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Press release from SoHum Community Health

SoHum Health is proud to announce a new avenue for ultrasound services in Humboldt County. Jerold Phelps Community Hospital in Garberville now has a brand new GE Logiq E10 Ultrasound machine, the most advanced ultrasound system available to date. Offering a wide scope of ultrasound exams including abdomen, aorta, renal, thyroid, carotid, scrotum, deep vein thrombosis, pelvic, infertility studies (follicle counts), and obstetric dating and anatomy. Doctor’s orders for ultrasound services at Jerold Phelps Community Hospital can be faxed to (707) 923-2578. Same Day Results and STAT Reads are available at the medical provider’s request. Once an order is received, SoHum Health staff will call the patient to schedule an appointment. We look forward to serving you!

For more information about Ultrasound services at SoHum Health, visit sohumhealth.org or call (707) 923-3921. SoHum Health is a California Special Healthcare District that operates Jerold Phelps Community Hospital, Southern Humboldt Community Clinic, Southern Humboldt Family Resource Center and Garberville Pharmacy.

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Press release from the Humboldt County Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) Division of Environmental Health:

The Humboldt County Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) Public Health Laboratory, in partnership with the California Department of Public Health Viral and Rickettsial Disease Laboratory, confirmed that a fox found at the Lanphere Dunes in the Arcata area tested positive for rabies. The animal was brought into the lab for testing after being found dead under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife (USFWS) work truck on Lanphere Road.

Last week DHHS’s Division of Environmental Health (DEH) received a report that a fox bit someone and then attacked a moving vehicle the following day on Lanphere Road. The person who was bit is currently undergoing treatment for rabies exposure. Two days after these encounters, DEH received the report of the dead fox.

Benjamin Dolf, DEH Supervising Environmental Health Specialist, said staff notified stakeholder agencies, including USFWS, which manages the dunes, Friends of the Dunes, which manages public access privileges and the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the neighboring Ma-le’l Dunes. “Based on the fox’s aggressive behavior,” USFWS staff had already posted warning signage and temporarily closed public access to the Lanphere Dunes wildlife refuge.

Although rabies is always present in the wildlife population throughout Humboldt County, especially foxes, skunks and bats, Dolf said, “It’s very likely that the fox found dead was the same fox from the other two incidents.”

However, he said people in the area between Manila and Mad River Beach who see a wild animal acting strangely should contact DEH which is monitoring reports in that area. He said as a general rule, it is important to use caution around wild animals, and if you encounter an animal that is sick, injured or docile, “Do not try to approach it, help it or try to nurse it back to health,” Dolf said. People who come across sick or injured animals can contact the Humboldt Wildlife Care Center which has staff who are trained to respond.

Preventive measures against the spread of rabies in Humboldt County include avoiding contact with wild and stray animals, bringing pet food indoors at night, reporting animal bites to your county or municipal animal control officer, and if you are bitten, washing the bite immediately with soap and water and seeking medical attention.

Public Health officials stress the importance of fully vaccinating domestic animals against rabies, including dogs, cats and select livestock.

For questions about rabies or to report a rabid or suspected rabid animal, call DEH at 707-445-6215 or toll free at 1-800-963-9241.
To report a sick or injured animal, contact the Humboldt Wildlife Care Center at 707-822-8839.

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On October 14th, 2022, at about 10:00 PM, the Sheriff’s Office received a report of a possible juvenile sexual assault in a wooded area near McKinleyville High School. Deputies responded to investigate and learned the incident had occurred several hours prior to the report. The Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Division was called to assist in the investigation.      

The alleged suspect was described as a Hispanic or Native American male who appeared to be in his thirties. He was approximately 5’9” – 5’10” in height and had a physically fit build. He had dark wavy shoulder length hair and a full beard, and was wearing a camouflage jacket, black sweatpants, and white shoes. He was also wearing a purple bracelet and carrying a blue hiking style backpack.

Deputies have been and are continuing to conduct patrol checks of the area but have been unable to locate the suspect. The Sheriff’s Office has been in contact with officials from the McKinleyville High School and notified them of the investigation.

