Essay: Politicians, Voters and Voltage

My family discovered the hulking wooden chair in the basement one summer morning about 25 years ago. The arms and legs were deeply scarred from the heavy metal apparatus once tightly fastened to it. It was, I announced to my parents' horror, the electric chair, liberated the night before from the ancient and abandoned Connecticut state prison. The Chair was too big a prize for high school kids to pass up. Sitting in it brought my imagination to life, as if I were its next official guest. My teenage sensibilities told me this was something people should not do to one...

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