Somewhere in midlife, many women discover they’ve become invisible. It turns out that’s not entirely a bad thing. If you are a woman somewhere in midlife, you may have noticed something curious. We have become invisible. This was not a dramatic “wrap the cloak of invisibility around you and poof, you’re gone!” kind of vanishing. I’m referring to a much more insidious, gradual, drip-campaign sort of situation. If you are my peer—a woman in early to late middle age—and you work hard to look attractive with fashionable clothes, tasteful makeup, and maybe even keeping up with TikTok trends, this may
(Translation: I built a landing page and felt like a tech wizard.) When I was in high school in the late 70’s and early 80’s (my god that’s so long ago!), I took a “Computer Programming” class. We learned to code in COBOL, BASIC, and FORTRAN. My public school didn’t even have its own mainframe — there was only one for all of Baltimore County. Once a month, our class boarded the big orange school bus to Loch Raven High School, toting our punch card decks with our programs. We handed them to some mysterious tech who then ran them.
(or How Comparative Advantage Finally Failed Me) Is it true that many people who enjoy cooking — or who excel at it — had a parent or close relative they watched and learned from? I’ve heard that theory, and it makes sense to me. So what happens when you’re raised by a single mother who not only does not cook, but wouldn’t recognize a fresh vegetable if it came up and bit her on the nose? My mother was a huge fan of TV dinners. And canned vegetables. And other unmemorable meals. On holidays, she made matzah ball soup with