It became largely a moot point because the weather Saturday and Sunday was less than ideal, but the summer-pool season and the condo complex I call home – which was scratched for 2020 due to COVID despite a raging blowback from some residents about the decision – will have to wait another weekend to ramp up in 2021.
Plans had been in place for the traditional Memorial Day-weekend opening, but a lack of lifeguards has become a problem. Apparently it’s the same across the region.
As of last report, only one lifeguard had been hired for our condo complex, which is kind of a problem because there are two pools. We’ll see how it transpires.
Just another challenge in these wacky times of ours.
EVERYBODY WANTS A CLEAN AND SHINY ELECTRIC CHAIR: From the pages of the Northern Virginia Sun back this week in 1979.
According to the paper, Virginia officials were giving the state’s 69-year-old electric chair a couple of coats of varnish and other tweaks to get it back in working order. Executions had been on hold for years but were expected to return with a vengeance over the rest of the year.
For those wondering, Virginia’ electric chair sent 267 condemned individuals (including one woman) to the promised land starting with its acquisition (from a New Jersey vendor for $3,700 paid in three installments) in 1908, according to coverage in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Lethal injection became the preferred method of execution in Virginia in 1995, but some prisoners still opted to go out with a jolt, as was their right under state law.
The small Democratic majority in the General Assembly voted this year to abolish the death penalty in Virginia, and one presumes that decision will stick even when Republicans (and they invariably will) return to control in the bouncy-bouncy political fluctuations that is Richmond.
- Scott McCaffrey