. Rich feels great and, when the weather cooperates, he is enjoying spring with bike rides and walks.

But the reason we are posting this note is to let you know of a big decision we have made. With our first grandchild turning one year old recently, we are eager to see more of her and participate in her life. Her parents, Ben and Elizabeth, live in New York, which has limited our ability to visit and share time with them. And both of us have brothers on the east coast. Combined with the retirements we have yet to enjoy fully due to my illness and the Covid pandemic, we have decided to move back east! A desire for more moderate weather as we age is also contributing to this decision.

It has not been easy to consider leaving our home and friends of the past 35 years, but we are both from the east coast, so at the same time, this feels like returning home. We want to turn a page as we enter this new, retired phase of our lives. So, on May 20^th, we will pack our possessions into a moving truck, load ourselves and our pets into our car, and head to Northampton, Massachusetts, where we are in the process of purchasing our new home!

We’ve spent the last few months decluttering and downsizing our accumulation of stuff. It’s been an emotionally exhausting experience, parting with many old possessions, but it is liberating at the same time. Our advice: don’t wait 30 years to weed out all the junk in your life!

We are relocating to western Mass, at the foot of the Berkshire Hills. Northampton is a vibrant intellectual and artistic community. The medical and social services are strong. As in Minnesota, a tradition of land conservation is long-standing, with the result that the area is full of publicly owned lands (mostly owned by cities and towns) with great hiking trails. Our new home backs up to a thousand acre conservation area, yet is only a mile from downtown. We’ll be within a few hours of our family in NYC, as well as the coast, Boston, and the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire.

We are sad to be placing distance between ourselves and our many dear friends in Minnesota, but know that we will return for visits, and that our door will be wide open to visitors. Please keep in touch with us! Rich is at anderbake@comcast.net and Becky is at reanderson513@gmail.com. Our new address as of May 23^rd will be 61 North Farms Road, Florence, MA 01062. We wish you all the best, and look forward to sharing our new home with you!

Rich and Rebekah