Dining on the poor, part one: "Meet Joseph Albert “Trey” Hollingsworth III, the biggest goober in Washington."

Originally published here on October 14, 2018; we're revisiting Hollingsworth's cash-engorged inhumanity because of this:

Dining on the poor, part two: Trey "Big Boy Pants" Hollingsworth reminds us that capital accumulation comes before YOUR life.

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As borrowed from Facebook (sorry; the source has been lost -- is it you, Dan Canon?), this profile effectively rests the case. It remains that I have significant issues with the Democratic dumb-ocracy, but voting in favor of Hollingsworth isn't something I plan on doing in this or any other lifetime.   

This is a profile of Joseph Albert “Trey” Hollingsworth III, the biggest goober in Washington.

As his name might lead you to suspect, he has been rich since before conception. His father, Joe Jr., is a prominent Tennessee capitalist who, in addition to owning “the largest developer for semi-rural industrial property in the Southeast,” [1] is known for an “adventuristic nature” that “expands beyond taking risks with start-ups, stocks and investments” to “hang gliding in Rio de Janeiro, racing Formula 1 cars and deep sea fishing off the Great Barrier Reef.” [2]

But Trey overcame his hardscrabble upbringing and in 2005, at the age of 22, founded Hollingsworth Capital Partners, which “purchases, renovates and repositions underperforming industrial and distribution investment property throughout the nation.” [3] His daddy is a silent partner.

A decade later, Trey decided to move to Southern Indiana and buy himself a seat in the US Congress, furnishing his campaign with over $3.1 million of his own money -- 88.4% of the total amount raised by the Hollingsworth 2016 effort. This was supplemented by $1.5 Million that the Hollingsworth Companies donated to Indiana Jobs Now, a Super PAC his father created for the sole purpose of getting Trey elected (and which he terminated weeks after achieving this goal). Mostly, this fortune went to TV ad buys, which were enough to marshal 34% of the competitive Republican primary vote, securing Trey the opportunity to face a Democrat in Indiana’s gerrymandered 9th District. Then, he rode the anti-Clinton wave straight to Washington, DC.

(Campaign finance epilogue: At the end of the race, Trey still owed the strangely repetitive sum of $246,246 to his pollster and other political consultants, so he, of the nearly $60 Million asset portfolio, asked his colleagues for help paying up. “Representative-elect Hollingsworth,” said a senior campaign adviser, “is extremely appreciative of those willing to help retire campaign debt that is owed to vendors.”) [4]

My favorite detail about his 2016 run is his approach to the press, summarized neatly in this excerpt from a profile in Slate: “The 9th District... doesn’t have much local media, and Hollingsworth frequently dodged what media there was. When he did agree to interviews, he often evaded, even on seemingly benign questions. He declined to release his tax returns. When someone asked him to name his three favorite Hoosiers, he declined to do that, too. One reporter asked him where he’d lived before moving to Indiana; ‘I’ll have to go back,’ Hollingsworth said, speaking about his own life, ‘and check the record.’ Pressed on when exactly he moved to Indiana, he finally answered with early summer. Another reporter tried to clarify whether that meant June or July. ‘I think that’s a good characterization,’ Hollingsworth said.” [5]

In his 22 months in Congress, Trey has maintained this demanding level of constituent accountability, appearing in zero public in-district town halls since being sworn in. His sacrifices in the name of transparency reached their peak one week at the end of 2017, during the fight over the Free Millions for Billionaires Bill, or as it was more commonly known, “tax reform.”

One provision of the initial draft of that bill would have taxed tuition remissions, which low-wage graduate students receive, as income, meaning workers earning roughly $15,000 a year would be taxed as though they were earning around four times as much. Indiana University being the largest employer in the district, Trey’s constituents did not all smile on this prospect. Specifically, on the evening of Monday, December 11, Campus Action for Democracy grad students staged a sit-in in his office in Greenwood, demanding to hear from Trey.

Rather than call and speak to them, Trey and his DC-based security chief issued two instructions: 1) that the building manager allow the protesters to stay in his office, but have the police restrict them from going into the hall, where the bathrooms are, and b) that his pregnant staffer supervise the student demonstrators for as long as they continued the occupation. So, as the occupiers explain in this video [6], they spent hour after hour with no access to bathrooms or contact with the outside world, never quite managing to get arrested for the cause.

