It seems wrong to begin a story like that, doesn't it? Particularly a story about a bookstore. It should begin "In the beginning," or "Once upon a time," or "It was love at first sight."

Especially "It was love at first sight."

After 40 years in business, Borders No. 1, the company's original Ann Arbor store, is scheduled to close on Monday. By late August, posters on the windows declared, "NOTHING HELD BACK!" -- and that meant the fixtures and furniture as well. The goods -- books, but also games and puzzles and teddy bears and throw rugs -- gave off the sour tang of a picked-over flea market.

A lonely security guard stood watch; he was added just recently, an employee said, after a shoplifting incident.

Borders Rewards customers have been receiving e-mails for some time now, ever since the chain declared bankruptcy and announced it was closing its 399 remaining stores. A month ago it was "30 to 50 percent off!" Now it's "60 to 80 percent off!"

There was recently a sign taped to No. 1's front door. It said, "Now Hiring: Apply Online at Borders.com." It was serious -- the liquidators needed to hire part-time help -- but it seemed like a sick joke.

What happened to the love?

"Borders used to be chockablock with books," said Jonathan Marwil, a University of Michigan history professor and author of a history of Ann Arbor. "It has increasingly looked less like a bookstore than a bowling alley, with its wide-open spaces. Now they're selling children's dolls on the front counter. It's really pretty grim."

It was a place where employees were devoted to their jobs. They prided themselves on their knowledge of their assigned sections -- and everybody else's. It was a gathering place and community center, just up the street from the university's main campus.

"We worked when we didn't have to work because we didn't know we were working. We would go into the store when it was closed to do more work," said Sharon Gambin, who arrived for the 1982 holiday season and went on to hold several positions during a three-decade career. "That's how much we loved what we did."

It's an odd thing to mourn for a store. Mourn for the employees who have lost their jobs, yes, but the store? Just another box on the roadside. Hundreds more like it. Move it along, capitalism.

Woolworth is long gone; few were saddened at its passing. Circuit City went belly up; silence. Great downtown department stores have vanished, changed names, disappeared to that Great Retailer in the Sky. (Jacobson's, the upscale department store that once occupied Borders' East Liberty Street storefront, is but one example.) With rare exceptions -- the late Atlanta newspaper columnist Celestine Sibley once wrote a valentine, "Dear Store," to the city's now-defunct retailer, Rich's -- the public yawns.

They'll probably soon forget about Borders as well. To most of the country, it's just another big-box chain, another in a series of disappearing strip-mall storefronts. Indeed, there's an irony in its demise, for as Borders is blamed for killing off some local independents, now it has been done in by Amazon and the Internet. The circle may go 'round again: Former customers may turn to independents, if their towns have them. Or, if they rule out their local chain, maybe they'll just go back to browsing on Amazon.

A shame, because when done right, there's something about a bookstore.

It's a library, a gathering spot, a refuge, a journey. Often it's small, maybe an 800-square-foot storefront jammed into a city street. Or it's idiosyncratic: an old house or converted barn, a rambling lobby or strip-mall space. It may not even be in your neighborhood, but that's where you go.

At its best, it's crowded: sometimes with people, always with books -- books stacked to the ceiling. Books lined up in bookcases. Books spread out on tables, highlighted on platforms, displayed in twirling, 5-foot-high wire racks.

Don't know what you're looking for? That's part of the adventure. A bookstore is governed by serendipity. You walk in and the world falls away. There's no rush. It's just you and the books, these pockets of words and paper that somehow transport you to a different place.

The best bookstores have a certain feel, a certain comfort to them. They're stately but not forbidding. The employees are a mix of the young and the eccentric, college students and lifers. The front of the store features their recommendations, a little offbeat, a little intriguing. If you're looking for something specific, they know where to find it; if you don't know what you're looking for, they can be your Virgil and Beatrice, guiding you through the world.

It is a place with a soul.

For much of its 40-year history, that was Borders. Though it was a chain, with hundreds of locations around the world, during its best years it maintained the feel of a great, expansive local bookstore, the 800-foot space multiplied by 10 or 20 (and much better organized). The choices were manifold, the employees passionate, the adventure always beginning.

In some towns and cities, Borders was it.

