Category Archives: Personal

Breakdown Break

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My favorite Voting Plan comes from my friend Tina, who posted on Facebook: “I plan to fill out my absentee ballot as soon as I get it, put it in the nearest drop box right away, and watch cat videos until after the election.”

I, on the other hand, even though contemplating how to follow Tina’s example and calm my nerves as we approach E-Day, couldn’t help myself. On my therapeutic walk this morning, I made the mistake of listening to The Daily‘s latest podcast, “The Spector of Political Violence.” It featured Americans of every political (and apolitical) stripe buying guns because they are nervous about everyone else having guns. I suppose it’s a comfort that the story’s angle was deliberately non-partisan. But hammering home the point that people who are scared arm themselves to feel safe–despite all the evidence that the presence of a gun increases the risk of violence–made me even more anxious. I’m a member of a very large club.

I recommend following Tina’s lead. So in that spirit, here’s some reminders of goodness and beauty from my daily walks of the last few months that are helping me get through:

  • Swinging ducks
  • Sharing
  • Teddy bear scavenger hunt

  • Pandemic baking

Remember to vote, and remember to set your clocks back Sunday. You’ve got your choice about how to spend your extra hour: sleeping, insomnia, doom-scrolling, watching cat videos. Choose wisely, and see you on the other side!

With a Little Help from Our Friends

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You know what motivates me more than almost anything? When someone I know and trust asks me to do something! I joined Weight Watchers with a friend. I took a job I wasn’t looking for because my friend recruited me. I served on our school district’s foundation—and even became its co-chair—because so many people I admired were involved and urged me to get involved, too. I make countless donations, go to events, and buy unwanted wrapping paper and grapefruit from friends’ children. I like to joke that my political activism consists of doing whatever my friend Ruth asks of me.

It’s not that I’m a pushover or a mindless follower. My parents never had to say, “Would you jump off a cliff just because your friends were?” It’s just that people I know and trust inform and inspire me. They provide good company, hold me accountable, and make me a better person.

It turns out I’m not alone, and that this has big ramifications for voter turnout. Research shows that the best way to get somebody to vote is when someone they know reminds them. Call it a helpful nudge, FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), or benevolent peer pressure–it works! That’s why one of my very favorite acts of political work this season has been Friend-to-Friend Voter Outreach.

It’s a simple and fun organic way of growing a network of voters not from campaign lists but from within our personal circles. All it takes is asking three people you know in battleground states and districts who share your views to vote, and to ask them to ask three more people. Follow-up with a couple of pre-election reminders, and that’s it!

Of course, if you’re an overachiever, you can ask more than three people—I’ve cast a wide net, and have also asked people not in battleground states but with roots there to participate.  But three is a perfect number—not too much to ask of anyone (including yourself!), and enough to make a real difference. It’s also a nice way to catch up with friends and relatives where contact might not extend much beyond birthday and holiday cards.

I’ve had some lovely exchanges with far-flung cousins, Facebook friends, and my daughter’s college roommate. My husband’s best friend, not normally political, agreed to contact his mother and all his high school friends in Cleveland. I’ve never in my life participated in a single chain letter, but this is a chain I love to build, link by link.

Please join me. Use the resources below, have fun, and let me know how it goes.  Let’s win big.

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– A good step-by-step guide (you don’t have to attend the ongoing workshops offered by the organizer, though you’re welcome to contact him for next date if you like).

–If anyone needs voting information, iwillvote.com is a great state-by-state resource.

-Here’s a handy chart for voter registration deadlines. Note that several have passed, but many states offer ways to register and vote after the deadline:

-A good read.

-Stress-buster:

Midnight Reading

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As a pre-teen, my favorite book was Gone with the Wind. I would devour it cover to cover far into the night, a flashlight illuminating the pages. As soon as I finished the book, I’d start over, hoping to beat my previous time. I saw the film many times, too, the screen’s imagery and Margaret Mitchell’s words melting together into memory. Still, it’s the thrill of my late-night, under-the-covers immersion at Tara with Scarlett O’Hara that stays with me.

I think it was Scarlett’s 17-inch-waist that first reeled me in. And, of course, the tempestuous romance between her and Rhett Butler. These sad, misguided fixations alone make me cringe. The backdrop of the Civil War and slavery barely registered. Referring to it now as a backdrop makes me cringe anew, proof positive of how easy it is for me still to retreat from reality.

