We’re halfway through the 5th Congressional District. We have spent one day downtown Minneapolis and another on Lake and Bloomington. The Citizens League has designated target cities, and we are headed to St. Louis Park. It’s 4:30 Wednesday; westbound I-94 is clogged. We exit at Cedar, where we see a woman on the shoulder holding a “Homeless - Need Help” sign. Alan suggests we pull over.

She is Gina Gono, a 42-year old Ojibwe from Leech Lake. At first, she has few complaints. She says many people are generous and usually give her enough money to keep herself and her friends in vodka; $7.45 a liter. She gestures north, toward a liquor store on Cedar. “What about food?” we ask, and she tells us she eats at St. Stephen’s shelter.

Gina Gono

Soon two of her friends join the conversation, talking about how they watch out for each other in the homeless camp they share. “If I pass out, they’ve got my back,” says Roland Anderson.

Gina tells us she loves her life and also hates it. Loves it because “I’m free.” Hates it because alcohol runs it. We ask what would help. More food, she says, and more sharing from Native Americans who benefit from casinos. On the address line of our consent form, she writes “2525 Cardboard Box.”

We drive down Franklin around Lake of the Isles and Alan is awestruck by the magnificent homes. He hasn’t seen this part of Minneapolis. Dog-walkers and joggers are enjoying the splendid evening. We talk with two of them, Gay Joel and Tom Dobmeyer. They are jogging buddies, mental health professionals in their fifties, and they share many views. They deplore the war in Iraq and worry that funding it comes at the expense of health care and education.

We get to St. Louis Park about 6:30, and now it’s I who am amazed. I haven’t been down this stretch of Excelsior Boulevard in years. Trader Joe’s is there and an attractive four-story condo development so new I can smell the varnish through the open windows as we walk down the street. The lush city park sits just north, and here we interview the first of several content residents. Richard Swenson has a good job with a big firm, and chose to live in St. Louis Park because of all its amenities, especially for people raising kids like he is. He is concerned about the environment, but mostly he is pretty happy with life and work.

Some here tell us they oppose the war, and echo the concerns we’d heard at Lake of the Isles, about inadequate public schools and environmental degradation.

The Illuris

We meet an Indian couple at a gas station, on their way from Hopkins to Uptown for dinner. They’re newlyweds and newcomers. He works in IT for a big company. They’re glad it’s finally summer. They were surprised and pleased to find an Indian community in Minnesota of about 25,000, and they tell us a Hindu temple will open in the Twin Cities in a few weeks. They’re not sure where, but they will find out.

A mile or two west on Excelsior we meet Cindy and Bill Scattergood, a 50-ish couple who’ve come to Miracle Mile to shop at Half-Price Books.

Bill Scattergood is a 35-year employee of a major corporation that underwent a merger a few years ago. He misses the local management and feels torn between his personal values and those imposed by his new bosses. The company makes high-profile charitable contributions but its policies exploit poor people, he says. He is also disturbed by the accelerating pace of life, the isolation people feel from one another and the growing disparity he perceives between haves and have-nots. He puts himself at “the upper end of the have-nots.” He is grateful for the security of his job, but anxious about the world, and working hard on “centering himself,” he says.

The Scattergoods

His wife Cindy tells us she is worried about their younger daughter, 22 years old, working in retail, but unable to make ends meet. She moved to her own apartment three months ago, but called her mother last week because she was hungry and couldn’t afford groceries. Cindy Scattergood said many of her daughters’ friends are still living with their parents because they can’t support themselves. She wonders what will happen to this generation, raised with lots of toys but insufficient skills for coping with the low-wage, sink-or-swim world they’re encountering.