Four days later, on December 15th, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce announced a Koch Brothers-sponsored “Tax Reform Town Hall” [7] with Trey. It was open to the public, with a few minor provisos: 1) Attendees had to register that very day on Eventbrite, 2) The Eventbrite link didn’t work, 3) The Town Hall was to take place in three days, on a Monday, 4) at 8 o’clock in the morning, 5) one week before Christmas, and 6) in the tiny town of Scottsburg. (Scott County, of which Scottsburg is the seat, gained some notoriety years earlier when then-Governor Mike Pence closed the local Planned Parenthood clinic, the county’s only site for HIV testing. [8] When, two years later, the worst HIV outbreak owing to needle-sharing in US history broke out in Scott County, Pence took three months to permit a temporary needle exchange, in which time nearly 200 Scott County residents were notified of an HIV-positive diagnosis.)

How did the Town Hall ultimately go? Citing a mysterious “threats of violence,” Trey cancelled the event. [9] A spokesperson said that, on the recommendation of Capitol Police, they would not release any details. That very same day, I swear before God, he posted on Facebook that, due to a fire in the building, the Greenwood office -- which students had occupied precisely one week earlier -- would be closed for re-construction until January 3rd.

The fire’s devastation was evidently total: no one survived to manage to get it reported in the local paper.

In the end, Trey voted for the Free Millions for Billionaires Bill, and made out like a bandit, handing himself $4.5 Million via the law’s “Pass-Through Tax Deduction” -- more than any other Member of Congress. The Grad Student Tax was removed from the final bill, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me that he personally called Tracey, the lead organizer of Campus Action for Democracy, to explain how hard he had worked to strike that unconscionable provision.

At this point, a lot of people have noticed that Trey spends about as much time in Indiana’s 9th, now that he represents it, as he did a couple years back, before he moved to it. Liz Watson, his Democratic challenger, has repeatedly invited him to a joint candidate forum, as have several non-partisan press outlets and organizations, including Hoosier Action and Campus Action for Democracy. Citing whatever and also this other thing, he has declined these invitations.

In the Republican Primary this year, a man named James Dean Alspach challenged Trey. He did not campaign. He barely posted a website. [10] His team, whoever they were, stapled up a bunch of lawn signs that said “James Dean” and showed his face. “If I win this primary,” he told WLKY News Louisville [11], “I’m going to announce my intentions to run for President as James Dean.” Detecting the interviewer’s confusion, Dean clarified: “So my whole focus in the Congress is to legislate for my Presidency.” He got nearly a quarter of the vote.

Trey is vulnerable, especially because he is facing an unusually strong candidate in Watson, a labor attorney who wrote the federal legislation on a $15 minimum wage, a staunch supporter of Medicare for All, and a friend to Pramila Jayapal, Bernie Sanders and around twenty labor unions. Her campaign has been so impressive -- raising over $1 Million, with nearly 50,000 contributions averaging under $40 -- that the DCCC added Indiana’s 9th, which Trey won by 14 points and Trump won by 25 -- into its “Red to Blue” class of swing seats.

In collaboration with the Working Families Party, Hoosier Action is running an independent expenditure on her behalf. Between our work, Watson’s strengths, Trey’s weaknesses, the mood of the country, and Sen. Donnelly’s rise in the polls, I think we might just be able to scale this immense mountain of a political effort and unseat the biggest goober in Washington, Joseph Albert “Trey” Hollingsworth.

The third.

[1] https://hollingsworthcos.com/about/history/founder/
[2] https://hollingsworthcos.com/…/04/EntrepreneurialOdyssey.pdf
[3] https://www.inc.com/profile/hollingsworth-capital-partners
[4] https://www.usatoday.com/…/millionaire-congressma…/95446364/
[5] http://www.slate.com/…/can_tennessee_s_trey_hollingsworth_b…
[6] https://www.facebook.com/campusactionfordemocracy/videos/526096767775024/
[7] http://www.scottchamber.org/…/tax-reform-town-hall-with-con…
[8] https://www.huffpost.com/…/mike-pence-indiana-hiv_n_57f53b9…
[9] https://www.indystar.com/…/indiana-congressman-c…/961036001/
[10] http://www.jamesdeanushouse.com
[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x8uXa_qBa0

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Kind words at my workplace, and I'm touched.

It was a fine Guinness pour on my part, and I'm reminded that it's time to lose thirty pounds; a few too many chins, but I'm almost 60, and nowadays my primary vice seems to be gluttony, not drunkenness. 

