the table?

so i'm trying out a blog. i've just moved to libreville, gabon. where is that, you ask...?

i'm terrible at keeping up with facebook and not much with even keeping in touch with people via email, forget phonecalls! but this is such a unique experience for me and thought that i would try documenting life via the blogosphere. but i don't want this to just be a travel blog. my life is going on here, my thoughts, my fears, my experiences, and i need a place to deal with all of that as well. i have a thing for quotes and simple prayers and good friends who send me things i think everyone should read. maybe if i start putting this stuff out there, in print, it will be more real or something. 

also, i have a thing for social justice, that everyone deserves dignity, regardless of position or possession. crazy to think americans are debating, politicizing, and polarizing social justice, its as if people such dr. king, who once said, "the hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood,"are dated - i don't think so. as a dear friend grew up believing, evil continues when good men do nothing. well the first part of doing something is becoming aware, so i like to think that this may be my forum to talk about observations i make and try filling the little cracks with hope and light (and honesty as much as i can), instead of despair and dark.

so about this name - the table. i'm not sure that i like it. but it has some meaning. i've just finished up graduate school at virginia tech and i've come here for a new job. we're just getting started here. the team is small and we're in a temporary office. we're staying at a hotel, we wake up, eat together around the same table everyday, then we go in and sit around another table, then we come home together and eat supper around that table. so right now, my life literally revolves around a table. as we get to know each other a but more, our conversations are getting deeper, we're laughing more. what my british co-workers would call "that bloody table" is now becoming the beloved table...ok, no. its still the bloody table. but i don't know - its where my life is happening right now and so maybe its works for the name of this blog. i also thought that if i'm able to create something more than a travel blog, something other than a whinny journal, that maybe i can also use this as a platform, then maybe i stop writing once we're all able to sit at the table because right now, to be honest, its a table of the privileged, of the powerful, and call me socialist (or naive), but i think we have all been created as equals, and that we should die that way as well.

please let me know what you think about the name and i will try to keep posting, even if it pleases only me.