Word: ambers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Just before graduating from ninth grade, Alicia Hayes, 15, and Amber Hernandez, 14, opted out of adolescence at this spot. On the night of Wednesday, May 22, Amber had a dispute with her parents and ran from the house. Sometime later, she and Alicia went to Point Fermin, climbed the fence and stood amid the wildflowers. They took their shoes off, tied their wrists together with twine and jumped. The next day a beachcomber found their broken bodies on the rocks at water's edge, some 150 ft. below. "Mom and Dad, I love you," read the note Amber left...
...case with most suicides, no one really understands what went through the girls' minds at that moment, and in the end perhaps it doesn't matter. What matters is the wreckage the girls left behind: families and friends grief-stricken and bewildered--and extremely vulnerable. Amber and Alicia were not the first students from San Pedro High School to commit suicide this year; in March, Christopher Mills, a junior, and his girlfriend Heidi Chamberlain, who went to a different school, also leaped to their death from the cliffs by the Pacific. So the second double suicide ignited fear...
...scientists, a piece of amber with nothing trapped inside is not so exciting. For artists and their patrons, however, it is an uncut gem. According to Grimaldi, Stone Age artisans used amber found on beaches of the Baltic Sea 10,000 years ago to carve amulets, pendants and tiny figurines. Indeed, Baltic deposits were Western civilization's primary source of amber at least as far back...
...name notwithstanding, amber isn't always amber in color. It can also be milky white, red and even blue or green--more than 250 different shades in all, say researchers--and artists have used just about every one of them...
Because it sometimes contains dead animals, amber was strongly associated with death in ancient times. "It was believed to serve as a ray of light for the dead person in the afterlife," says Faya Causey, a historian of ancient art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Many of the amber figurines carved during the classical period relate either to death or to fertility and rejuvenation. Amber may have been used by Egyptians in the mummification process, possibly because it is a powerful desiccant, or drying agent. It was also valued as a medicine. According to Pliny the Elder...