Rudder Theater

Whoo-hoo! In fulfillment of a New Year's Resolution, I am finally getting caught up with my overdue buildings!

(This is Stop #17 in the Texas A&M Building Writing Tour, my attempt to motivate myself on my dissertation by writing in every campus building before I graduate.)

Note: Due to my perfectionism affliction and my incredibly hectic semester of data collection, I’m posting this over three months after my September 28 visit to Rudder Theater. I realize this is not the proper way to write a blog. After all, blog is short for “web log”, which implies that the blog should log our thoughts and experiences as we go along, not long after the fact. Fortunately, this is not a proper blog, so I can do whatever I want.

My first visit and second visits to Rudder Theater had something in common: they both featured an expert in crisis management.

The first visit occurred back in 2004, during my first year of this doctoral program. I had just donated blood at a campus blood drive. One moment I was walking to my next class, chatting with my husband on my cell phone; the next moment I was sprawled on my back in the grass, with no memory of how I got there. Leaning over me was General Van Alstyne, then Commandant of the A&M Corps of Cadets. He assessed my vital signs, noted the gauze strapped to my elbow, and recruited the necessary troops. He dispatched one student to inform the blood drive crew that a donor had collapsed. Another student assisted him in carrying me and my stuff to the nearest air conditioning, in Rudder Theater. After ten minutes spent horizontal on a theater lobby bench, I felt much more like myself. Soon I was on my way to class again, but I wasn’t allowed to walk—a kind phlebotomist ferried me to class in her own car.

On my second and most recent Rudder Theater visit, September 28, I had the privilege of listening to another man with emergency-handling experience: astronaut Jim Lovell.

Like nearly everyone, I have seen the movie Apollo 13. More than once. It’s the best kind of movie, the kind that takes an amazing story and somehow draws you into it, and makes you care how it turns out. But even better was the silent footage of Fred Haise, Jack Swigert, and Jim Lovell in the LEM, and the actual Mission Control folks in Houston, all narrated by one of the main characters.

I started my writing session in the auditorium balcony after Jim Lovell finished his presentation, and finished it just outside the door on a bench. (It still counts, it’s still 30 consecutive minutes in Rudder Theater.) From the bench, I could look over the balcony and see an amazing wall of art. The wall is cover with a bunch of painted blobs. Each blob contains a landscape made of little pieces of wood. I wish I knew the story behind the Rudder Theater landscape wall, because it’s really cool. As with most of my building pictures, the photo does not do it justice.