Word: furness
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...last week, the contrast they found with their living standards in West Berlin was appalling. Nowhere did the disparity between East and West come clearer than at the crossing points themselves. West Berliners cruised through the Wall in gleaming Volkswagens and Mercedeses or walked across warmly clad in fur coats, bright Bogner ski pants and ruddy complexions. The East Berliners who greeted them looked grey and chunky by contrast in their long, drab overcoats and Russian-style galoshes. Their streets, their homes looked much the same: empty, and a bit forlorn...
...galosh has gone galumphing into oblivion, and in its place is the musketeer boot, the Robin Hood boot, the cossack boot, lined, unlined, fur-topped, made of fake leopard or silk faille or nylon mesh or even real leather. Office girls wear them to work at the slightest sign of inclement weather, carrying their shoes in a tote bag (the smarter ones keep a pair of shoes in their desk). For the evening, slippers are carried in jeweled reticules...
...president of the American Fur Co., Astor ruled the closest thing to a private empire ever established in America. Most of the fur-trading tribes -the Winnebagos, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Sioux-were in perpetual hock to him, and they had a habit of going into battle with medals bearing his likeness strung about their necks. Astor's puffy face, in fact, was thought to be a more powerful talisman than a scalp or even a medicine bonnet...
...knife and wiped his fingers on his neighbors' clothing. But the territory he controlled was larger than Western Europe, its security was protected by strings of private forts erected and maintained by Astor, its commerce was served by a vast private fleet that carried countless thousands of furs to Europe, China, India and South America. In matters of border disputes over the fur trade, the government of Great Britain preferred to deal with Astor rather than with the Government in Washington...
...caused a flurry of pouts elsewhere in the dance world. The American Ballet Theater got nothing; nor did the entire field of modern dance. And though the foundation patiently announced that a grant to ballet did not preclude future grants to modern dance, this did not smooth the ruffled fur. "People stop me on the street," says Kirstein, "and tell me I'm taking bread out of their mouths...