From an early age, I knew the broad outlines of the Civil War—Confederacy bad, Union good. Slavery was a horror, and Abraham Lincoln was right up there with FDR and JFK in the presidential pantheon. After all, my parents were active in the Civil Rights movement. Perhaps that’s why I read furtively by flashlight. But I didn’t sneak out of the house to see the movie version of Gone with the Wind. I’m sure we watched it together, and I don’t remember any in-depth discussions. My parents pointed out that Mammy, Prissy, and Sam were stereotypes undergirding the fantasy of loyal black people happily serving benevolent masters. But mostly we focused on those incredible hoop skirts and what Scarlett saw in that drip Ashley.

My first misgivings about GWTW came not from a deeper understanding of structural racism but from feminist critiques. That scene where a half-drunk Rhett shows Scarlett how he could crush her skull between his hands, then carries her upstairs to the bedroom, where she wakes up all smiles the next morning? Not long after my dawning horror that the scene depicted rape, I had another rude awakening: Rhett was a charter member of the KKK.

So I relegated Gone with the Wind to all the other things I’d once enjoyed and could no longer stomach: Coming-of-age stories that romanticized child sexual abuse; Last Tango in Paris; Bill Cosby. I moved on without giving GWTW much thought beyond feeling ashamed by my clueless self.

I’ve evolved some from my oblivion over the decades, though I have barely scratched the surface. I still read in bed after midnight. Now the illumination is provided by my iPhone rather than a flashlight—and also by the words of Nikole Hannah-Jones, in her brilliant New York Times Magazine essay, “What is Owed?”:

“If true justice and equality are ever to be achieved in the United States, the country must finally take seriously what it owes black Americans.”

I will strive to repay my debt.

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Worth reading:

John Ridley, “Hey, HBO, ‘Gone With the Wind’ romanticizes the horrors of slavery. Take it off your platform for now”  (Los Angeles Times, June 8, 2020)

Jacqueline Stewart, “Why we can’t turn away from ‘Gone with the Wind’” (CNN, June 12, 2020).

Sam Adams, “Gone With the Wind Is Back on HBO Max With This New Introduction” (Slate.com, June 26, 2020).

Nikita Stewart, “Black Activists Wonder: Is Protest Just Trendy for White People?” (New York Times, June 26, 2020).

Screen Time

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I see my client’s face. A bit pixelated, true, but more centrally framed now that the camera angle cutting her off just above the chin last week has been adjusted. I glimpse my own image and “office” in the small rectangle. Oh, no, has the covering slipped from my daughter’s old dresser? How many times will the screen freeze today?

Still, it’s better than nothing. I’m lucky to have a private space, with no children to homeschool or shush—the daughter whose room I’m in is long grown. Cursed, blessed technology exists now, at least for most people with the wherewithal to find their way into somebody’s private practice. I have been on Zoom support sessions for clinicians, and hear horror stories from those who work with people who are impoverished, undocumented, hungry, homeless, imprisoned, sick, overwhelmed by life even in the best of times. Some people they’ve been unable to reach altogether.

The fact that things are so much worse for others is frequently brought up by my clients who can and want to keep seeing me. They feel grateful and guilty. I feel the same way.

Still, we sit and talk. I talked too much at first, trying to compensate for the feeling of disconnection through excess verbiage. Eventually I remembered the value of listening, with an assist from Zoom, which goes haywire when more than one person (or rectangle) is speaking.

Nothing sounds quite right. I read somewhere that the time lag is part of what makes video calls so tiring. Exhaustion turns to panic when suddenly the client’s voice sounds stretched out and underwater, or every other word is dropped. What if they are revealing something crucial, and I miss it? I briefly wonder if bandwidth, too, engages in repression or dissociation, or if it reflects the client’s usual experience of feeling unheard and my own inattentiveness.

Sometimes, I prefer just the phone. I came into the mental health field more than 40 years ago as a crisis line volunteer, and like a duckling, I imprinted on the first thing I was exposed to. I’ve always been struck by how people can often go deeper, be more vulnerable on the phone.

Still, whether via Zoom, doxy, FaceTime, or phone, psychotherapy in the time of Covid has felt a lot like those many check-in calls I fielded on the crisis line. People say the same thing, over and over. It’s the same conversation we’re all having now, as coronavirus infects not only our cells and the economy but every nook and cranny of mental space. My colleague asked two analytically inclined clients if they wished to explore some of what they were delving into before. “Absolutely not!” they both said. I’ve wondered with clients what we might be talking about if we weren’t talking about the pandemic. “That’s a good question!” they say, before returning to coronavirus. Remote video platforms aren’t the only ones with bandwidth issues.

