About Me

Pearl City, HI, United States
Husband, father, grandfather, friend...a few of the roles acquired in 69 years of living. I keep an upbeat attitude, loving humor and the singular freedom of a perfect laugh. I don't let curmudgeons ruin my day; that only gives them power over me. Having experienced death once, I no longer fear it, although I am still frightened by the process of dying. I love to write because it allows me the freedom to vent those complex feelings that bounce restlessly off the walls of my mind; and express the beauty that can only be found within the human heart.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Am I Worth It?


Dear Lord,
Lest I continue my complacent way,
Help me to remember that somehow out there,
A man died for me today.
As long as there be war,
I then must ask and answer:
Am I worth dying for?
--Eleanor Roosevelt
Kept in her wallet during World War II

Copyright © 2018
By Ralph F. Couey

In the history of the United States, there have been times when unfortunately we were forced in undertake war as the last means of defense. When that has happened, our young men and women have courageously stepped forward to serve, many of whom paid the ultimate sacrifice. We have erected monuments to honor them, both the living and the dead not only here, but around the world. It is an established fact that no nation on earth has sacrificed so much of it’s own blood in defense of other people’s freedom.

After decades of benign neglect, it has become fashionable to honor them in other ways. Uniforms that in the not so distant past produced contempt now inspire respect and admiration. The pendulum of that respect has swung fully back from the Vietnam era, and that is a good thing. Serving in the military has never been an easy job, even in peace time. The work is hard, the stress high, the hours seemingly unending, and the responsibilities daunting. And there is the risk to life and limb as well. If one stops to consider all those things, it can be amazing that there are those out there who are willing to enlist at all. There are plenty of inducements offered to enlistees, but when they’re asked, almost all of them will tell you, quite honestly, that the reason they do what they do is that they love America.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Leaving Fantasy Island



Copyright © 2018
By Ralph F. Couey

In a few days, we'll be on the road again.  Our three-week sojourn in Hawai'i is ending and the time has come for us to return to the real world, however reluctantly.

It's been an eventful time.  We spent time with family again, people we just don't see often enough.  I had several helpings of shave ice (can never have too much of that), many meals of local delicacies, and shopping.  I visited my old ship, twice as it turns out, walked hand-in-hand with my wife in the magnificent glow of a Waikiki sunset...oh yeah, and almost experienced the end of the world.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Standing on Land's End



Copyright © 2018
By Ralph F. Couey

About five million years ago, a volcano on the island that would eventually be called O'ahu, began to erupt.  The outflow would form most of the island, along with contributions from several smaller volcanoes, including the iconic Diamond Head.  The shield eventually collapsed leaving the spine of a mountain range we now know as the Ko'olaus.  O'ahu's shape resembles either a ship or a odd-looking pelican, depending on your own perceptions.  The part of the island that would be either the bow of the ship or the bill of the bird narrows down to a point of land called Ka'ena Point.

Ka'ena in the Hawai'ian language translates to "heat," and is named after a brother or cousin of the volcano goddess Pele.  Exposed to storm-driven northern swells, the area has been the sight of some of the largest waves ever seen on this planet.  In January 1998, professional surfer Ken Bradshaw was photographed speeding down the face of an 85-foot wave.  Even on calm days, big rollers routinely crash on the volcanic rocks that mark the area around the point.  

Sunday, January 21, 2018

The Occasional Seedy Underbelly of History


Copyright © 2018
By Ralph F. Couey

Honolulu is one of those places where history points in many different directions, all of them colorful. King Kamehameha, after consolidating his rule over all of the Hawai'ian islands in 1804, located his royal court here on two separate occasions, as did his descendant, Kamehameha III. The first European, British Captain William Brown made port here in 1794. Many other ships followed, and soon Honolulu was the focal point for shipping between North American and Asia. With the expansion of trade came the people. Almost every Asian culture is represented here, and Honolulu is one of those rare places where white people are a distinct minority, totaling less than 20% of the population.