The investigation is ongoing and as further information is developed it will be released to the public.

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

On Sunday, musical megastar and Eureka native Sara Bareilles returned to her old stomping grounds and showed her hometown it can do big things. Anyone who dares to estimate the size of the crowd will be guessing, so LoCO will go ahead and play too: There were a gazillion people at Halvorsen Park, which we now know is criminally underutilized. Eureka looked dreamy. 

The Outpost bopped around and snapped a few photos to commemorate the day which locals who attended are sure to wear as a badge of honor for years to come. We share those little snaps now.

(Click photos to enlarge)

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Story by Alejandro Lazo, Jenna Kuang and Julie Watts.

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For decades California’s lawmakers and regulators have taken aim at employers who rob their workers of pay, overtime premiums, tips and other forms of compensation.

Just last year, legislators made certain instances of wage theft a felony. They also fixed their sights on wage theft in the garment industry, eliminating some longstanding pay practices that often resulted in workers being paid below the minimum wage.

Earlier this month, California Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower recovered $282,000 in stolen wages and penalties for 22 workers of a Long Beach car wash using a law enacted in January that empowers her office to place liens on the property of problematic worksites.

California’s laws targeting wage theft — which is the failure by bosses to pay workers what they are owed — make it a leader among states, national labor experts say. But in practice, enforcing those laws has not been easy.

State officials and lawmakers say the Labor Commissioner’s office, the California agency overseeing wage and hour violations, has been too short-staffed to do its job, a problem that worsened during the pandemic and subsequent labor shortage.

Last year alone California workers filed nearly 19,000 individual claims totaling more than $338 million in stolen wages. Many claims take three times longer than the legal minimum of 135 days to resolve, data provided by the Labor Commissioner’s office show.

‘Three strikes’

Assemblymember Ash Kalra, a San Jose Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s labor committee, said the Labor Commissioner does not have enough agents or other workers to process all of the wage claims made by California workers effectively.

Nearly a third of the Labor Commissioner’s positions were vacant in May, officials told a state Senate budget committee. In August, a spokeswoman for the Labor Commissioner’s office told CalMatters the office had hired 288 people since January 2021, but not how many people had left the office during that period.

The Labor Commissioner’s budget this year is $166 million, enough funding for nearly 840 positions.

“We need to put more urgency into it,” Kalra said, ”and that could include having hiring bonuses, whatever it takes to increase the staffing, because it’s unacceptable — the current state of affairs. If we really care about these workers, we need to show it.”

Experts and legislators say California’s bureaucratic hiring processes and below-market salaries are complicating its hiring efforts.

When it comes to recruiting workers “it’s three strikes against them right now, just the government in general,” said Patrick Murphy, director of resource equity and public finance at The Opportunity Institute, a nonprofit that studies poverty and racial inequality in California. “It’s the nature of government, the tight labor market, and then the specialization that goes with these jobs.”

The state’s hiring and retention issues at agencies enforcing labor laws have existed for years. The Little Hoover Commission, California’s bipartisan oversight agency, studied wage theft in 2015 as part of an investigation of California’s underground economy.

Hiring frustrations

The study found that state investigators across agencies are paid less than those in police forces and often require more training and education. The state’s hiring process for such jobs can take up to a year, the report found, making hiring frustrating for all parties.

“We’re just not a competitive employer,” said Krystal Beckham, a project manager with the commission who led the study. “You can see that when it comes to enforcement in the underground economy.”

California stands out among states for its efforts and policies to tackle wage theft given its union density, number of worker centers and public dollars committed to combating the problem, said David Cooper, a researcher who has studied wage theft at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which is based in Washington, D.C.

Union members accounted for 15.9% of wage and salary workers in California, compared to 10.3% nationally. That higher than average membership helps workers identify wage theft, Cooper said.

