Last Saturday, Mer and I started the day off in a mellow way by sleeping in, and then going to Friendly’s for breakfast. I had never thought about if a place I go for ice cream served breakfast, but they do, and we had a two-for-one coupon, so our food was on the cheap. Yum!

We continued the mellow theme through much of the day, taking time to listen to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!, a favorite Saturday pastime.

In the evening, we went to Actors’ Summit theater to see Golda’s Balcony, a one-woman show about Golda Meir. Not to my credit, I had no idea who Golda Meir was. Now I know! For those who do not know, Golda Meir was a strong supporter of having a Jewish state, and became the Israeli Prime Minister in the early seventies. She was Prime Minister during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, which Israel was losing early on, and Golda made the decision to load 25 atomic bombs onto planes to end the war. This convinced the U.S. to supply Israel with needed supplies, and they turned the tide of the war without using the atomic weapons.

The play started with Golda as an old woman, telling us (the audience) about her life story. She kept changing time frames quickly, always skirting around the question of nuclear weapons until the end of the play. Every time she got to the recollection of giving the order to load the bombs, she would change topic. In this way, in about 90 minutes, we went through her life story. I thought this worked really well; it kept my attention. I had guessed that Golda was skirting around the topic of the bomb, but it was still a moving moment when she talked about the decision.

I have to admit that I like getting my history in these ways. I’ve liked all the historical plays we’ve seen at Actors’ Summit (ones on Feynman, Bohr, Truman, Darrow, and more).

However, this play is apparently not for all audiences. One of my students was there. Her thirteen-year-old mind’s summary of the play the next day was “that play about that strange lady doing those boring things.” I told her she might think differently in twenty years.