The Hawai'ian Monarchy was overthrown in 1893, and the entire island chain was annexed as a territory by the United States in 1898. Most people when they come here flock to the popular tourist destinations, particularly Waikiki and Ala Moana. But located near downtown is what for most of its history was considered the seedy part of Honolulu. The area now known as Chinatown encompasses a street named Hotel, a place when mentioned to military veterans will almost always return a smile and a chuckle.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

The Voices of Fear

Blast and fallout map, 150kt weapon.
Hawaii Emergency Management Agency

Copyright © 2018
By Ralph F. Couey

By now, everyone knows what happened herein Hawai'i a week ago.  At 8:07 in the morning, a massive text push from the Hawai'i Emergency Management Agency (HEMA) lit up cell phones all over the 50th state, warning of an inbound missile and ending with the words, "This is no drill."  Although not backed up by any other authoritative source, and lacking the obvious confirming sirens, police cars, fire trucks, and scrambling military jets, most people took the text at its word, and panicked.  38 minutes later, another text push announced that the alert was a false alarm, but the damage had been done.

In the days since, the incident has been explored by the media and the legislature.  The Federal Communications Commission is also performing its own investigation.  And if the federal government wasn't in shutdown right now, there's no doubt that congress would be throwing its collective hat into the ring.  So far, it is what HEMA said it was all along, a mis-click on a computer monitor that instead of running a test, launched the state-wide alert.  The identity of the staffer who made the mistake is being protected by his agency, and thankfully so, since HEMA has received a lot of death threats aimed at him and his family.

The Happy Heartache of the Past

The Old Grey Lady

Copyright © 2018
By Ralph F. Couey

We accumulate memories on our trek through life, some bad, some good, most neutral.  Some of those recollections can be triggered by sounds, smells, or sight. When the emotionalism of nostalgia becomes intertwined with those memories, they can become far more selective than objective.  But nothing brings those thoughts into focus like visiting a place of significance from the past.

I spent 10 years in the Navy, serving on two ships and a shore duty assignment.  By the end of that span, I was a Chief Petty Officer, and facing a life-changing decision.  My kids were about to become teenagers, and they needed me at home a lot more often than my duty commitments allowed.  With my priorities properly aligned, I turned my back on the sea and headed home.

I left behind a decade's worth of remembrances of 28 foreign countries visited, friendships that have stayed strong across the intervening decades, and a warm recollection of a time when my life had a mission.

Sunday, January 14, 2018

Paradise (Almost) Lost



Copyright © 2018
By Ralph F. Couey



It was a calm, quiet morning, a cool breeze drifting through the windows and in a tree just outside a dove was calling. I had just finished dressing and was ruminating over the possibilities for breakfast when that instantly identifiable tone issued from my cell phone. I didn't react immediately, assuming it was a high surf warning for the forecasted 50-foot waves pounding the north and west shores of O'ahu. Eventually, I picked it up and there in front of me was this message:

"BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT
INBOUND TO HAWAII.
SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER.
THIS IS NOT A DRILL."

As wakeup calls go, it was certainly an eye-opener.

I grew up during the worst part of the Cold War and am old enough to clearly remember regular 'Duck and Cover" drills in school, so the idea of a pending nuclear attack is not unfamiliar to me. But even with the recent nerves over North Korea, this seemed to come clean out of the blue, very out of place on such a calm and peaceful morning. For about 30 seconds I was frozen in place, then the analyst part of my brain woke up and began to function.

Outside the window, all was still quiet. I should have been hearing warning sirens spooling up and the sounds of HPD cars racing to critical traffic control points. There should have been the sound of fire trucks and ambulances racing to clear the primary target area. I should have been hearing the roar of jet engines as the fighters of the Hawaii Air National Guard and U.S. Air Force were scrambled from Hickam and Honolulu International Airport. I should also have been hearing the strident sound of ship's whistles from Pearl Harbor signaling emergency recall to their crews. Something was wrong. If the alert was genuine, there should have been a lot more going on.

I moseyed into the living room, turned on the television and clicked through the local stations. Instead of a news desk and grim-faced anchors, I saw NCAA basketball and two infomercials. Business as usual. Continuing to surf, I came across another channel where a vivid red crawler was splashed across the top of the screen accompanied by a kinda creepy computer-generated voice repeating the warning I had seen on my phone. I thought about that for a moment and decided that this was part of the automatic response accompanying the text push. In other words, no human had yet acknowledged the warning. I put the remote down and went out to the front porch. All I saw and heard was...normality. Just another Saturday morning in Honolulu.

Less than five minutes had passed by this point, but I had already assessed, based on all the available information, that someone at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HiEMA) had somehow clicked the wrong thing on their computer, a boo-boo of massively critical proportions. Roughly 40 minutes later, the media was reporting that this was in fact what had happened. At shift change, a watchstander had initiated a test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and selected the wrong option. By the time the error was known and reported, panic had ensued throughout the islands.

