dan oshinsky dot com: A blog about stories, the work... and my mother.

You knew it was coming, eventually: the Social Media News at 6. (To be followed soon by the Hyperlocal News at 6.) Dallas’ KDFW has the story: (H/T to NPR’s Andy Carvin for the link.)

There’s this amazing moment in one of Carl Reiner’s and Mel Brooks’ “2000 Year Old Man” sketches, when Reiner is moving through a line of questions about the early days of man. He’ll get to the good stuff in a second — questions about Joan of Arc, questions about the secrets to longevity — but (…)

Like many people who I refer to as aunts and uncles, my Aunt Lois and Uncle Bobby aren’t actually related to me. They did, however, have the unfortunate privilege of living across the street from my family when I was growing up, and they had the poor sense to engage my mother in regular conversation. (…)

I’d like to take just a minute to discuss a word that, too often, gets misused and misapplied in the English language. I’m talking, of course, about the word ‘dedication.’ It’s a word that gets associated with athletes and scholars and really anyone for whom hard work is a core value. But I’d like to (…)

Ignoring the contradictions and laziness in general sentence structure for just a moment, I’d like to suggest that context is everything. (1) When I was a kid, a 45 minute drive to Baltimore was an interminable exercise. Maybe it was just childhood antsyness (2); maybe it was just that at that point in my life, (…)

There is a force in San Antonio that is often discussed but rarely experienced. I’m talking, of course, about the weather 1.). It is hot here; that should not come as a surprise to you. But what is a surprise is how little time people spend outside in San Antonio. It’s so hot that humans (…)