A Tea Party at the Mennonite Home

I presented my senior honors thesis to a group of elderly people at the Mennonite Home during work yesterday. Sort of. I cut it down to about ten minutes and watered down the content so much that I cringed a little bit inside. But it was fun! They all sat in the dining room and drank mint tea and ate brownies. I played a few songs on the piano, and then presented about how hard it was for colonial patriots to stop drinking tea, even though many of them believed boycotting was the only way to preserve their freedom. They loved the story about Miss Hornbloom, who knocks her husband over the head with a broomstick and yells, "Go dirty Clod-pole, get me some Shushong*!" They also loved the story about John Adams trying to ask a lady for some tea, "provided it has paid no duties or has been honestly smuggled." When she replied no, that they had renounced tea, he wrote to his wife and stated, "I must be weaned, and the sooner the better."

So even though many of them slept or were in another world, about a third of them were truly interested. In fact, they answered my questions excitedly and often interjected with small tidbits about what they remembered from their history classes. Even though my project was simplified and slightly modified, I still tried to get them to think historically. I began with "let's travel back in time and imagine that we're American colonists in 1760." I tried to get them to understand that colonists looked very much like the British, and that it was a struggle to give up something that was such a deep-seated every day tradition. I also told them that they would make good patriots because they were drinking mint tea rather than black tea!

It was a great time and I think some of them really enjoyed it. My supervisor was interested and asked me to leave my notes on her desk so she could read them for fun. I also think it would be fun to present a fuller version of the paper to a more alert group of elderly people. Anyway, I can't say I haven't gotten a lot of mileage out of this honors thesis!

*a type of Chinese tea