Last summer the loving husband and I added onto the house. We dug deep into the old savings account and decided to build a large toilet bowl for birds. In more sophisticated cultures it might be called a deck. So far, it’s worked out quite well and we’re glad we spent the money on it. At any given time you can look out the dining room window and see happy, happy birds running on the railing, hopping up and down the steps, always leaving a happy little deposit behind. Birds are not the only beasts-of-the-air that enjoy the new structure. The wasps have constructed three lovely nests on the railing, with hundreds of little wasplings ready to hatch. When I want to relax on the deck, I actually feel like an intruder in my own back yard. I know the birds are hiding in the grass, saying to each other, "Doesn’t she have anything better to do than sit on our toilet bowl? Why doesn’t she just go back to work? What a bum!" I know I’m not wanted in the garden either. The birds are dive-bombing me while I work. The bunnies are throwing themselves against the fence, trying to get in. The bugs are slowly eating me alive. I AM NOT THE MASTER OF MY UNIVERSE! Fitting into the harsh scheme of nature is difficult, but it can be done. Right now, I’m getting along very well with the bumblebees. We co-exist side by side in the flowerbed. They don’t sting me and I don’t spray them with Terminex. By the way, if you decide you want to build a toilet bowl for the birds, we have lots of books in the library to give you design ideas. Research tip: Look up "decks" not "toilet bowls." We also have lots of new fiction on the shelf for your reading pleasure, "Sleeping Beauty, by Philip Margolin. Author Miles Van Meter is on a book tour to promote his sensational bestseller "Sleeping Beauty," a true-crime account of an attack by a serial killer that left his twin sister, Casey, in a coma. Tonight the audience waits to hear Miles discuss recent developments in his sister's case. Six years earlier, life was much simpler for everyone involved, especially 17-year-old Ashley Spencer, a popular high school soccer star. Then one night an intruder entered Ashley's home and murdered her father and her best friend. Traumatized and suffering from a crippling sense of survivor guilt, Ashley is ready to give up on both soccer and life until help comes from an unexpected source; she is offered a scholarship to the Oregon Academy by school dean Casey Van Meter. The school quickly becomes a haven for both Ashley and her mother, Terri. As Ashley regains her sense of self through the school's soccer program, tragedy strikes again and Ashley has to run for her life, unaware that the key to her survival is in the one book she's afraid to read — "Sleeping Beauty." "Digital Fortress," by Dan Brown. When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant, beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage — not by guns or bombs — but by a code so complex that if released would cripple U.S. intelligence. Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country, but also for her life, and for the life of the man she loves.
