Word: ostrich
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...ostrich feather business has one thing in common with the buggy-whip industry and the horse. All three were ruined by Henry Ford. When women began riding in open automobiles before World War I, they had to discard their majestic hats, crowned with glossy ostrich plumes. That spelled disaster for South Africa's ostrich farmers, who fed and plucked 1,000,000 ostriches every year. On the sun-baked Little Karoo plateau around Oudtshoorn, ostrich capital of the world, farmers killed their birds by the thousands, stripped the rich dark meat from the carcasses for stew. Flocks dwindled...
Last week Oudtshoorn's feather business was in the midst of a new boom. Fashion had brought the ostrich plume back to style. In Paris, Christian Dior and other high fashion designers were trimming hats with ostrich feathers. So was Manhattan's Lily Daché, who explained quite simply: "It was time for the ostrich feather to return." Oudtshoorn's farmers did not question the verdict; they crowded into the feather auction hall, offered their pluckings to dealers so sharp-eyed that they could identify at a glance the feathers from any one of 200 farms. Bids...
...more pleased than South Africa's ostrich king, 78-year-old Max Rose, who owns 8,000 birds. He sleeps by day in a hotel room in Oudtshoorn, breakfasts at midnight in his big, untidy office, heaped high with bundles of ostrich feathers, and works while others sleep. Max Rose, who has made & lost fortunes in feathers, is now apparently going to make another...
...Human Pincushion act (sticking pins through his flesh). He did manage to sew buttons on his wrists and fasten his shirtsleeves to them, but he never could get used to the pain. One artist that Mannix did not even try to emulate was the Human Ostrich. The Ostrich swallowed white rats and frogs and brought them up again...
Temple, but tap-dancing never interested Maria. At six, she was up on her toes, dancing to The Stars & Stripes Forever. Soon after, swathed in her mother's remodeled peach satin and ostrich feather negligée, she made a solo debut as the Glow Worm. Unlike a lot of other dancing moppets who never get beyond the Glow Worm stage, Maria and her younger sister Marjorie (now a principal dancer in the Marques de Cuevas Grand Ballet) stuck to their toe shoes...