"I find in books a comfort and a companionship, a refuge from an urgently insistent world," wrote Ann Miller in the Longmont (Colorado) Weekly about the closing of that town's Borders, its only new-book bookstore. "I am worried about the folding of bookstores like Borders and the lost opportunity for browsing. ... There was no better place for grazing the written word and for meeting the best of friends."

Joe Gable, who managed Store No. 1 from the mid-'70s to the mid-'90s, puts it more simply.

(CNN) -- As the Horn of Africa suffers its worst drought for 60 years, there are reports of growing conflict between people and wildlife over the region's limited resources.

Conservationists say that in Kenya livestock herders and their animals are encroaching on water sources in protected areas, which is having a potentially devastating impact on the wildlife there -- particularly elephants.

With the region getting hotter and dryer the battle for water is going to become even more of a problem in the future, says Angela Sheldrick, director of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT), an organization that protects animals in Kenya.

"The incursion of livestock into Kenya's protected areas in search of pasture has in recent years put additional strain on the wildlife numbers," Sheldrick said.

"Areas that in the past might have sustained the wildlife through the tougher years no longer can, with the added impact of domestic stock," she continued.

One group that has traditionally lived in harmony with wildlife is Kenya's semi-nomadic Maasai people. But even that relationship is shifting.

Uneasy truce between Maasai and nature

Sheldrick says that in recent years the Maasai have sold much of their land to other tribes who are now cultivating and irrigating strategic water points that have been on elephants' migratory routes for millions of years.
In drought conditions, when water points are few and possessively guarded, the Maasai and wildlife do come into regular conflict.
Angela Sheldrick, director DSWT

She points out that farming and elephants are never a good mix, with the mammal capable of destroying a farmer's crop in just a few hours.

"In drought conditions, when water points are few and possessively guarded, the Maasai and wildlife do come into regular conflict -- particularly elephants," she said.

Jan de Leeuw, from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), says during periods of drought people get desperate.

"Herders have animals which are thirsty and because these are areas which have very few water points if wells don't have water they might have to walk 50-100 kilometers to find another," he said.

Leeuw says that Ethiopian herders have told him that during times of drought rules about certain areas being protected for livestock in their opinion can be broken.

'Green drought' hides hunger in Ethiopia

But it's not just the livestock that's using areas it shouldn't says Leeuw.

"Based on aerial surveys in Kenya we see that two thirds of the wildlife wanders out of the protected areas during dry seasons in search of water," he said.

"In areas with crops elephants tend to eat these, which is leading to reactions of people," he continued.

In the Tsavo conservation area, home to the country's largest population of elephants, the DSWT has helped the Kenyan Wildlife Service set up some artificial water points.

The new water sources, in the form of boreholes and windmills that pump water, are intended to provide much-needed relief to the herds of elephants.

But Sheldrick says water issues need to be dealt with carefully as what seems like a quick fix can actually become damaging in the longer term.

"For example, when considering water points in a national park, this can attract more livestock and more human pressure to the area, and ultimately be more detrimental than beneficial," she said.

"However, with many rivers that used to flow all year round now drying up for months at a time this has had to be addressed," she continued.

The DSWT is famous in particular for hand rearing orphaned elephants and it runs what has been described as the world's most successful rescue and rehabilitation center for orphaned elephants.
Kenya cannot afford to lose more elephants, as already our elephant populations are significantly less than they were years ago.
Edwin Lusichi, Nairobi Elephant Orphanage

But these are difficult times for Kenya's elephants.

"They are always first to feel the effects of drought, due to their inefficient digestive system, with much passing straight through them, and because they impact the vegetation as they do," explained Sheldrick. "Nature has made them fragile."

Edwin Lusichi is head keeper of the Nairobi Elephant Orphanage; he's concerned that if the drought persists the land will no longer be able to sustain the elephant population that's already dwindling under threat from loss of habitat and human pressures.

Late last October, a pair of innocuous packages were dropped off at a courier’s office in Sanaa, Yemen, for shipping to an address in Chicago. Hours later, the two brown boxes - stuffed with books, clothing, and brand new laser printers - were loaded into the cargo hold of passenger planes bound for Dubai and Doha on the first leg of their journey to the United States.

What the hundreds of passengers on those flights did not know was that ingeniously concealed in the printer cartridges inside those printers were explosive devices containing a white powdery chemical known as PETN.

