While Eden Prairie slept at about 1:40 a.m. on Sept. 5, a resident called 911 after being awakened by the loud noise of speeding and racing vehicles near Flying Cloud Drive and Crosstown Circle. At the end of a chase of one of the vehicles involved, police found it crashed near a residence in Minnetonka. One of its passengers was dead, the other injured. (That person died later that day at the hospital.) A few days before that, on Aug. 30, the Star Tribune reported a speeding driver hitting a tree on a major thoroughfare in St. Paul, resulting in…
Author: Vijay B. Dixit
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Vijay B. Dixit
Vijay Dixit Vijay Dixit left his professional career to champion distraction-free driving after a distracted driver killed his 19-year-old daughter, Shreya, on Nov. 1, 2007. Vijay and his wife Rekha, with their surviving daughter Nayha, established the Shreya R. Dixit Memorial Foundation www.shreyadixit.org with the mission to transform the driving culture. The charity works with individuals, businesses, and communities in making distraction-free driving part of a healthy lifestyle. Vijay has been recognized by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety for his work in education and has also authored “One Split Second,” a book about the epidemic of distracted driving – how it kills and how we can fix it. He has written many commentaries on the subject of distracted driving.
India is the land of festivals. Each conveys a message of harmony, be it with family, community, nation, the world, or the cosmos. These festivals—spaced out at regular intervals during the year—have been an integral part of India’s culture over millennia. Celebration of these festivals is the mechanism chosen by the ancient sages to reinforce the above messages regularly. Otherwise, they would get lost with time. Here we are, centuries later, celebrating those festivals. Raksha Bandhan is one such festival that comes in the month of Shravana, the rainy season in the Hindu lunisolar calendar. This year, the celebration occurred…
Deep inside the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska is a kid-friendly maze garden blooming with kindness. The maze serves as a popular go-to destination throughout the year for parents with small kids. It is a pleasant site where one may savor the greenery of late spring or the sparkling colors of fall. Kids lost in the maze ask for help in loud shrieks. Their moms and dads stand atop an overlook watching their puzzled little ones. After a constant plea for help, the moms and dads give in and shout tips, guiding their little ones out. While a game of…
Stavya Arora, Morgan Cook, and Harini Senthilkumar wrote this article for Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN) as part of an internship provided by Vijay Dixit Chairman of the Shreya R. Dixit Memorial Foundation The Air Expo at the Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie during the weekend of July 24th-25th was rich with vintage stories – and planes – on display, taking off, and in flight. The stories of the planes in action were told by veterans from the U.S. Air Force and Navy and brought Air Expo 2021 to life. Major Katherine Conrad described her A-10 Warthog airplane and…
Inattentive, not being able to keep focus.Hyperactive, moving excessively not fitting to the setting.Impulsive, acting hastily in the moment without thought. Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity-Disorder (ADHD) and Attention-Deficit-Disorder (ADD) are mental disorders, according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA). For those who have ADHD it is a sometimes welcome and sometimes unwelcome part of who they are. (The acronyms ADHD and ADD are used interchangeably in general discussions with ADHD used throughout this article.) ADHD is, “A complex thought process that drives our decisions” according to Cindy Lea1, a coach/counselor and owner of the ‘Succeeding with ADHD’ practice in Eden Prairie. She explained that our…
Eden Prairie High School Student Excels at National Speech Contests Iesh Gujral is a senior at Eden Prairie High School (EPHS), where he is a member of the school’s Debating Club. This year Gurjal reached the semifinals in the highly competitive national speech tournament. EPHS Debate and Speech Coach Jason Meyer called it unprecedented at EPHS. No one has ever made a Semifinal round in the National Speech and Debate Tournament, the most prestigious contest in the country.In addition to national tournaments Gujral also was among the top three in several regional invitational tournaments this year.Extemporaneous Speaking: A PrimerGujral offered…
Chief Weber seeking diversity on the EP police department Chief Greg Weber said he is a strong supporter of diversity in the EP police force. “We always look at diversifying the police department. How do we reflect the community we serve, not only from an ethnic background, a gender background but also mindset?” Diversity on the police force helps to bring a comprehensive set of strengths and perspectives to serving the community, according to Weber. “If we had 70 school resource officers we’d fail miserably. If we had 70 computer forensics officers we’d fail miserably. We need different passions and…
In the following two-part series, Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN) contributor Vijay Dixit met with Eden Prairie Police Chief Greg Weber to review recent matters of driving and policing in Eden Prairie. Traffic fatality figures trend up Too many precious lives are being lost in Minnesota. In this case, the lives lost are due to increased road fatalities in Minnesota. According to preliminary numbers published by Minnesota Office of Public Safety , the traffic fatality count stands at 132 on May 15, 2021. That is 39% higher than 94, the same time number in 2020. Also, the state of Minnesota…
Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs – the four world religious traditions with roots in India, use a variety of inter-related lunar and solar calendars. Several important celebrations are associated with 10 days, April 12 through 22. Thus begins the sacred Hindu period of ‘Vasant Navaratri’ (वसंत नवरात्रि,The Nine Holy nights of Spring). During the nine nights, Hindus fast and worship the Divine Mother in her nine forms. It culminates in the festival of Ramanavami. The day is observed as the advent of Rama – a Prince, one of the many incarnations of the Divine worshipped by Hindus. In northern India and…
On March 28, the CDC COVID Data Tracker reported 30,038,363 confirmed cases and 546,144 deaths in the USA. Millions of families have been affected by the death of a loved one. This is a story about one family finding its way during the pandemic. AMY IRVIN is an emergency room doctor who has been practicing emergency medicine for fourteen years. She went to medical school at the University of Iowa, did residency in neurology in Madison, Wisconsin and then emergency medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She chose emergency medicine and not neurology because at the time there was not a…