A tattered white sheet dividing Mr. Wong's bedroom in half gives him the only privacy from his latest roommates, whom he does not count among his friends.
When a tattered black canvas sheet that serves as a curtain is raised, you see a mass of rigging, masts and sails that get hoisted up and down on ropes.
Their names rustle like tattered sheet music: Doris Eaton Travis, who is 99; Lucile Layton Zinman, 100; Virginia MacNaughton Fersen, 92; Nancy Bernard Levy, 99; and Barbara Hunter, stage name Billee Blanchard, who won't give her age.
First it was old fur pieces for Davy Crockett hats, then tattered sheets for Superman capes, & not so long ago overbleached Levis for TV cowboy characters.
An early morning trickle at one San Diego relief center Friday later grew into hundreds, with throngs of people carrying tattered sheets of paper and notebooks full of scribbled phone numbers walking among the service tables set up by FEMA, the Red Cross and other government agencies.
A pimp in a tattered shirt gestures at a doorway.
Blood was smeared on the hoods of two cars, and rescue workers hurried to cover corpses with whatever they could find cardboard; a tattered, soiled blanket; a sheet of plastic.
"I think it had something to do with that," says Díaz, sitting in a tattered hammock in the back of his home made of rusty sheet metal.
Her mother treasures a tattered suicide note.
He unfolded a tattered highway map.
Mr. Svenson likes a tattered look, although some pieces are too tattered even for him.