“We need to put more urgency into it, and that could include having hiring bonuses, whatever it takes to increase the staffing, because it’s unacceptable.”
— Assemblyman Ash Kalra, Democrat from San Jose

The state also has 47 worker centers, more than any other, according to a recent report by the Worker Empowerment Research Network, a national collection of labor experts. Worker centers are community-based organizations providing training and support for low-income workers. California’s labor offices have partnered with a coalition of 17 centers to bring wage theft investigations in certain industries.

Also workers can file lawsuits against employers through California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), which gives workers the same powers as the state to sue employers and recover penalties on behalf of coworkers. Last year the Department of Industrial Relations received 6,501 notices of new PAGA suits, according to data provided to CalMatters in response to a records request.

Abusive practices

The size of California’s economy, its diversity and demographics, also give cover to abusive practices by employers, experts said. The state has a vast service economy, a robust agricultural sector and one of the nation’s largest immigrant populations, including about 1.7 million undocumented workers, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Wage theft typically impacts society’s most vulnerable workers: those with the least education and financial means and the fewest legal protections — often those workers are immigrants.

“California has far more immigrants than a lot of other places, and we know that immigrants, and people of color generally, tend to more likely be victims of wage theft,” said Cooper, who is director of the institute’s Economic Analysis and Research Network, which coordinates nearly 60 state and local research and advocacy efforts nationally.

“Immigrants who are either undocumented, or may have family who are undocumented, are not going to speak up as vocally if their rights are being violated.”

Cooper said the thousands of wage theft claims filed in California each year are likely an undercount of stolen pay cases.

‘Good faith dispute’

On the other hand, the California Chamber of Commerce said those claims represent only a fragment of a percent of California’s $1 trillion-a-year payroll, and the vast majority of claims are misunderstandings of California law.

CalChamber CEO Jennifer Barrera, who represented employers as an attorney before joining the business group, said wage theft claims at large employers often come down to a “good faith dispute” about whether a worker was properly classified. With small employers, there often was a lack of education about labor laws, she said.

“When you got into the smaller employers, it was just a lack of understanding of what actually the law required but thinking that they were doing things right,” she said.

California’s policymakers over the years have focused on accountability in cases of wage theft. The state, for instance, requires businesses in certain industries, such as car washes and garment manufacturers, to register with the state and post bonds with the state, so there are funds available to recoup stolen wages for workers.

The Legislature also has taken on the growing prevalence of contracting and subcontracting in various industries by passing laws that make the “parent” employer or company responsible for a contractor’s labor violations.

California’s former Labor Commissioner, Julie Su, instituted a statewide, multilingual “Wage Theft Is A Crime” public awareness campaign in 2014. Two years later she launched a strategy of partnering with various workers’ rights organizations throughout the state to bring targeted, high-profile enforcement actions against some large employers.

Advocates, not umpires

Experts credit much of California’s wage theft enforcement philosophy to Su’s advocacy.

“Su lifted up an entirely different way of thinking about the role of government and was not afraid to say, ‘We are not neutral. That is not our role. We are not umpires,’” said Janice Fine, professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University. “We are advocates for worker rights.”

Su, now deputy secretary of labor in President Biden’s administration, through a spokesman declined to comment.

Some experts have argued that gig economy companies such as Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. have committed wholesale wage theft by classifying their workers as contractors rather than employees.

California, the birthplace of the gig economy, has been at the forefront of those battles.

“Su lifted up a different way of thinking about the role of government and was not afraid to say, ‘We are not neutral. That is not our role. We are not umpires.’”
— Janice Fine, professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University

In 2019, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation intended to classify some independent contractors as employees. In response, Uber, Lyft and other gig giants spent more than $200 million on a successful ballot measure, Proposition 22, that exempted them from that law. The ballot measure was ruled unconstitutional last year but remains in place while the case is being appealed.

In 2020, García-Brower’s office sued the ride-sharing companies, accusing them of “systemic wage theft” for misclassifying workers and failing to meet their obligations under California law, including paying minimum wage, overtime, providing rest breaks and other allegations. That suit also remains outstanding, but the debate over worker classification is now a national one. On Oct. 11, the Biden administration released a proposal that would make it easier for contract workers to be classified as employees, giving them federal labor protections.

