Philadelphia a ship worth its own sail

Trapped in the rise and fall of the Gulf Stream, I wanted off. The night sky was beautiful, but staring miserably after the lights on the horizon, the only place we wanted to be was home. Land. Steady. Good.

I was on watch and was supposed to be in the ship's tiny, claustrophobic lab. For a while I sat at the entrance, pretending to pay attention while the others worked. They used magic markers to draw smiley faces on Styrofoam cups. And then I moved to the leeward side and there were three of us, sharing all our pent-up misery, all the thoughts kept silent in the presence of happier shipmates.

"Everyone else knows what to do. What everything's called. They should warn you it'll be like this before you come."

"What if one of us got really sick? Then they'd have to let us go back to land, right?"

"I wonder what they're doing at home right now."

We sat there, staring off until first one of us went below to try to sleep and then our watch officer sent the other on a boat check. Then it was just me and the ocean. And thoughts of mutiny.

But as double doses of prescription seasickness medication caught up with me and words like "jigger," "head" and "forestays'l downhawl" began to flow more easily, this new world seemed different. We were, quite literally, all in the same boat, and the places we were going were glorious and beautiful. On the ocean but apart from it, isolated from the larger, global reality, I became used to life on this boat which had looked tiny from the dock but now seemed tall and huge. Watching the moon set in a blood-red puddle one night -- our last 3 a.m.-to-7 a.m. watch -- we leaned against the bow of the S.S.V. Corwith Cramer and realized how special this was, how unique and irretrievable. And I realized how if you're not careful, you can travel the world and still not really see it.

I have lived in Philadelphia on and off for 10 years now and, before that, stayed in this city with my grandparents. Most of my conscious life has been here. But the longer I live, the bigger the city gets before my eyes. Every day I discover a new mural, a new sculpture, a new bar or another patch of green.

When I first read Michelle Dubert's column two Thursdays ago, in which she explains in detail how my beloved city of Philadelphia is "unattractive" to her, I was annoyed. For her New York is the great city, the materialization of all this world's beauty and wealth, while Philadelphia's main redeeming quality is that it is "within striking distance of both New York and Washington, D.C."

Similarly a Dec. 9 DP article gave me pause: "It may not boast the 71-foot tree of the Rockefeller Center or the legendary status of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, but with a profusion of traditional parades and performing arts presentations, Philadelphia is giving New York a run for its money for the title of 'Christmas capital of the world.'"

Just as the Corwith Cramer will never be bigger than the cruise ships that we watched out for from the bow, Philadelphia will most likely never overtake New York in size. But who would really want to be a big, lumbering cruise ship of a city when you could be on your own boat, powered by your own efforts? Philadelphia is a city of character, of history and distinction, and it is a city that needs our help to get where it's going. Cruise ships are often on autopilot. You call them on the radio, but no one is home. They're bigger than everyone else. They don't care.

My East Asian Diplomacy professor ended the semester last week by predicting the decline of America and the concurrent rise of East Asia. Maybe in a decade or so, the great city of the world will be Tokyo, Shanghai or Bangkok.

As our dollar falls, as our jobs move offshore and as the average American descends further and further into debt, this beautiful country may in a few years find that it is superpower of the world no longer. If that happens, if history begins to sweep aside our great nation, will you switch countries like a disloyal sports fan jumping bandwagons?

Or do you love America for her ideals? For values like freedom, justice and the pursuit of happiness?

Onboard the Corwith Cramer, despite nauseous beginnings, I learned to appreciate a mode of transport that has been outdated for maybe a hundred years. I opened my eyes and saw the stars. I loved our ship because she was my first ship, because she was beautiful and because she could get us where we wanted to go.

But most of all, I loved the Corwith Cramer because she was ours.

In the same spirit, Philadelphia is ours.

Danielle Nagelberg is a junior International Relations major from Philadelphia. Schuylkill Punch appears on Tuesdays.

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