Time feels so strange, endless and fleeting at once. Clients wonder, How long will this last? When can we return? And even if we do, will I ever feel safe? Wondering the same, we do our best to hold people, not knowing how long we can all hold on.

Time Warp

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I am almost always way behind in my reading: usual backlogs are six weeks for the New Yorker and six months for the Atlantic. My husband once remarked, “You have many good qualities, but knowing when to stop reading an article you’re not absorbing isn’t one of them.” (Neither is speed reading.)

Taking his words to heart, at least now when I sit down with The New York Review, I flip through the pages, reading only one or two articles between the cover and the Complex, Dynamic Tomboy and New York City Attorney seeking love (or at least lust) in the back-page Personals.

“Damn,” I think to myself as I toss the barely read periodical into the recycling bin. “This is really great and incisive writing. Too bad I don’t do more of it.”

I can’t toss The New Yorker, though. I’ve never been a just-the-cartoons page-flipper. The magazine used to be known for its timeless (and endless), multi-part series on things like corn, or rivers, or geology, so it didn’t really matter when I tackled my piles. But even the hallowed New Yorker succumbed to the reality of shorter attention spans and more topical coverage. So I’m now often in a time warp when I do sit down to read.

After the 2016 election, I savored this peculiarity. For weeks, I was still relishing the prospect of our first female commander-in-chief. President Obama was not ever going to have to turn over the keys and the nuclear codes to someone completely his opposite and unfit for office in every way imaginable. I could live in my alternative reality long before the Trump administration’s insistence on doing so wreaked such widespread havoc.

Now I’m in that surreal space again, my reading lagging way behind the current reality of our Covid-upended world. In my time warp, things exist beyond the total takeover not only of our health and our economy, but of seemingly all news, conversation, and every waking and non-waking moment.

My lagging world isn’t quite as enjoyable as before, when President Obama’s magnetic smile stretched from sea to shining sea. I’m catching up on the House impeachment vote, moving through Ian Frazier’s Season’s Greetings, the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, the Democrats in disarray. Mitt Romney hasn’t yet become an unlikely hero/traitor (take your pick) during the Senate impeachment “trial.” The Iowa caucuses are still a quaint if undemocratic trendsetting tradition, not a debacle. There’s still more than a dozen candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. Then, as I make my way through the stacks, Bernie is poised to run all the way to the end zone while his opponents tackle each other, littering the field. Super Tuesday has yet to come, along with all the rest of the brutal primaries before they get postponed. The Democrats are not yet in a state of array behind Joe Biden–Man from a By-gone Era who is, strangely, now the Man of the Moment. There’s nary a hint of the pandemic about to engulf us (although one might take this flu season Valentine as foreshadowing):

I am glad my behind-the-times reading creates corners of my psyche beyond the reach of Covid. I am even perversely grateful to be reminded of how Stephen Miller is one of the most loathsome denizens of Trump’s swamp. The corona virus is not the only devastating force in the world.

My time warp is about to converge with the present moment: I have finished the New Yorker whose cover features Trump with a surgical mask over his eyes as he rages on and on. Just two more issues until the one with the spiky virus balls festooning the cover. I will miss the past times of my so-slow reading, just as I miss our pre-Covid world that seems centuries ago.

But I look forward to a better future, when and if it ever comes.

Titanic

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I keep thinking about the film Titanic as we begin to absorb the public health and financial impacts of hitting this coronavirus iceberg.  First there’s the feeling of nothing much happening, or maybe it’s something, but we’ll all be fine. Awareness that the ship is going down creeps in at different paces to different people, and reactions vary. Quick-wittedness, denial, altruism, selfishness, desperation, calm. The entire panoply of human nature unfolds while the orchestra plays on.

What sticks with me the most from the film are the parents in steerage, cuddling with their children in cramped metal cots. Mothers and fathers know they’re all doomed, but they do what they can– speaking in soothing tones to their still-oblivious sons and daughters, telling stories, performing the ritual of nightly prayer, holding them tight. Love creates a cocoon of security: False, but also true.

Psychotherapists call this “felt security.” It reflects not so much the dire dimensions of the actual situation, but the reassuring sustenance drawn from the relationship with a loving, trustworthy, and reliable caregiver. Those parents in steerage send the message, “I am here with you right now, and in this moment together we are okay.”

