Despite a slight population decline in Eden Prairie, experts highlight its minimal impact and emphasize ongoing city development and planning.
Author: Frank Malley
Frank Malley
Frank graduated from Stanford University and did graduate study at Princeton and the University of Wisconsin toward a Ph.D. in English. He also took graduate business courses at the Illinois Institute of Technology and Illinois’s North Central College. He taught college English and British literature at a two-year University of Wisconsin Center System campus in Marathon County, Wis. For 26 years he worked in purchasing, product development, and general management at light manufacturing companies in the Chicago area. He later owned a company that imported custom-made products from China. In 2016, Frank and Pamela, his wife of 50 years, moved to Minnesota to be near their son, who lives in northeast Minneapolis.
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There are many impressions about the immigrants who come to the U.S. to become American citizens, but what do hard numbers and historical data tell us? The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reports that in 2022, 967,500 immigrants became naturalized U.S. citizens. Of those seeking asylum, 34,000 were included in the number of naturalized citizens in 2022. Apparently, the U.S. does accept immigrants, but under what circumstances? Per the USCIS, immigrants must reside legally in the U.S. for five years to even become eligible for citizenship. For those becoming citizens, the median (typical) time from arrival to naturalization is…
Eden Prairie-area housing experts explain why foreclosures seem so prevalent and some options available to those faced with a forced sale.
Time. Time. Time does not stand still. In our community, someone has a sharp pain. Or an elevated fever. Or intense nausea. So he picks up the phone and calls his doctor’s number. If, for example, he phones his doctor’s number at Park Nicollet or Allina/Abbott clinics, his call is received at a “call center” somewhere in cyberspace — not at the clinic that houses his doctor’s office. Then begins possibly a long wait, and next his journey through several phone trees with possibly more waits. Part of a comment on Park Nicollet’s comment page reads: “On 10/3/21, I just…
Gregg and Jana soldiered through infertility treatments for six years. Then Jana helped convince Gregg that adoption was their best hope to have children. In 2012 the Prior Lake couple signed up for infant adoption with the Lutheran Social Service (LSS) before it merged with the Children’s Home Society. They entered LSS in March, had their home study approved by LSS in July, and in 2013 had their four-page profile shown to expectant mothers in the LSS Family Profile Book. LSS procedure was to counsel pregnant women and then let them select potential adoptive parents from the profile book. Finally,…
Heidi Wiste is president of the Children’s Home Society of Minnesota (Children’s Home) and also associate vice president for adoption and foster care at Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota (LSS). Based in St. Paul, Children’s Home serves Eden Prairie for foster children adoption, infant adoption, and international adoption. It is an adoption agency, as distinguished from a lawyer who offers to arrange private adoption, which provides an individual, independent link between a biological parent and an adoptive parent. Children’s Home does international adoptions from China, South Korea, India, Honduras, Ecuador, Colombia, Jamaica, Dominica, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.…
Passing legislation protecting reproductive rights, improving mental health funding, and measures to improve gun safety are among the priorities of Eden Prairie representatives in the Minnesota Legislature that begins its session on Jan. 3. Legislators that represent Eden Prairie, Sen. Steve Cwodzinski, District 49A Rep. Laurie Pryor, and 49B Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, all Democrats who were elected in November, gathered virtually on Dec. 30 with Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN) to share their thoughts on the upcoming 2023 Minnesota legislative session. The legislators answered questions about a number of issues. Their responses are edited for length. EPLN: What will be your…
Eventually, we go from “Where did all these old people come from?” to “Oops, I’m one of them.” Sue Bohnsack, supervisor of the Eden Prairie Senior Center, views “old” as a state of mind. Vicki Franzen, licensed marriage and family therapist at Eden Prairie’s Bridge to Hope and Healing, acknowledges the role of physical decline but also focuses more on the mental aspect of “old,” which she sees as a frame of mind, an attitude. Franzen says that as you age, your life feels narrower. There are growing limitations. Bohnsack emphasizes that there are as many kinds of aging as…
Every minute of every day, you feel utterly overwhelmed. Your mind projects only negative future outcomes. Looking back on the past, you have a negative filter that captures only moments of futility, humiliation, and failure. With grim humor, you say, “I don’t do happy.” You are immersed in depression. Eden Prairie psychiatrist James Van Doren, M.D., says depression is not “the blues.” Depression’s many and varied symptoms may include a general “withdrawal of interest,” an inability to experience joy or pleasure, loss of motivation, loss of energy, sleep disturbance in the form of insomnia or in oversleeping, a cloak of…
Traveling west on Highway 5, just 10 minutes from Eden Prairie, is the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. The arbor in its name is Latin for tree. That fact, however, is just a part of the story. The Arboretum’s literature tells us it is home to 32 display and specialty gardens, 48 plant collections, and 5,000—five thousand!—plant species and varieties. You are walking along in the flower gardens behind the Oswald Visitors Center and are stunned not to encounter a giant leafy tree but rather lilies and more lilies and even more. There are not just pretty pastels but also the drama and darkness…