Gregg and Jana posed for a photo shortly after adopting their son, with a picture of the baby they had originally planned to adopt in the background. That baby, also a boy, died in 2016. Photos courtesy of the family 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…
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.
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…
Photo from San Diego News Center 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…
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Getting help with depression. 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…
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…
Three candidates running in the Aug. 9 primary to be the next Hennepin County sheriff took part in a League of Women Voters forum on June 29 at St. Louis Park City Hall. Those vying to replace Sheriff Dave Hutchinson are Joseph Banks, at various times chief of police for the Lower Sioux, the Upper Sioux, and the Morton, Minnesota police departments; Jai Hanson, a police officer who has been on two metro police departments; and Dawanna Witt, a major in the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office. The two top vote-getters in the primary will run against each other in…
The last couple of years have not been kind to the law in Hennepin County. Live and in a viral video, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd before all the world, and generally, there was a lack of confidence in having County Attorney Mike Freeman prosecute the case. Not surprisingly, there are now seven candidates for the Aug. 9 primary vote on the Hennepin County Attorney position. They are vying to replace Freeman, who’s stepping down after 24 years in the position. Candidates in the nonpartisan race are Martha Holton Dimick, Jarvis Jones, Tad Jude, Mary Moriarty, Paul Ostrow,…
The abuser is going to be filled with rage. The abuser is going to be a primeval beast of flaming wrath. All because the abused is going to pick up and leave. The departure would be new. The anger and control already exist. An abuser is someone that exerts power and control in a domestic relationship and feels threatened if that power is not complete, according to Meg Schnabel, executive director of Bloomington-based Cornerstone Minnesota, who has been honored by the White House for her innovative services to victims of domestic abuse. The abuse may be physical or financial (“I control the…
Steve Cwodzinski (pronounced Swodzinski) has long been a man in love. For 33 years, he loved teaching history and government to Eden Prairie High School students. In 2018 and again in 2020, the Eden Prairie Democrat was elected state senator for Senate District 48 (redistricting has rechristened Senate District 49). He now says he loves coming to his legislative job every day. He also loves a beautiful lady: his new home, the Minnesota Capitol building. In his book, “Beyond the Lesson Plan,” he declares, “I believe that an educated, informed, enlightened and engaged population is a necessary ingredient for every democracy…