Word: spruced
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...make her own from blueprints. Although a Steinway violinmaker pronounced her first effort the work of "a good carpenter," she went ahead with No. 2, soon began turning out instruments that were good enough to sell. Nowadays, she tries to use the same woods Stradivarius used; she gets spruce and curly maple from the mountains of Czech been seasoning since World War I, and Lombardy poplar from the crates used to ship Chianti bottles from Italy. Toughest wood of all to find is the seasoned willow that Stradivarius used for blocks to strengthen the corners and ends of his violins...
Raids & Whoops. The Olive and Boyle quarter began to spruce up; even the antique-and-junk dealers caught the spirit, began upgrading their wares and window displays. St. Louis was in the process of demolishing 465 acres of downtown property for redevelopment, and the intrepid Gaslighters staged foraging raids behind wrecking crews, picking up church pews, chandeliers and marble bathtubs. With their truckloads of artifacts, they transformed the old buildings into a gingerbread plaisance calculated to bring a tear of delight to the eye of St. Louisans yearning for the good old days, a whoop of joy to younger citizens...
Seldom had Belgrade seen more bustle and toil. Wrecking crews felled whole rows of shabby old tenements as if scything corn. Gangs labored round the clock to transform gaping foundations into spruce little parks. Everywhere, the police rounded up known drunks, idlers and beggars and sent them off to the countryside for the duration of the Conference of Unaligned Nations...
...last the East German Communist regime of Walter Ulbricht seemed to be making a determined attempt to stop its refugees running out to the West. But they still keep coming. Last week People's Army patrols in camouflage uniforms stalked the spruce forests and potato fields in a twelve-mile circle around East Berlin in search of defectors; jackbooted People's Police and railway police combed all access roads, airports and railways leading to the city. But through them all the refugees poured across to the West at the rate of some 1,500 a day. West Berlin...
...present version of the play has the influence not anticipated by Brecht himself: that of Mr. Eric Bentley, the translator, or "adaptor" as the program has it. Mr. Bentley's translation of a difficult text is a fair one, and a clean one, but he has seen fit to spruce up the play by adding several songs and an opening and closing chorus-line number more reminiscent of the English than of the Bavarian music hall...