505 days

In California, García-Brower, who was appointed by Newsom, has continued the pro-worker philosophy of her agency. She was a former executive director of the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, a Los Angeles- based organization that investigates wage theft and other abuses in the janitorial industry.

“My number one goal is to improve our ability to enforce the law, to make workers’ protections real in a very practical way for the poorest workers, for those vulnerable communities,” García-Brower said in an interview with CalMatters last month.

Most pressing for García-Brower is addressing backlogs for those workers waiting to have their wage claims heard. For workers who don’t drop or settle their cases, the state averages 505 days to decide an individual worker’s wage claim, data from 2017 to 2021 show. That is much longer than the 135-day maximum set by state law.

Kalra, the assemblyman, said California needs to quickly address those wait times by staffing the commissioner’s office.

“We’re having these massive budget surpluses; if we can’t give them the resources now, then it may just show that it’s not a priority,” he said. “I really hope that’s not the case.”

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Staff reporters Lil Kalish and Grace Gedye contributed to this report. Julie Watts is an investigative journalist at CBS13 in Sacramento.

This article is part of the California Divide project examining income inequality and economic survival in California.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

A commentator recently wrote, in response to something I’d written about nuclear fission reactors, “There’s no such thing as safe nuclear power.” Which is true, but that’s on a par with, “There’s no such thing as safe anything” — driving, eating, sex, drugs, colonoscopies…All have their risks. The question is, of course, “Compared to what?” While not 100% safe — in this life, nothing is — nuclear fission probably the safest form of power generation we’ve got, certainly hundreds of times safer than coal, while contributing a fraction of global-warming carbon dioxide that coal does. You don’t have to be “pro” or “anti” nuke to take the alternatives into account when deciding what your stance is going to be; just look at the numbers.

Currently, fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — provide two-thirds of the world’s electric power needs. Of the rest, half comes from hydro power, with nuclear, solar and wind making up the balance. Nuclear accounts for about 10% of all electricity generation.

Climate Change

A few years ago, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) compared the lifetime values of the carbon footprints of coal, gas, nuclear plants, taking into account initial construction and final demolition. Coal was the clear winner — 820 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity sent to the grid — with gas being the runner-up at 490. Hydro, solar and gas are way less, while nuclear power scored a mere 12 grams per kilowatt-hour. These are all median values, of course, and different groups come up with different numbers, but the very highest I’ve seen for nuclear comes from a Dutch anti-nuclear group: 117 grams per kWh, still a fraction of that for coal. (Thanks to Sabine Hossenfelder for providing links to these numbers.)

Safety

Coal sucks. That is, our lungs suck up pollution from fossil-fuel power plants (coal, oil and natural gas), causing, by a recent estimate nearly 9 million deaths per year — one in five of all deaths. Here’s a summary in the Guardian (not known for its pro-nuclear stance) if you don’t want to wade through the fine print. 

Nuclear power is benign in comparison. The worst nuclear power accident, Chernobyl, in 1986, killed 40-50 people directly, and a hundred times that—maybe 5,000—from long-term cancer. Virtually all the deaths resulting from the 2011 Fukushima disaster resulted from the evacuation, mostly ill and old people whose continuous care was interrupted. Just one worker died several years after the accident from radiation-induced lung cancer. (Somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people died in the tsunami, which caused the Fukushima accident.)

Other Pros and Cons

The generation of electrical power from hydro and solar sources is environmentally destructive by its very nature. Hydro — think of those four damn dams on the Klamath that (1) should never have been built in the first place and (2) are proving devilishly difficult to remove. And while solar has been getting cheaper and more ubiquitous in the US, it still accounts for less than 3% of the power we now use. (Wind = 9%, hydro = 6% for comparison.) Nuclear power plants, OTOH, have relatively small footprints.

Nuclear has solar and wind beat in providing on-demand power, not just when the sun shines or the wind blows.

