Archive - Learning to Live

Poking my head above the parapets

I’ve been scarce lately, taking a short hiatus to watch spring turn to summer, watch my two nearby grandkids grow (the others are coming for a…

Jun 17 • Chris Rauber

My meeting with the President

His eyes were incredibly distant as if I didn't exist or anyone He was large, huge really his mottled skin and comb-over familiar as a family memory He…

Jun 11 • Chris Rauber

A fracture in time

When I took a detour to urgent care I didn't doubt I'd again see my fully-branched redbud tree But when I returned after three long hours a large branch…

Jun 8 • Chris Rauber

May 2026

Bumper sticker philosophy

I know little, and understand less.

May 30 • Chris Rauber

how shall we spend the days and hours

how shall we spend the days and hours they didn't have who died, at Fallujah, Gettysburg, Thermopylae, Khe Sanh, Midway, Stalingrad, Salamis, and the…

May 25 • Chris Rauber

Watching the world unroll below

Birds don't wish to fly, they just do swooping, soaring, plunging sometimes earthward like small feathered rockets, feeling the air rush over/under…

May 24 • Chris Rauber

How empire ends

Gradually, then suddenly an empire stops looking and feeling imperial forgets where it left its glasses or its founding principles loses track of…

May 19 • Chris Rauber

getting real about where and who we are

Politics is messy; so is governing.

May 18 • Chris Rauber

Words stripped down to basics

Words stripped down to basics their essence laid bare as an old doorknob not glamorous but real, as real as dirt or the small kernels of wind-blown…

May 17 • Chris Rauber

I’ve always been a bit of a loner, even as a young child.

May 15 • Chris Rauber

Object permanence, and lessons in loss

Babies learn it bit by bit people or things disappear, then return as if by magic. A game of peekaboo teaches the lesson perfectly: yank the towel or…

May 7 • Chris Rauber

We tell ourselves stories in order to live

We tell ourselves stories in order to live and yet we don't last long. We waste away or vanish in an instant all of us, time's mini tragedies whether in…

May 3 • Chris Rauber