Anyway, Cassie gave me advance notice of my turn as subject of the employee profile, and she did a fantastic job with it. It hasn't always been easy finding my footing these past four years, but verily, it's getting better all the time. 

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You’d be hard-pressed to find someone in New Albany who hasn’t heard of or met Roger Baylor, a long-time New Albany resident who has had his hand in many beer-related ventures. Roger curates our beer program here at Pints and spends a lot of time researching, sourcing, and of course drinking the unique and delicious beers we keep on tap.

He describes himself as a “flagrant Europhile,” so the beers at Pints&union that he enjoys most are the ones that connect to travel experiences in Europe, like @pilsnerurquell (Czech Republic), @fullers (United Kingdom) or our excellent small list of Belgian Trappist ales. In 2004, he got to bicycle with a group of friends around the country to all the Belgian monasteries to drink that brew ale so it holds a special place in his heart. Picking a favorite beer at Pints is no easy task, but he says “sipping on a Rochefort 10 or draining a tankard of Urquell takes me back to some very good times abroad.”

When he’s not sorting through beers at Pints&union, he’s generally at home in his century-old house just up the street from the pub with his wife Diana and their three feline lodgers. He loves reading, music, cooking, trip-planning and local political commentary, but he stays pretty busy with his other part-time job as digital editor for Food & Dining Magazine.

Thank you Roger for your dedication and the care you put into selecting great beers for the pub, I think we can all agree New Albany wouldn’t be the same without you!

A reader writes, we answer: "Roger, when you ran for mayor, didn't Extol Magazine have a profile about you?"

Frequent reader R writes: "Roger, when you ran for mayor, didn't Extol Magazine have a profile about you?"

R, you have a long memory, indeed. I'd completely forgotten about it. The story was in one of the 2015 editions, early in the magazine's existence,, and I believe Angie Fenton wrote it.

Fortunately the page in question can still be viewed on-line: Roger Baylor

Love him or loathe him, there’s no denying Roger Baylor is passionate about New Albany ...

 ... While he’ll always be revered as a veteran zythologist (the man knows beer), he’s now known for speaking up about what’s occurring in the New Albany – often and loudly – and unapologetically sharing his perspective, even if that means taking to his blog to skewer those involved.

Baylor also has taken plenty of heat himself. “I have people who call me all kinds of non-flattering names, but I would hope that right or wrong, I throw punches, I get knocked down, I get back up and I keep throwing punches. … I hope that somebody would say, ‘He does a good job of standing up for what he believes,’ even if they didn’t agree.”

All about Paul Kiger in Extol.

There's an excellent profile of Paul Kiger in the most recent issue of Extol. I'd credit the writer, but didn't notice a byline.

Paul probably is most famous for selling my mom's house, but he's done some other things, too.

Read all about them at the web site.

Free at Last | Paul Kiger

Local real estate guru Paul Kiger was a force of nature, a whirlwind of energy. But much of that was focused on running from demons, until he came clean and focused on himself.

Meet Joseph Albert “Trey” Hollingsworth III, the biggest goober in Washington.

As borrowed from Facebook, this profile effectively rests the case. It remains that I have significant issues with the Democratic dumb-ocracy, but voting in favor of Hollingsworth isn't something I plan on doing in this or any other lifetime.   

---

This is a profile of Joseph Albert “Trey” Hollingsworth III, the biggest goober in Washington.

As his name might lead you to suspect, he has been rich since before conception. His father, Joe Jr., is a prominent Tennessee capitalist who, in addition to owning “the largest developer for semi-rural industrial property in the Southeast,” [1] is known for an “adventuristic nature” that “expands beyond taking risks with start-ups, stocks and investments” to “hang gliding in Rio de Janeiro, racing Formula 1 cars and deep sea fishing off the Great Barrier Reef.” [2]

But Trey overcame his hardscrabble upbringing and in 2005, at the age of 22, founded Hollingsworth Capital Partners, which “purchases, renovates and repositions underperforming industrial and distribution investment property throughout the nation.” [3] His daddy is a silent partner.

