Elizabeth Ann Brown Hardeman

Almost every home has one. Whether it's a dilapidated strip of wood in the midst of a small one-room shack in the hills of Chiapas, Mexico; an extravagant slab of marble underneath a grand chandelier in an Italian villa; a few canes of bamboo lashed together in the slums of a southern province in China; or a common piece of oak in a two-stor y parsonage in A lton, Iowa--all tables I've had the privilege of sitting around in my…