A lot of us, even those who are not parents, have been doing a lot of that recently as we try to maintain a sense of normalcy and well-being in the midst of a global pandemic and economic meltdown. Posting pictures of sunsets, flowers, the family dog, funny memes; poetry chain letters; neighbors opening their windows to sing, clap, or howl; sewing masks for front-line workers; donating to especially hard-hit groups; buying gift cards from our favorite restaurants and small businesses; moving our normal activities like school, yoga, fitness, book groups, phone banking, work from real life to Zoom—all help knit together a sense of security.

Titanic also depicts a society similar to ours in terms of class and economic inequality. The rich are the most protected while the poor suffer, even though they’re all in the same boat. The unsinkable Molly Brown, a member of the privileged class, decries the entitlement and selfishness of her peers, urging them to make more room on the lifeboats to save far more people. Her plea goes largely unheeded.

We are seeing the same dynamics play out now: just look at the back-and-forth of the recent $2.2 trillion relief bill passed by Congress. Thanks largely to Democrats, more room was created to help the most vulnerable. Far more will be needed.

Just as not everyone perished in the Titanic, we will somehow survive this. But whether or not we view all as deserving a place on the life boats will determine who and how many.

Marriage Story: On the Screen, in Politics, and IRL

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I’ve seen the film Marriage Story twice. Following the uproar over a conversation Warren and Sanders had in 2018 about whether a woman can beat Donald Trump feels like watching it a third time.

Two couples: The fictional Nicole and Charlie, an amicable but divorcing duo with an eight-year-old son who want different things, and the real-life Warren and Sanders, like-minded good friends and political colleagues who both want to be president.

Befitting their long histories of mutual admiration and affection and their desire to protect what matters most (a child, a progressive movement), both couples initially observe non-aggression pacts: mediation instead of divorce lawyers for Nicole and Charlie, close policy alignments and no bad-mouthing for the presidential rivals. But as differences emerge and each seeks advantage in order to prevail, initial vows give way to some definite hot-mic moments.

So it goes in movies, in politics, and in life. The same experience is rarely received or recalled in the same way.

Given that a woman’s electability against Donald Trump has featured prominently in so many political conversations over the past three years, it’s entirely plausible that Sanders told Warren that a woman couldn’t win the presidency in 2020. Or maybe he just pointed out how a lying, sexist Trump would weaponize gender in a society riddled with outright misogyny and unconscious bias. It’s also entirely plausible that Warren heard his words correctly. Or that she didn’t, but understood the implicit message, “better not try,” a warning women hear all the time.

In Marriage Story, Nicole hears this warning, too, and for a long time heeds it. Every time she tries to implement their initial agreement to try living on both coasts, Charlie dismisses her wishes. After all, they are a New York family, with a flourishing theater life there. Besides, LA, television . . . Seriously? Nicole continually acquiesces, losing herself in the process until she has had enough. No wonder she is susceptible to the ruthlessly empathic and effective divorce attorney Nora, who knows exactly how to fashion Nicole’s inchoate dissatisfactions and longings into the story of a reclaimed self.

The shift from acquiescence to “Enough!” seems abrupt, excessive. But it comes from tolerating a lengthy accumulation of insensitivities, intended and inadvertent injuries, and the preeminence of others’ needs and desires until finally we reach a tipping point. Suddenly, we’ve had it.

Getting fed up is at the heart of so much conflict and also of so much necessary change, both personally and socio-politically. It drives not only Nicole’s and Warren’s persistence, but also the #MeTooMovement, Black Lives Matter, Sanders’s (and Trump’s) political appeal, and the success of so many women candidates in the 2018 mid-terms.

“Enough!” It drives a great many of us. For better and for worse.

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A slightly different version of this piece initially appeared in NCSPP’s Impulse, a publication for therapists. The topicality of the Oscars and the political spat is past, but the themes are timeless.

Medicare for Me

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A lot of people dread turning 65, but not me. Ever since a cancer diagnosis in 2012, there’s nothing I’d rather do than tick off the years toward old age. I’ve eagerly awaited certain milestones:

  1. 60 for most senior discounts at the movies
  2. 62 for the lifetime pass to National Parks (I lucked in at the $10 rate just before it increased to $80—still a steal!)
  3. 65 for Medicare
  4. 66 and two-thirds for collecting 100% of my Social Security.

