The story begins in 2006, during a plane flight to the other side of the world. At that time, Eden Prairie’s Habitat for Global Learning had financed an opportunity for Eden Prairie schools Superintendent Melissa Krull to join a State of Minnesota Trade Commission trip to China, according to Dave Lindahl, Eden Prairie’s Economic Development Manager. Midair, Krull met Richard He. He was a Chinese-American drumming up international business for Chinese cities, including Hunan Province’s Loudi (pronounced “LOH-dee”). Contrary to the recollections of some, there was never any intent to have a “sister city” relationship with Loudi. Eden Prairie Chamber…
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.
Babar (pronounced “bobber”) Khan is a Pakistani-American resident of Eden Prairie and a director of the Senate District 48 DFL. Recently he sat for an Eden Prairie Local News interview to discuss the Pakistani-American community in Eden Prairie and to help EPLN showcase EP’s growing diversity. He and EPLN are quite conscious that he does not speak for all Pakistani-Americans. Khan is a mechanical engineer working as a consultant in quality management systems. Many Pakistanis in Eden Prairie, he noted, are working professionals—physicians, people in finance, clinicians. Many Pakistanis who come to the United States have higher levels of Pakistani education,…
I’m Jewish. Forty-five minutes after sunset on December twenty-first, however, I stood alongside my wife gazing into the southwest nighttime sky over Eden Prairie and preparing to stand witness to the “Christmas star” conjunction of two planets. The cloudy sky had just one hole in it, and that was for the crescent moon. Paradoxically, science gave me the faith to know that beyond the wall of clouds, Jupiter and Saturn were collaborating on a stunningly brilliant, glowing combination. Like so much else in 2020, the cloudy wall was not a bad thing. 2020 is neither a good year nor a…
Elina Curran is a mother and a founder. She is the founder of the Eden Prairie based Chris Wivholm Foundation, which funds neuroscience research on addiction and attempts to eliminate the stigma attached to addiction. Her son, Chris, died of a fentanyl overdose on March 30, 2018. He was 21. From 1999 to 2019 in the US, nearly 450,000 people died from overdoses involving either prescription or illicit opioids, according to Centers for Disease Control and the National Center for Health Statistics. The Department of Health and Human Services reported that in 2018 two million people had an opioid use disorder.…
Are you missing travel and nature during the pandemic? Tired of the monochromatic beige ground and grey skies of early December? Good news! While the pandemic interferes with normal travel, the resourceful Minnesota Zoo has found a way to entertain and educate in bright shades of blue, green and purple. A 20-ish minute drive from Eden Prairie, the Minnesota Zoo’s Nature Illuminated event is lighting up its winter offering. For $50 a car, nighttime visitors can drive past a multitude of brightly, colorfully lit art installations of the animals on our globe that are coping in their threatened habitats—the…
(Note: EPLN is a non-partisan, non-profit, and volunteer news organization. As part of EPLN’s coverage of these historic 2020 elections we’re collecting stories and moments from across the political spectrum that are, in some cases, little known or understood aspects of the political process. Below is one such story. If you would like to submit a story idea, please send it to editor@eplocalnews.org.) The formal title is precinct chair. A precinct is essentially a neighborhood. A precinct chair is the Get Out the Vote (GOTV) person for the neighborhood. So how did I spend Election Day November 3, 2020? As…