Al Qaeda had found a potentially lethal flaw in aviation security. Conventional single beam X-ray machines rarely detect PETN. It was the same substance that had been smuggled aboard a U.S.-bound airliner by the alleged "underpants bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the previous Christmas. Western counter-terrorism sources say that chemically, the two batches were virtually identical, suggesting they’d been made by the same bomb-maker.

The printer bombs were timed to explode on the last leg of their journey over the eastern seaboard of the United States. Only a last-minute tip from Saudi intelligence led to their discovery at air cargo hubs in Germany and the UK. Around five times more PETN had been stuffed inside the cartridges than used in the failed attempt over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

"The aircraft could have been brought down," UK Home Secretary Theresa May told the British Parliament days later.

Today, passenger and cargo jets are still vulnerable to a well-disguised bomb containing the colorless and odorless PETN, according to multiple counter-terrorism sources. That is despite improving detection capabilities and greater international cooperation.

"There is no 100 percent, foolproof system for all cargo, all passengers," U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told CNN, "but what we can do and are doing is maximizing our ability to prevent such a plot from succeeding. Good intel, good information sharing."

One of those measures is more comprehensive screening. Despite the fact that approximately 60% of all air cargo enters the United States on passenger jets, not all of it is screened.

"Not all cargo is screened; all cargo, however, is looked at in some fashion. So it kind of depends on what you mean. Screening is a term of art, but no, we don't have 100 percent screening of all cargo at all times, that's correct," Napolitano told CNN.

The Department of Homeland Security is also carrying out ongoing assessments of the security of air cargo supply chains, including at points of origin and shippers. In thwarting potential plots, security experts emphasize intelligence tips are the first line of defense.

Despite the discovery of the printer bombs last October, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP) was exuberant. "The following phase would be for us to use our connections to mail such packages from countries that are below the radar and to use similar devices on civilian aircrafts in Western countries," the group said in a special issue of its online magazine Inspire.

It also boasted of its technical prowess. "The toner cartridge contains the toner which is carbon based and that is an organic material. The carbon’s molecular structure is close to that of PETN."

According to explosive detection experts, the X-ray absorption of PETN and ink-toner is indeed similar. "They understood the technology and what it did up to a point," says Kevin Riordan, technical director at Smiths Detection, a UK company that is one of the leading producers of explosive detection.

"They are using novel techniques of concealment, novel materials in terms of containment, and novel materials in terms of explosives," he told CNN in an interview at a Smith facility in Doncaster, England.

The device was so well concealed in the printer that it took UK authorities many hours before they found the explosive device –- even after isolating the consignment containing the suspect package at East Midlands airport, several sources told CNN.

"[It]was examined by specialists and at their first examination they declared it not a bomb," according to Sidney Alford, an explosives expert who helped U.S. authorities in the initial stages of the investigation.

"Only when they received intelligence saying we think it is look again or words to that effect did the awful truth dawn on them. That must really have scared them."

Following the package bomb plot, the Department of Homeland Security mandated that all in-bound air cargo travelling to the United States on passenger jets should be screened by the end of 2011.

But according to explosive detection experts, even 100% screening offers no guarantees.

According to a June 2010 report by the U.S Government Accountability Office (GAO), TSA officials have reservations about the effectiveness of using canine teams to screen for explosives. The white powdery explosive PETN in particular is difficult for sniffer dogs to detect because it has a low vapor pressure, meaning very little of it naturally disperses into the air, according to explosive detection experts.

Screening through physical search is impractical given the volume of cargo and the ease with which PETN can be hidden. Conventional X-ray machines may also fall short, a leading explosive detection expert told CNN.

Explosive detection experts say air cargo departure points around the world need a new generation of equipment. Napolitano says this has become a priority.

"We've now worked with the World Customs Organization, as well as with ICAO [the International Civil Aviation Organization] on improving standards for screening cargo for bombs but also mail. We've also been working on improving technology that gives us better screening capabilities," she told CNN.

The latest generation of explosive detection equipment involves two stages of scanning - an advanced X-Ray machine which provides a high-resolution image of contents which if suspicious prompts a second test. That involves swabbing the outside of the package or analyzing the air inside it. This technique –- known as explosive trace detection - can detect and identify extremely small quantities of explosive residue such as PETN, according to experts.