A decade later, Trey decided to move to Southern Indiana and buy himself a seat in the US Congress, furnishing his campaign with over $3.1 million of his own money -- 88.4% of the total amount raised by the Hollingsworth 2016 effort. This was supplemented by $1.5 Million that the Hollingsworth Companies donated to Indiana Jobs Now, a Super PAC his father created for the sole purpose of getting Trey elected (and which he terminated weeks after achieving this goal). Mostly, this fortune went to TV ad buys, which were enough to marshal 34% of the competitive Republican primary vote, securing Trey the opportunity to face a Democrat in Indiana’s gerrymandered 9th District. Then, he rode the anti-Clinton wave straight to Washington, DC.

(Campaign finance epilogue: At the end of the race, Trey still owed the strangely repetitive sum of $246,246 to his pollster and other political consultants, so he, of the nearly $60 Million asset portfolio, asked his colleagues for help paying up. “Representative-elect Hollingsworth,” said a senior campaign adviser, “is extremely appreciative of those willing to help retire campaign debt that is owed to vendors.”) [4]

My favorite detail about his 2016 run is his approach to the press, summarized neatly in this excerpt from a profile in Slate: “The 9th District... doesn’t have much local media, and Hollingsworth frequently dodged what media there was. When he did agree to interviews, he often evaded, even on seemingly benign questions. He declined to release his tax returns. When someone asked him to name his three favorite Hoosiers, he declined to do that, too. One reporter asked him where he’d lived before moving to Indiana; ‘I’ll have to go back,’ Hollingsworth said, speaking about his own life, ‘and check the record.’ Pressed on when exactly he moved to Indiana, he finally answered with early summer. Another reporter tried to clarify whether that meant June or July. ‘I think that’s a good characterization,’ Hollingsworth said.” [5]

In his 22 months in Congress, Trey has maintained this demanding level of constituent accountability, appearing in zero public in-district town halls since being sworn in. His sacrifices in the name of transparency reached their peak one week at the end of 2017, during the fight over the Free Millions for Billionaires Bill, or as it was more commonly known, “tax reform.”

One provision of the initial draft of that bill would have taxed tuition remissions, which low-wage graduate students receive, as income, meaning workers earning roughly $15,000 a year would be taxed as though they were earning around four times as much. Indiana University being the largest employer in the district, Trey’s constituents did not all smile on this prospect. Specifically, on the evening of Monday, December 11, Campus Action for Democracy grad students staged a sit-in in his office in Greenwood, demanding to hear from Trey.

Rather than call and speak to them, Trey and his DC-based security chief issued two instructions: 1) that the building manager allow the protesters to stay in his office, but have the police restrict them from going into the hall, where the bathrooms are, and b) that his pregnant staffer supervise the student demonstrators for as long as they continued the occupation. So, as the occupiers explain in this video [6], they spent hour after hour with no access to bathrooms or contact with the outside world, never quite managing to get arrested for the cause.

Four days later, on December 15th, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce announced a Koch Brothers-sponsored “Tax Reform Town Hall” [7] with Trey. It was open to the public, with a few minor provisos: 1) Attendees had to register that very day on Eventbrite, 2) The Eventbrite link didn’t work, 3) The Town Hall was to take place in three days, on a Monday, 4) at 8 o’clock in the morning, 5) one week before Christmas, and 6) in the tiny town of Scottsburg. (Scott County, of which Scottsburg is the seat, gained some notoriety years earlier when then-Governor Mike Pence closed the local Planned Parenthood clinic, the county’s only site for HIV testing. [8] When, two years later, the worst HIV outbreak owing to needle-sharing in US history broke out in Scott County, Pence took three months to permit a temporary needle exchange, in which time nearly 200 Scott County residents were notified of an HIV-positive diagnosis.)

How did the Town Hall ultimately go? Citing a mysterious “threats of violence,” Trey cancelled the event. [9] A spokesperson said that, on the recommendation of Capitol Police, they would not release any details. That very same day, I swear before God, he posted on Facebook that, due to a fire in the building, the Greenwood office -- which students had occupied precisely one week earlier -- would be closed for re-construction until January 3rd.

The fire’s devastation was evidently total: no one survived to manage to get it reported in the local paper.

In the end, Trey voted for the Free Millions for Billionaires Bill, and made out like a bandit, handing himself $4.5 Million via the law’s “Pass-Through Tax Deduction” -- more than any other Member of Congress. The Grad Student Tax was removed from the final bill, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me that he personally called Tracey, the lead organizer of Campus Action for Democracy, to explain how hard he had worked to strike that unconscionable provision.