Nuclear power plants are scary-expensive, each one costing several billion dollars to build, plus it takes decades from inception to actually producing power. And the cost of nuclear fuel — uranium 235 — is only going to increase as world supplies are depleted. Unlike solar and wind (I don’t even want to think about more dams for hydro plants), uranium, along with coal and natural gas, is non-renewable.

And then there’s the problem of dealing with used radioactive fuel bundles. Right now we have six hugely expensive (both to build, to transport and to fill) dry casks sitting on the PG&E Buhne Point site. Which are designed to be transported (in the unlikely event engineers can’t stem the coastal erosion), but — with Yucca Mountain dead, to where??? I wrote about them here.

Alternative nuclear energy

Current proposals for a new generation of nuclear fission power plants incorporate passive fail-safe mechanisms: if they overheat, they automatically shut off without and human involvement. (That’s compared with some of the older designs: accidents waiting to happen. Or which did happen. For instance, the Russian RBMK “Generation II” reactor at Chernobyl that underwent an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction — causing an explosion that released massive clouds of radioactivity across Europe — was known to be unstable at low power levels.)

Most of my own hopes for future electricity generation from nuclear fission lie with small modular units built in a factory and transported to the site where power is needed. I wrote about the most promising venture, at least in the US, five years ago under the cutesy header “Nuclear Batteries.” NuScale’s 65 foot high x 9 foot diameter light water reactor stems from a design that originated at Oregon State.

As I wrote then, “the module’s passive-safe design needs no external power to cool it down in an emergency…a bank of 12 could supply the needs of a million-plus population. Building identical units at a central manufacturing facility is inherently safer than in-situ construction of a conventional nuclear power station, while the cost of a single [60 megawatt] NuScale SMR [Small Modular Reactor] is estimated at about one-twentieth of that of a 1,000-megawatt [conventional] plant.” The plan was to have a 12 prototypes working by 2027, but Utah-based NuScale has since pushed that target date back by three years while adding 50% to the original $4 billion R&D cost estimate.

This is far too complicated a topic to be dealt with in a quick ‘n’ dirty summary. I encourage you to do your own research before jumping on the “no safe nuclear” bandwagon.

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When we moved into our new apartment this summer, it needed an extensive renovation. The workers were there all day for a couple weeks. With typical Turkish hospitality, my mother-in-law would make them lunch and offer tea. One afternoon, we were all sitting in the newly remodeled dining room, having lahmacun, when one of the workers and I, for some odd reason, found ourselves in a debate about Russia and the ongoing war to the north.

In the midst of the argument, the worker insisted adamantly that America was finished, that Russia would win the war against its neighbor Ukraine. I objected, and pointed out the string of losses and setbacks that the Russians had already incurred. Of course, politics can spoil the appetite, and seeing the bewildered looks on everyone else’s faces at the table, we both swallowed our nationalism and went on with the lunch.

Later, the incident stuck with me. Since the war began last winter, Turkey has officially been a neutral mediator in the conflict. Readers may even recall a trip I made last spring to Dolmabahçe Palace here in Istanbul, where Russian and Ukraine delegations met briefly for the first of several failed peace talks. Since then, other meetings were more fruitful: for example, the agreement that allows grain and wheat from Ukraine to be shipped through the Bosphorus, and on the other side, some Russian yachts have reportedly been anchored here, safe from seizure. The Turkish government has also publicly denounced the recent annexations of Ukraine provinces by the the Russians in controversial referendums.

Yet as my run-in with the construction worker seemed to indicate, one cannot always regulate the feelings of the people, to paraphrase a scene from “Casablanca.” Surely, that worker was not alone in his opinion. Are some Turks rooting for a Russian victory? I guess the answer is, it’s complicated.