UPDATE 1/30/2018: The Federal Communications Commission issued their preliminary report this morning. On the Saturday morning in question, the off-going night supervisor decided to run a no-notice drill for the on-coming day shift by playing a recording simulating an emergency communication from Pacific Command reporting an inbound ballistic missile. The message began with the words "Exercise, Exercise, Exercise," but ending with the words, "This is not a drill." The Warning Officer did not hear the words "Exercise, Exercise, Exercise," but did hear "This is not a drill." He reacted according to directive and policy and sent the alert. PACOM, hearing the alert from HEMA rechecked their sensors and immediately reported that there was in fact, no alert, and no danger. But there was no mechanism in place to immediately recall a mistaken alert. While I was in the Navy, we ran battle drills constantly. But knowing the firepower carried within our ship's hull, we always padded the alert messages with the words "EXERCISE! EXERCISE! EXERCISE" both at the beginning of the message and at the end of the message. Never, and I do mean never, did we ever place the words "THIS IS NOT A DRILL" anywhere in those messages. The consequences of a fatal misunderstanding were just too dangerous.

A video surfaced online of parents lowering their children into storm drains. On Interstate H-3 between Honolulu and Kaneohe, drivers abandoned their cars and raced on foot into nearby tunnels. A state assembly rep huddled with his children in their bathtub, praying fervently. People took shelter in their garages, crying and praying. A soccer field was cleared in seconds as terrified parents fled with their kids. At University of Hawai'i - Manoa, students fled their dorms and ran aimlessly for any kind of shelter. Some went to placarded fallout shelters only to find the doors locked up tight. On Waikiki, tourists ran from the beaches back to their hotels. Guests were herded into underground storage areas. In restaurants, people were huddling in storage areas and walk-in refrigerators. On the roads and highways, drivers ignored traffic laws and raced at speeds up to 100 mph trying to reach family and shelter. The cell networks on O'ahu were instantly overloaded as frantic people tried to call, text, and facebook loved ones to say their final goodbyes. Almost everywhere, people were crying in terror. The end, they had decided, was nigh.

Eventually the word got around that it was a false alarm. People's reactions since have been almost universal in their anger. The HiEMA director did not mince words, taking full responsibility for the incredible error. There were calls for investigations and firings. Democrat politicians took to the airwaves turning the incident into political fodder, blaming President Trump for the whole fiasco, hoping to obfuscate the fact that the rise of North Korea to the status of a nuclear power in the first place happened on the watches of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Changes have already been made, for example, now to run that EAS test requires the assent of two people. Other changes are on the way.

In the aftermath of this terrifying incident lies the stark reality that Hawai'i is manifestly unprepared for the real thing. Not that, in my opinion, any preparation would be sufficient.

Nuclear weapons come in a variety of sizes and uses, from small tactical battlefield munitions in the 10 to 20 kiloton (kt) range to megaton-range (mt) city killers, the destructive power of which is beyond most people's comprehension. There are three immediate effects, blast, heat, and initial radiation. After that, irradiated debris falls from the sky, poisoning the land and killing whatever life is left. Most elements will decay within hours to a couple of weeks. But other elements, such as Strontium-90 and Cesium-137 have half-lives of 30 years, which means it would take that long for that radiation to decay to half the immediately lethal level. Any land so blasted and exposed would take a century or longer before it could be safely re-inhabited.

O'ahu is, and has for a long time, been a primary target. It is a major military command and operations center, home to the Pacific Fleet, the Pacific Air Force, and a plethora of secretive facilities, mostly underground, vital to military operations. It is the only major port facility for commercial traffic between the U.S. west coast and Japan. It is also a vital communications center, not only for government and the military, but private enterprise as well. World War II started for the U.S. at Pearl Harbor. It was a primary target of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And in the post-9/11 era, it remains a very attractive target for terrorism.

And it is home to 950,000 people, plus tens of thousands of tourists on any given day.

Even a quick look at a map of the Pacific Basin reveals that the loss of Hawai'i creates a huge problem for everyone who does business in those great waters. Our enemies have always understood this and it is assumed that any weapons targeted on this island would not yield kilotons, but megatons. Why is this important? A small weapon affects a limited area, especially in terrain marked with high and steep mountain ranges. But a 1 mt weapon detonated at 5,000 feet over Pearl Harbor would leave nothing alive on O'ahu. That fact renders any alert useless, unless the intent is to send the populace into a terrified frenzy.