At this point, a lot of people have noticed that Trey spends about as much time in Indiana’s 9th, now that he represents it, as he did a couple years back, before he moved to it. Liz Watson, his Democratic challenger, has repeatedly invited him to a joint candidate forum, as have several non-partisan press outlets and organizations, including Hoosier Action and Campus Action for Democracy. Citing whatever and also this other thing, he has declined these invitations.

In the Republican Primary this year, a man named James Dean Alspach challenged Trey. He did not campaign. He barely posted a website. [10] His team, whoever they were, stapled up a bunch of lawn signs that said “James Dean” and showed his face. “If I win this primary,” he told WLKY News Louisville [11], “I’m going to announce my intentions to run for President as James Dean.” Detecting the interviewer’s confusion, Dean clarified: “So my whole focus in the Congress is to legislate for my Presidency.” He got nearly a quarter of the vote.

Trey is vulnerable, especially because he is facing an unusually strong candidate in Watson, a labor attorney who wrote the federal legislation on a $15 minimum wage, a staunch supporter of Medicare for All, and a friend to Pramila Jayapal, Bernie Sanders and around twenty labor unions. Her campaign has been so impressive -- raising over $1 Million, with nearly 50,000 contributions averaging under $40 -- that the DCCC added Indiana’s 9th, which Trey won by 14 points and Trump won by 25 -- into its “Red to Blue” class of swing seats.

In collaboration with the Working Families Party, Hoosier Action is running an independent expenditure on her behalf. Between our work, Watson’s strengths, Trey’s weaknesses, the mood of the country, and Sen. Donnelly’s rise in the polls, I think we might just be able to scale this immense mountain of a political effort and unseat the biggest goober in Washington, Joseph Albert “Trey” Hollingsworth.

The third.

[1] https://hollingsworthcos.com/about/history/founder/
[2] https://hollingsworthcos.com/…/04/EntrepreneurialOdyssey.pdf
[3] https://www.inc.com/profile/hollingsworth-capital-partners
[4] https://www.usatoday.com/…/millionaire-congressma…/95446364/
[5] http://www.slate.com/…/can_tennessee_s_trey_hollingsworth_b…
[6] https://www.facebook.com/campusactionfordemocracy/videos/526096767775024/
[7] http://www.scottchamber.org/…/tax-reform-town-hall-with-con…
[8] https://www.huffpost.com/…/mike-pence-indiana-hiv_n_57f53b9…
[9] https://www.indystar.com/…/indiana-congressman-c…/961036001/
[10] http://www.jamesdeanushouse.com
[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x8uXa_qBa0

Listen to this: "Five Things: Dawn Howard On Ireland, Grief, And Political Transformation."

Hey, wait -- I know Dawn Howard. Now, go listen to the program, where she somehow made it through the entire 42 minutes without mentioning craft beer.

Five Things: Dawn Howard On Ireland, Grief, And Political Transformation, by Tara Anderson (WFPL)

(podcast) Episode 42: Dawn Howard on Political Transformations and Facing Fears

This week’s guest on Five Things is an accountant who’s finally figured out how to use her skills to support the things she believes in.

Let me explain — Dawn Howard has experienced a political transformation over the past few years. She describes herself as a former Republican who is now “super-left,” as she says, and she says that change started when she broke her ankle while living in Ireland. (Listen to the episode to learn how that makes sense together.)

She recently quit her job as a corporate tax professional to open her own consulting firm, and that led her to becoming a paid staffer for a political campaign: she’s now the finance director for Dan Canon’s Congressional run in Indiana’s 9th District.

Dawn is a friend of mine, and that’s why I knew she’d be great in this context — she’s unusually open about her challenges in life, and she talks about serious things in a really smart, funny way. I’m so glad to share her story here. Listen in the player above.

On why she chose accounting as a profession:
“I noticed that for some reason, accounting came to me way easier than it seemed to anybody else in the class. It still does — all the debits and the credits and all that stuff, it just clicks immediately, and it’s the easiest, most logical thing in the world to me. And so at that point, I was very much like, it’s not about what you want to do, it’s not about passion, I’m not going to be an astronaut, I’m not going to be an actress, I’m not going to save the world. This is a thing that’s going to get me a job, so I’m going to be an accounting major.”

On moving to Ireland by herself to work:
“I learned a ton about myself there. I was by myself for the first time there. I did a lot of walking on the beach by myself there, thinking about lots of stuff, most notably it’s where I became the liberal that I am today.”

