Word: quilt
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While France and Britain developed centralized monarchies in the late Middle Ages, the German empire remained a crazy quilt of kingdoms, duchies, bishoprics, free cities and other flotsam. In the late 13th century, the imperial crown came into the hands of a Swiss family named Habsburg, but the Habsburgs' only real power and wealth came from their family possessions in Austria and Bohemia; the Germanic Holy Roman Empire, a concept that exercised a magic attraction in the Middle Ages, had about as much authority as the United Nations has today...
...eulogized AIDS victim Ryan White, saying there were "too many patches in the quilt." That quilt symbolized his own unwillingness, while President, to do or say much about the disease...
Many have found success and prosperity in their new home. A decade ago, a 1 1/2-mile strip of Bolsa Avenue between Garden Grove and Westminster in Orange County, Calif., was a ragged quilt of vacant lots and small stores, bean fields and discount emporiums. Today the stretch is as alive as payday in a port city -- specifically, Saigon. Between 20,000 and 50,000 Vietnamese flock each weekend to 800 shops and restaurants, buying herbal medicine and dining out on snail-tomato-rice-noodle soup. In the mornings people may attend Buddhist ceremonies in makeshift temples; in the evenings they...
...bluster on the left, Gorbachev's greatest challenge comes from the reactionary conservatives. They make up a bizarre patchwork quilt: hard- line trade unionists and factory workers from groups like the United Worker's Front who oppose a "return to capitalism"; military officials angered by plans to convert defense factories to civilian use; entrenched party apparatchiks who fear the loss of position and privileges; and Russian nationalists who hanker after the Czarist past, many of them aligned with the reactionary Pamyat (Memory) movement. Whatever their ideological differences, the conservatives are united by a concern that the reforms are moving...
...shops announced half-price earthquake sales. But the mood turned to grimness as the extent of the destruction became clear. Officials estimated that property damage could mount to $10 billion or more, probably surpassing the losses from Hurricane Hugo. Throughout the quake zone, residents awoke to a crazy quilt of destruction in which some buildings were leveled while neighboring structures survived intact. In San Juan Bautista the 125-year-old home of restaurant consultant Becky McGovern is situated only 100 ft. from the San Andreas fault. Although it bounced "from one side to the other," the house did not fall...