Update from Bob Sparling:
May 2019
I am grateful to the community at Covenant for welcoming me back in 1974. When I arrived I was fresh out of prison for refusing induction into the army during the Vietnam War. I had served 18.5 months of a thirty-month sentence when I was released a month after Nixon resigned. I had lost my respect for the law and, to a significant extent, my parents. I saw them as complicit for their failure to question the war until after it was over. For decades I visited my parents only a few days a year. To mark the occasion and provide a vegetarian dish, my mother would always make her green bean casserole (with mushrooms, water chestnuts and cheese). I have since become closer to them and to my sister, a retired special ed teacher. At age 91, my father died in 2013 after 6.5 years on dialysis. Ten days after I turned 70 last month, my mother died, also at 91, after sixteen months on dialysis. This month I received my first social security check. I will soon inherit enough to buy a condo.
It was a great satisfaction to sing in Larry Hill’s Covenant Choir, where I came to know some great choral works. I am also grateful for the privilege I had of staying in the Church all night to practice. It has now been a third of a century since I acquired a great Steinway B which I still enjoy. I have pursued music via private lessons in piano and singing. I have taken more than a dozen classes at Longy, including harmony. I now have a small pipe organ in my apartment. It has 68 keys and 68 pipes, the largest of which is four feet long. At Story Chapel at the Cemetery I sometimes play the organ, mostly easy pieces.
If I enter a church, it is almost always to hear a concert. I am not a believer in any organized religion, but recognize that churches build communities which give people a sense of belonging and sometimes help to improve the world.
My biggest public claim to fame is as the founder/organizer of Naked Yoga for Men. We are in our 20th year and have met more than 1500 times. I do not lead the class except on rare occasions when an instructor backs out and it is too late to cancel. I find it rewarding to bring men into yoga and a community that gives them respect and cares for their well-being. We currently meet in Charlestown and have a Meetup Group.
https://www.meetup.com/NakedYogaForMen/
This month I started taking classes at the Down Under School of Yoga in Brookline. These are my first clothed classes since my last visit to Kripalu (2009). In around 2001, before it became so expensive, I saw Irma there. I am doing at least four classes/week at Down Under.
After 42 years in Cambridge, all of it in the same Central Square building, I had to move in 2018, a year after the building was sold. I am now near Coolidge Corner, not far from my first Boston area address, which was 71 Crowninshield Road, where Martin Mullvain lived in 1974.
I have walked at Mt. Auburn Cemetery since 1977. It was David Schermer who went with me the first time. At that time the Cemetery had no bike rack and we hid our bikes under some shrubs. I had moved to Cambridge in 1976. I have been a volunteer at the Cemetery since September 2008. I am not in the office but at the Visitor Center, which is at the front of Story Chapel. I answer tourist questions, look up grave locations for visitors and generally share my love of the Cemetery. I learn from the visitors and the other volunteers. Unless out of town, I am usually there Tuesdays 11:30–2. When on duty I can be reached at the Visitor Center phone which is 617.607.1963. Near the grave of muckraking journalist I.F. Stone, I have found the resting places of Larry Hill and Martin Mullvain.
I am grateful to the community at Covenant for welcoming me back in 1974. When I arrived I was fresh out of prison for refusing induction into the army during the Vietnam War. I had served 18.5 months of a thirty-month sentence when I was released a month after Nixon resigned. I had lost my respect for the law and, to a significant extent, my parents. I saw them as complicit for their failure to question the war until after it was over. For decades I visited my parents only a few days a year. To mark the occasion and provide a vegetarian dish, my mother would always make her green bean casserole (with mushrooms, water chestnuts and cheese). I have since become closer to them and to my sister, a retired special ed teacher. At age 91, my father died in 2013 after 6.5 years on dialysis. Ten days after I turned 70 last month, my mother died, also at 91, after sixteen months on dialysis. This month I received my first social security check. I will soon inherit enough to buy a condo.
It was a great satisfaction to sing in Larry Hill’s Covenant Choir, where I came to know some great choral works. I am also grateful for the privilege I had of staying in the Church all night to practice. It has now been a third of a century since I acquired a great Steinway B which I still enjoy. I have pursued music via private lessons in piano and singing. I have taken more than a dozen classes at Longy, including harmony. I now have a small pipe organ in my apartment. It has 68 keys and 68 pipes, the largest of which is four feet long. At Story Chapel at the Cemetery I sometimes play the organ, mostly easy pieces.
If I enter a church, it is almost always to hear a concert. I am not a believer in any organized religion, but recognize that churches build communities which give people a sense of belonging and sometimes help to improve the world.
My biggest public claim to fame is as the founder/organizer of Naked Yoga for Men. We are in our 20th year and have met more than 1500 times. I do not lead the class except on rare occasions when an instructor backs out and it is too late to cancel. I find it rewarding to bring men into yoga and a community that gives them respect and cares for their well-being. We currently meet in Charlestown and have a Meetup Group.
https://www.meetup.com/NakedYogaForMen/
This month I started taking classes at the Down Under School of Yoga in Brookline. These are my first clothed classes since my last visit to Kripalu (2009). In around 2001, before it became so expensive, I saw Irma there. I am doing at least four classes/week at Down Under.
After 42 years in Cambridge, all of it in the same Central Square building, I had to move in 2018, a year after the building was sold. I am now near Coolidge Corner, not far from my first Boston area address, which was 71 Crowninshield Road, where Martin Mullvain lived in 1974.
I have walked at Mt. Auburn Cemetery since 1977. It was David Schermer who went with me the first time. At that time the Cemetery had no bike rack and we hid our bikes under some shrubs. I had moved to Cambridge in 1976. I have been a volunteer at the Cemetery since September 2008. I am not in the office but at the Visitor Center, which is at the front of Story Chapel. I answer tourist questions, look up grave locations for visitors and generally share my love of the Cemetery. I learn from the visitors and the other volunteers. Unless out of town, I am usually there Tuesdays 11:30–2. When on duty I can be reached at the Visitor Center phone which is 617.607.1963. Near the grave of muckraking journalist I.F. Stone, I have found the resting places of Larry Hill and Martin Mullvain.