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From the 19th Century Crimean War, which pitted the Russian Empire against the Ottomans (with the British and French), through to the present-day war, Turkey and its giant neighbor to the north have had a complicated relationship, at times at odds, other times benevolent, generally mixed. The same could be said of its relationship with its Nato allies, I suppose. And why not? Both the East and West see Turkey as a valuable strategic partner, particularly for its access to the Dardenelles and the Mediterranean, and as a power player in the region. Think also about how the U.S relied on Incirlik Air Base during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.

Turkey, perhaps because of its location, has always been sought as a partner and ally, pulled back and forth. The West employs diplomatic measures, reminding Turkey of its role as a NATO ally, and the EU for years has frustratingly dangled the possibility of EU membership in exchange for cooperation – this came into play especially during the Syrian Civil War, when a desperate Europe pleaded with Turkey to take ownership of the refugee crisis – to which an annoyed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan refused, declaring that his country alone would not be the world’s warehouse for refugees. And so on … there are many twists and turns in the story of the East and West and Turkey. Let’s focus on the more immediate.

Here in Istanbul, not a day passes that I don’t look out at the Bosphorus and see all the vessels, big and small, bearing names from near and far, passing north and south, a reminder that this slender waterway is one of the world’s busiest, important not only for commerce, but also in that it connects not only people but cultures.

Since the war began last winter, we have read daily news reports about Turkey’s oft-stated role as mediator. Erdoğan met with Ukraine President Zelensky in Lviv in August, and reportedly was set to meet with Russian President Putin in the Kazakhstan capital Astana this past week to discuss, among other things, the importance of economic ties, and he has spoken to both men over the phone on several occasions.

While all of these gestures, and others, give evidence of Turkey’s commitment to a neutral stance, again one has to wonder how much public policy differs from the person on the street. Isn’t that always the case? For most, honor will not feed an empty stomach, nor will it pay the bills. With Turkey’s economic situation, already bad before the war, and not appearing to be improving, you wonder if at some point these pressures will force Turkey to choose with its stomach rather than its head, to put it crudely.

You may have read of the crippling inflation we are facing here in Turkey – 83 percent according to a BBC article just a week ago (To which my Turkish friends and colleagues scoffed, waving their hands dismissively. “It’s a lot higher than that! Much more!”). I can personally attest that even basic necessities like bread and milk cost five times what they cost just a few years ago. One of my teacher friends, an American, related going to a restaurant in his Taksim neighborhood one day to see the prices had gone up, and then going back a few days later, only to find the prices had gone up yet again. The cost of a monthly metro pass, which millions here in the city rely on to commute, went up this year from roughly 200 lira to more than 600 lira.

The causes of this hyperinflation trace back to well before the war, when Turkey borrowed billions internationally to fund a series of mega-projects like the Marmaray, the subway that runs beneath the Bosphorus and connects Europe and Asia, as well as a third span bridge, an undersea car tunnel and the new international airport, said to already be the busiest in Europe. Well, of course this money had to be paid back, but when Turkey’s economy stalled in recent years, and its currency sank (it’s now about 18-1 down against the dollar), and its political situation grew unstable with a failed coup attempt in 2016, foreign investors lost some confidence. All of these pre-War factors have, in one way or another, contributed to the soaring rise in costs.

At the start of this year Turkey was emerging from the pandemic and hoping that a return of tourism would put the economy back on course. Then, unhappily, the war came along.

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Which brings us to the Ukrainians and Russians here. In 2019, some 7 million Russians visited the country, whereas this year the number fell to a little over 2 million so far. Just for comparison, a “record” number of Americans visited Turkey this past year – 477,000, which illustrates that even in a bad year, the Russian tourists far outnumber those coming from the U.S. Of course, distance accounts for some of that. For many Russians, Turkey is an ideal summer destination, with Istanbul and the calming waters of the Med to the south only a few hours’ flight away.

I can attest to that. Every summer my wife and I (and now our son) fly down to the south coast, where her family has a house in Anamur, and on every flight the plane is filled with Russians. Most are bound for Alanya and Antalya, popular coastal towns where even the signs and menus are in Russian as well as Turkish. So for many years, the Turkish tradespeople have welcomed the Russians, as well as Ukrainians, since they are a vital part of the tourism economy.

