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…
Author: Frank Malley
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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.
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…
Minnesota’s five-judge panel has released the 2022 redistricting map they have created and approved for congressional, state senate, and state legislative districts. Representative Mary Murphy, DFL – Hermantown, who chaired an unsuccessful House effort to create a Minnesota Legislature redistricting map, has said that generally, the courts follow the principle of “least change.” Old Senate District (SD) 48, which covered Eden Prairie and southern Minnetonka, certainly has lived out the idea of least change. Modest redrawing changed SD48 into new SD49, with Congressman Dean Phillips, State Sen. Steve Cwodzinski, State Rep. Laurie Pryor, and State Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn still representing…
It is the year 1517, and furious over the church’s selling of indulgences — passes that supposedly get dead loved ones out of Purgatory — a grim Martin Luther is walking down a street in Wittenberg, Germany. Hammer in hand, he is prepared to nail 95 Theses to the door of the Schlosskirche (Castle Church). Well, all right. Researcher Erwin Iserloh writes that Luther did not need a hammer. Luther simply enclosed the 95 Theses in a letter he wrote to his superiors. Among Luther’s present-day legatees are Eden Prairie’s five Lutheran churches. There is Christ Lutheran Church, part…
Every 10 years there is a U.S. census which in turn requires that each state review the boundaries of its congressional districts, state senatorial districts, and legislative representative districts to see that they are configured so as to preserve the concept of one-person, one-vote. And so we begin to accumulate newly redrawn maps of Minnesota’s political districts. The House redistricting committee under Rep. Mary Murphy (DFL-Hermantown) has produced a map, as has the Senate redistricting committee under Sen. Mark Johnson (R-East Grand Forks). If the Minnesota Legislature cannot agree on one map by Feb. 15, 2022, the redistricting will be…
In 1860 there was a flyspeck on the map of Minnesota — the town of Eden Prairie with its population of 304 people. Ninety years later, in 1950 — according to the U.S. Decennial Census — the town’s population had struggled to become 1,384 people. Then the population doubled in 1960, more than doubled to 6,938 in 1970, exploded to 16,263 in 1980, 54,901 in the year 2000, and 64,198 in 2020. Pundits such as bigcommerce.com provide a partial explanation: “With cars available to the masses, more people were leaving cities and commuting from the suburbs.” Eden Prairie did have three…
How do very conservative Christian denominations view a congregant’s choosing to take his mental and spiritual problems to a secular psychologist? Pastor Dale Hummel heads Eden Prairie’s Wooddale Church, which is an evangelical church. His answer might surprise some observers. Pastor Hummel feels that a mentally ill person can benefit from spiritual counseling by his pastor but also from professionally trained therapists. He would offer spiritual counseling and if there were a need to plunge far deeper into the person’s mind and emotions, he would refer the person to a professional counselor – with the proviso that the person consult…