The reality of a nuclear attack on O'ahu is this: if the blast and heat don't get you, the radiation will. There won't be edible food or drinkable water, emergency medical care, or a functioning government. Because the transmitters and broadcast facilities are not hardened against electromagnetic pulse, local radio stations would be unable to broadcast emergency information. Federal disaster aid would be at the least days away, even if they could safely land here. Those left alive would die a slow and painful death from radiation poisoning. I for one would rather be taken by the blast.

Flight time from North Korea is less than 20 minutes, and that is not enough time to get people to shelter, even if they knew where to go. HiEMA's protocols were that people hunker down for at least 14 days. There are, as of today, no shelters stocked with food and water for several hundred people for two weeks. So even if people found there way to a (relatively) safe place, they would die of hunger or dehydration before those two weeks were up.

The thing that amazed me was that even after three years when everyone knew about the nuclear threat from the Hermit Kingdom, nobody knew where to go or what to do. The alert sent people screaming, crying, and panicking into running to...nowhere. It is amazing that nobody was injured or killed. This result could not have been on HiEMA's list of desirable outcomes. The responsibility for that reaction lies solely with the government, including those politicians who spent the days after the false alarm elbowing each other aside in front of the television cameras. If they had been more proactive in telling people what they needed to know in the years prior to this incident, I think things would have played out in a much calmer way. The most important element of that pre-planned knowledge is a full understanding of what twenty minutes means, and what someone can reasonably accomplish in that span of time. I was darkly amused by one visitor interviewed on local television, who told the reporter that upon receiving the alert, he checked out of his hotel and headed for the airport and the first available flight out. In twenty minutes, he couldn't even have made it out of Waikiki.

In Japan, people have been drilling for years for the eventuality of tsunamis. Because of that training and education, when the siren sounds, they know where to go and what to do. If they can take it, I'm of the opinion that we can as well. 

I do understand that the government must provide some element of hope. It is a basic human characteristic to want to cling to life, even when all indications are that life is ending. The government just can't announce, "Hey, a missile's on the way. See you on the other side!" But the stark reality proven on Saturday is that nothing worked as planned, and thus Hawai'i is manifestly unprepared for an attack. The leadership is unprepared to manage the situation, and the populace is completely uneducated on what to do and where to go. I'm sure there was a reluctance to teach such things, out of a fear of alarming the citizenry, but such caution is inappropriate, and perhaps cowardly, in a world where a psychopathic Kim Jon Un might unleash an attack for no other reason than because he got up on the wrong side of the bed.

There are things that must be done as soon as practicable. Shelters must be established and stocked with food and water. People must at least make a passing effort to stockpile their own supplies in the event they cannot get to a shelter. And everyone, citizens and leaders alike, needs to have a plan.

As much blame that has been directed at the government, people have to understand that they have an important share in this responsibility. Families must sit down and discuss what they will do if a real alert is received. Children need to know where to go. Parents must know what to do and where to go, and families need to embrace the sobering fact that there may not be time enough to gather before the missile arrives.

A nuclear attack on Hawai'i is no longer a subject for academic study. The threat is palpably real, dangerously so, and the failure to properly prepare the people of Hawai'i will ensure major and certainly unnecessary loss of life.

The world has changed yet again, and Hawai'i must embrace this new reality. Retreating into the delusion of wishing will accomplish nothing but destruction and death. This is a beautiful land, populated by a loving and joyful people, things that are certainly worth preserving. The only way to protect and preserve that land and those people are for their leaders and custodians to make sure that everyone is fully prepared.

Beautiful memories are part of the Hawai'ian experience. But for those who live here, and those who were visiting, they will never forget that Saturday in January, the day that Paradise was almost lost.

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Time, Distance, and Linearity

From Humans are free.com

Copyright © 2018
By Ralph F. Couey

Time.

We live with it every day.  In many ways, it defines our existence.  And yet as familiar as it is to us, time remains one of the things we least understand.