In the wake of Putin’s recent call for the draft, we have read of many fleeing Russia. According to news reports, more than a few have chosen to flock to the south coast, and are buying up properties, which suggest they are choosing to stay for the long term. At any rate, they appear invested.

Meanwhile, here in Istanbul, merchants and vendors who depend on tourism say the war has negatively affected their businesses. In a September story on Euronews, the owner of a Bosphorus fish restaurant claimed that half of his customers are Russian tourists. With sanctions imposed by the West, many customers find that their credit cards don’t work. Imagine you are a restaurant owner, already dealing with rising costs (rent, utilities) as well as many locals (like my wife and myself) choosing to stay home. How would you feel if your best customers aren’t able to pay?

“I am not happy, and my guests are not happy,” the fish restaurant owner told Euronews, an online news outlet, last month. “For Russian people, it’s difficult.”

One can suppose it’s not much easier for him as well. As I said, locals like my wife and I would love to show our support for these restaurants, but the fact is that with these prices, we simply cannot afford to eat out very often. It has become almost a luxury. A meal that cost 200 lira a couple years ago will run over a thousand now – for the same meal! You just feel ripped off, but you realize that it’s not anyone’s fault, everybody is just trying to get by.

Anyway, if you reflect on the dependence these locals have on Russian tourism, then perhaps it’s easier to understand why some, like my construction worker, get defensive when the subject of the war is brought up, and even more so if it is suggested that Russia may well be losing. After all, maybe they don’t agree with the invasion, but they do feel a vested interest in Russia’s long-term well-being as it is inexorably tied to their own, at least in terms of everyday living. As I said, for some here, perhaps ideals or “the good fight” are luxuries they feel they can ill-afford.

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A few years ago, I wrote a story about Trotsky’s house on one of the Prince Islands here in Istanbul. The house was up for sale, so that story provided the opportunity for me to explore the 1917 Revolution and its aftermath, of the White Russians who fled to Istanbul. To this day, in some parts of the city, vestiges of the White Russians remain, such as an old Russian Orthodox church in the neighborhood of Karaköy.

Last spring, I visited both the Ukraine and Russian embassies, just to get a glimpse of some of today’s refugees. Some were going to stay in Turkey, while others were anxiously hoping to get travel visas to Europe or the States. Seeing these people standing patiently, some with children, in queues, clasping bags and paperwork, was like déjà vu, reminding me of the numerous Syrian families I’d seen camped out on the streets of my neighborhood at the height of that conflict. Most of them have gone – either enculturated (many opened businesses, their children enrolled in schools), or else continued on to points West). Nowadays, one doesn’t hear much about the Syrians. Does that mean the conflict is over, or that the world’s interest just moved on to the latest crisis du jour? Or to other refugees: At this point, there are a reported 145,000 Ukrainians in Turkey, while the number of Russians who have fled their country since the war began is estimated at 200,000 – although it is difficult to find an official number on how many have come to Turkey.

Personally, I hope that one day, the war and all its attendant misfortunes and tragedies will end soon, and these stories entered into the long book of history on Turk-Russian relations, along with those of their long-vanished ancestors. But whatever happens, Turkey and Russia, as well as Ukraine, will continue to co-exist, to depend on each other economically, well into the future. For that reason, one understands why the country is hoping to keep its neutral role, mediating a hopefully peaceful end soon. Some would suggest that it’s a disingenuous route at best, dangerous at worst, as JFK warned in his inauguration speech at the height of the Cold War, “Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”

But what can you say? Given the situation, perhaps striking the middle ground is the only course the Turks have, and they must make it work, with help from its Western allies. Their livelihood in a sense depends on them resolving this bloody dispute between two very valued neighbors. I, and most others, have always seen Turkey as a bridge between East and West. If that is the case, then it is a bridge that’s strength is being sorely tested. Since we are ending with metaphors, let us hope that it is made of sterner stuff than the Crimea bridge that went up in smoke last week.

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James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul.