“I’m talking to my wife.”

This is the old’s Dutch man’s response to my suggestion that maybe, just maybe, talking on his Smartphone in the supermarket and thus expectorating into a public we all must protect might not be ideal behavior during, you know, a pandemic.

A more clever interlocutor than I might have rejoined: “I am sure she’s a lovely woman. Is she immune to all disease.” But I just rolled my eyes and moved on. Not for the first time, a fellow citizen of our global village and I disagreed about what it meant to serve the common good.

(This post is entitled “Citizen.” You can expect citizen II and III and so on as the days of Corona pile up. No word conveys the category we must all upgrade and redefine, beyond borders and between friendship, if we are to get beyond this disease and then reconstitute the world into a place where more of us can live and thrive, a world not made so susceptible and fragile because it serves the needs of the few. Well, no category demands upgrade more than “citizen” save perhaps “leadership.”)

Now two things are worth pointing out about my haranguing this guy and his phone. One, I am ruining his city. Two, his city is full of supermarkets.

About point one. Amsterdam got discovered ten years ago or so and has suffered predictably from what the forces of money do whenever they enter an urban environment: Rent goes up, small business loses out to chains and big corporations, things get cleaner but they also get less weird and less cool. Property value increases, groovy vibe decreases. And for guys like my old man, who may not think in terms of groovy vibe, what’s clear is that his kids can no longer live in the neighborhood where they grew up. An affordable starter house? Not anymore.

In the case of Amsterdam, I represent these forces. While I am not the typical ex-pat working at Booking.com or moving here since Brexit, he can’t know that any more than he can know I regret the changes to my adopted home as much, if not more, than he does to his actual home. (Also, I speak no Dutch and as a general rule, if you are gonna act like a self-righteous jerk, it behooves you to do it in the native tongue of those you would patronize.)

About the second point. One of the reasons Amsterdam is such a livable city is that you are never more than five minutes from a supermarket. The postie cascading effect of this is too large to go into here, but for sure food is less packaged (only having to survive a day or too) and so seems fresher. People don;t need SUV’s to go to Costco to buy groceries for a month but just get on their bike to buy for the day. All neighborhoods become livable. Indeed, tourists come to Amsterdam–or used to–for the fantasy land centre, the maze of streets and rainbow of canals that lends itself to ideal waling imbibing, and being. A groovy vibe. But the city lives well because areas are not segregated by use: Office parks in one area, housing in another. Instead, most neighborhoods include business and housing, schools and cafes, day life and nightlife. Mixed used making for a good life.

Thus I can be sure that this gentleman’s wife was no more than 500 yards from where he was standing. Admittedly, I dislike such phone use in public anyway. But I get it. “Honey, does that chicken fricassee recipe call for rosemary or thyme?” But this was not that. This was, “I am just looking at the eggs now. In a moment I’ll be near the bread.” And well, Sir, while your blood may be in the soil as mine is not, and though you can say “Wie zijn billen brandt, moet op de blaren zitten” as I cannot. And while I will happily volunteer to be the poster child of those who kill groove, you are in the wrong and I am not.

Because the lesson is this: we are all connected. And we must connect better. To justify war and self-serving tax policies and the befouling of our environment leaders have claim we are connected by nationality and income and forces of economy. Maybe so. But first we are connected by our need to help each other, and the air we breathe.

The lesson predates school. In this time and this place we are all citizens, the upgrade in global behavior which any moment demands to begin with each of us.