Our existence is linear.  In every way we perceive, it is to us a straight line with a beginning, a middle, and an end.  That is the context in which we understand life.  We are born -- the beginning.  We die -- the end.  At any point on the line between those two points, we define as the middle.  We understand that line.  It organizes things in a way easy to understand.  But the length of that line is as individual as the people who exist upon it, from less than ten minutes to more than ten decades.  Our line is but one of billions of other lines coexisting in the same space.  Stretching into the past are lines that started and ended long before us.  Other lines extend on into a future that remains a mystery.

We believe those lines are fixed, that they cannot be edited.  To get from Monday to Friday, we must pass through the intervening days.  In order to travel from Kansas City to St. Louis, you have to pass through Columbia.  This is the essence of the three dimensional universe we inhabit.  The linearity of time for us is the same as physical distance.  

The Difference Between Confidence and Hope

Shot themselves in the foot once again.
And us in the heart.

Copyright © 2018
by Ralph F. Couey

A few days have passed and the sharp pain has faded to a dull ache.  The shock of seeing the Chiefs lose yet another playoff game has given way to a kind of fatalistic sense of an expectation fulfilled.

I know we attach way too much importance to sports and their outcomes, especially when there are so many more vital issues to be concerned about.  But having said that, there's no denying the sense of ownership, identity, and belonging that arises from our loyalties to a team.  And the angst that hits home when that team fails.

If you're going to be a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs, the first requirement is to grow a callous around your heart.  The record of the Chiefs in the postseason requires it.  Crushing futility is a good term, but doesn't come close to describing how it feels.  Since their victory in Super Bowl IV just short of a half-century ago, the Chiefs have played in 16 playoff games and lost 15.  It's not just the losses, but the character of those losses.  Way too many of them were games where things seemed well in hand, only to see them slip away at the end.  

Thursday, January 04, 2018

New Years, and the Revolving Resolve


Copyright © 2018
by Ralph F. Couey

"To have the kind of year you want to have
something has to happen that you can't explain
why it happened."
--Bobby Bowden

The earth has complete one more orbit around the sun, a digit has been added to the calendar, and with the roar of fireworks, a new year is upon us.

New Year's is a neat way to draw a line between the past and the future, a time when it becomes somehow convenient to redraw our lives along what we hope will be happier and more prosperous times.  When the clock's hands point straight up on that night, it is a moment when hope becomes somehow palpably real, as if we could take it in our hands, stroke it gently, and feel the joy of a perfectly unsullied moment.  The year past is seen as old and broken, something without value to be cast aside in favor of the shiny new future. And yet, as the patterns of the past have shown, most times we find ourselves at the end of that new year, essentially in the same rut we were in before.

Resolutions are made every year, and every year remain unfulfilled.  All those wonderful changes we intended to make become lost in the return to the post-holiday routine.  The passion and energy we were planning to use in pursuing the new us somehow is drained in the long, dark tunnel of January, February, and March.  Anyone who has belonged to a gym sees this graphically manifested in the flood of new members during January, few of whom remain by Valentine's Day.  For some, the resolutions were set too high.  For most of the rest, I think we find we're comfortable being who and what we are, unwilling to vacate that safe little box and voyage into uncharted territory.  At the end of the year, we do see changes, but they are almost always small and inconsequential.

Being Home on the Road

Farewell, California...

Copyright © 2018
by Ralph F. Couey

"I will never lose the love for arriving,
but I'm born to leave."
--Charlotte Eriksson

It was a warm, sunny day, like nearly all of the 91 days we spent in California.  We had gone through the travail of packing up the car, checking out of the hotel, and now we pointed the car's nose eastward.  The approach to that day was accompanied by a sense of unreality born out of the daily routine that had been ours.  We knew that the end of our stay was nearing, that we would leave the marvelous Mediterranean weather for far colder climes.  But somehow, even as we headed for I-15, we still couldn't quite grasp it.

Our life now is a succession of contracts, thirteen weeks in one place, then hitting the road for another.  We sold our home in Virginia, and while we use our daughter's home in Aurora as a home base of sorts, at this point there isn't really any place we could call home.  But that's how we like it.  Cheryl has a kind of stopwatch inside of her with regards to her job.  When the contract is up, so is her patience for the often stodgy bureaucracy that is the modern American hospital.  So it is with a kind of relief that she can pick up and leave without looking back, pushing on to the next adventure.  Since we don't have anyplace to call home, we don't get homesick.  We make friends and have fun, but are still able to take off without any emotional strands tugging at our hearts.