On speaking about her own struggles with mental illness without stigma:
“I’d been for a very long time a person that was all talk and very little action in this area. Telling people that, you know, there’s no shame in getting therapy, go get therapy. There’s no shame in taking meds, go take meds. Mental illness is like any other illness, and we should treat it that way — all the while not going to therapy, not taking any meds, thinking that if I was less lazy, if I would exercise, if I would have my life together a little more, that everything would be better. But eventually, I finally stuck in with a therapist for a while, got a diagnosis, went through all the processes of the trial-and-error of the meds. And there is no one answer, but it is an answer."

THE BEER BEAT: "How Jared Williamson Found Love — and a Head Brewing Job — at Schlafly."

I raided the Instagram account of Jared Williamson for this photo from his recent visit to Germany.

Uwe Schulz, the brilliant brewmaster from Spalter Bier. Blending tradition and innovation in a fascinating way in a village that is ~1200 years old.

In an effort to keep this simple: I'm delighted at Jared's career path in brewing, honored to have played a small part in encouraging it, and thrilled that he was able to go to Germany for a taste of what has inspired me for so long.

This blog post catches us up with Jared's world at present. Click through to read the entire piece. You'll love it.

How Jared Williamson Found Love — and a Head Brewing Job — at Schlafly, by Cheryl Baehr (Riverfront Times Blog)

Sitting at the top of one of Munich's tallest buildings with a beer in hand, Jared Williamson of Schlafly (2100 Locust Street, 314-241-2337) can't help but look back with amazement at how he got here.

"I started working with beer about fifteen years ago, and I was introduced to Spaten early in my beer education," Williamson recalls. "And here I am at the source. It's a culmination, like I'm circling back to where it all began."

Williamson's job as head brewer at Schlafly has led him to Munich, where he is embarking on a tour of Germany's hop fields. But his beginnings were much more humble. A native of Indiana — the part of the state just outside of Louisville, Kentucky — Williamson was introduced to beer while working at New Albanian Brewing Company, an establishment that was the first in the area to add lesser-known brews to its taps. In the late 1990s, seeing beers like Spaten, Guinness and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was not all that common in the Midwest. The novelty, as well as the quality of these beers, piqued his interest.

Though his job was to work on the brewpub's guest tap and bottle program, Williamson could not keep himself from wandering into the brewery. He found himself drawn in to the beer-making side of the operation. "I'm a musician, so I was drawn to the creative aspect, but I'm also a science nerd. The combination of the two is what really appealed to me," Williamson explains. "Eventually, the original brewer left and they handed me and another guy the keys. The world was our oyster, and we got to make the best beer we could — and make some mistakes too."

Al Knable gets some ink and pitches an Affordable Housing Trust Board.

Delve into Amanda Beam's column to learn the details of Dr. Knable's affordable housing proposal, and ask yourself a question: Apart from deposed councilman John Gonder, when's the last time you heard an entrenched local Democrat so much as mention the phrase "affordable housing"?

BEAM: Knable offers common sense solutions during first year on New Albany council, by Amanda Hillard Beam (CNHI Jeffersonville)

 ... And now Knable has his eye on a new plan he believes can both restore abandoned and blighted properties and bring much-needed affordable housing to the area. His soon-to-be proposed Affordable Housing Trust Fund should work much like the Louisville model on which it is based. Every NA district would qualify.

“What I’m looking to try to do is fill a niche that kind of fills these areas that might otherwise fall through the cracks because these homes and buildings are scattered throughout the city,” Knable said.

Harris Wofford -- finding love, being everywhere.

The remarkable thing about Harris Wofford's two love stories? They really aren't remarkable.

Finding Love Again, This Time With a Man, by Harris Wofford (New York Times)

AT age 70, I did not imagine that I would fall in love again and remarry. But the past 20 years have made my life a story of two great loves.

Wofford himself? That's a different story. Meet the Zelig of our times, still in the thick of it at 90.

The Man Who Was Everywhere, by Jason Zengerle (New Republic)

The serendipitous political career of Harris Wofford

History will show that Harris Wofford did not split the wood that blazed during Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats. He had no hand in Watergate or in Iran-Contra, nor did he pilot the fighter jet that deposited George W. Bush on the deck of the aircraft carrier from which he declared, “Mission Accomplished.” But these are the exceptions. Pick pretty much any other major chapter from the last 80 or so years of the American political story, and there’s a shockingly good chance that Wofford played a role—tangential or central, onstage or off, but always, somehow or some way, in it.