Photography forces one out into the world, interacting with people and the environment. It flexes all those right brain, spatially-adept muscles.

This is what sexism does best: it makes you feel crazy for desiring parity and hopeless about ever achieving it.

Id always assumed that by 40 Id have at least a modicum of stability - a steady income, an established career, a bountiful fullness, like a pillow into which I could sink as I entered the second half of my life.

It's 2013 ... The Time's obituary for Yvonne Brill, renowned rocket scientist, winner of the National Medal of Technology and Innovations, leads with, 'She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. "The world's best mom," her son Matthew said.

I loved to press the shutter, to freeze time, to turn little slices of life into rectangle rife with metaphor.

Photography forces one out into the world, interacting with people and the environment. It flexes all those right brain, spatially-adept muscles.

I sell my first book to Random House, a memoir of my years as a war photographer, for twice my NBC salary.