The possibility that Minnesota, our cover subject this week, is America's most civilized state began to dawn on Chicago Bureau Chief Gregory H. Wierzynski last year while he was covering pre-election politics in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

What first impressed Wierzynski was the civility and fairness of the precinct caucuses he had been observing. In Chicago, he thought, similar meetings would have been punctuated by shouting and fistfights. Later, as he was packing to leave his Minneapolis hotel and return to Chicago, he watched an early evening news report "of snowmobile accidents, city council resolutions and a pronouncement by the Governor. It was intensely local," Wierzynski recalls, "and, I thought at the moment, boring." He arrived home that night, just in time for the sort of late evening television news to which he was more accustomed. "This version," he says, "was also intensely local; it featured a series of scandals, murders, police corruption, and so forth. I sat there astounded. After the short trip to the Twin Cities, I suddenly realized that things did not have to be this way."

That realization prompted Wierzynski to suggest a cover story on the good life in Minnesota, an idea that sounded particularly appealing to our Manhattan-based editors. Setting out to document his convictions, Wierzynski went back to Minnesota, accompanied by Correspondent Dick Woodbury. They traveled to big cities and small towns, through virgin forests and across sparkling lakes and rivers, interviewing more than 100 Minnesotans--many of whom were anxious to continue talking about their state over dinner and into the evening. In fact, Minnesota's Governor Wendell Anderson and his wife Mary insisted that Wierzynski stay with them and get to know them as a family.

Associate Editor Lance Morrow, who wrote the story, was another beneficiary of Anderson's Minnesota-style hospitality. During a week that Morrow spent in the state, he found himself in Duluth one night to hear the Governor address a group of steelworkers. Duluth was also playing host to a convention of Lions, and there wasn't a hotel room in town. Anderson, whose staff had rented a small suite as an afternoon headquarters, promptly turned the rooms over to Morrow for the night.

Reporter-Researcher Alexandra Rich did not travel to Minnesota for the story, but she is no stranger to the state; she has been visiting her Minnesota relatives ever since she was a child. "Each trip to Minnesota," she says, "reminds me that there is a place in America where you can still enjoy uncrowded streets, undisturbed natural beauty and a sense of comfort and security."

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