This month, I achieve Milestone #3, and I couldn’t be happier. Not just because it means I’m still alive and well, but because of the hundreds of dollars I’ll save every month for the same insurance and doctors I have now.

Don’t get me wrong—as a self-employed cancer survivor, I was thrilled when the Affordable Care Act passed, and pre-existing conditions could no longer be used as an excuse to deny people coverage. I was lucky enough to have good coverage pre-ACA through my husband’s employer. But my husband felt he couldn’t leave no matter how unhappy he became as the job grew more stressful. Employer-provided health insurance, which we were fortunate to have, equaled golden handcuffs. The ACA changed all that. My husband, also a cancer survivor, was thrilled to join me in the ranks of the happily self-employed.

We paid through the nose to keep our good coverage through Covered California, and it was a privilege to do so (in all senses of the word).

Still, as great an accomplishment as the ACA is, it highlights the problems in our for-profit healthcare industry. It’s why single-payer, universal coverage, the public option, and Medicare for All are so front and center in the 2020 campaign. Democrats have varied but serious proposals about how best to improve healthcare, while Republicans continue to sabotage an imperfect but substantial reform, even threatening to eliminate the ban on pre-existing conditions altogether and putting healthcare out of reach for tens of millions of Americans.

Medicare for All has always struck me as a way to borrow a catchy name and a popular program as an umbrella description of our aspirations for universal coverage. There are different ways to skin this cat. My personal preference is to initially lower the age at which Medicare eligibility starts (a proposal that Senator Joe Lieberman thwarted in 2009), funnel much younger people dropped from their parents’ coverage into it, and allow an opt-in for everybody by expanding the public option—essentially the glide path described by many Democrats to achieve Medicare for All. I understand the appeal and economic rationale of a rapid and far-reaching overhaul, but a more gradual transition avoids the risk for major implementation glitches and has far more buy-in from voters.

Which brings me back to Medicare for Me, my “OK, Boomer” achievement that moves me higher up the ladder on which I was already born—a ladder whose bottom rung swings far beyond the reach of so many.  I am glad to have reached this milestone, which makes my life easier and more affordable. I will be gladder still when Medicare for Me becomes Medicare for All.

For My Mother, on the Eve of the Public Impeachment Inquiry

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My mother was glued to the television every minute of the Watergate hearings when PBS began broadcasting them on May 17, 1973. I was a senior in high school then, and although I’m sure I must have left the house from time to time that summer before college, I was often alongside her, riveted. My mother had spent a lot of the preceding years chain-smoking and cursing every time Richard Nixon showed up on TV, and I lived with equal parts admiration and fear that one day her turquoise glass ashtray full of butts would go hurtling across the living room and shatter the screen.

The testimony itself proved shattering enough: John Dean’s complicity turned into conscience; Alexander Butterfield inadvertently revealing the White House taping system that eventually led to the “smoking gun” tape proving Nixon’s direct involvement in the cover-up and obstructing justice. I don’t remember at what point we put a bottle of champagne in the fridge in anticipation of celebrating the president’s demise after invincibility slowly turned to inevitability. But I remember popping it the night of August 8, 1974, when Nixon announced his resignation, effective at noon the next day.

Those times seem long ago and in a galaxy far, far away. They’ve been beautifully captured by James Poniewozik, chief television critic for the New York Times. I’ve been aching for my mother all day long, and his account makes me ache even more for a time in which accountability and truth mattered.

My mother would have turned 96 just last month, but she’s been dead since 1995. I often look up into the stars at night and think, “Thank God you’ve missed this, it would kill you.” I was grateful that my mother died with her adoration of Bill Clinton intact, unsullied by his impeachment scandal. I could imagine ashtrays hurtling once again through the air when the Supreme Court declared Bush the winner in 2000. Although I’m sorry she missed the Obama years (she would have been equally thrilled by Hillary), I was thankful she missed 9/11, Iraq, endless wars. Trump’s election would surely have finished her off. (I feel that way myself much of the time, and do not have my mother’s habit of smoking to relieve the anxiety.)

But I do wish I could have her on the couch right now, riveted, alive with fury. I love to imagine her devouring then adding to her shelves all the books about Trump (and his fall) to her extensive Watergate library.

Right now, the prospect of popping champagne seems dim. But if and when it comes, I’ll raise a glass to you, Mom.

Let Us Eat Cake!

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Five minutes after the power came on after a three-day outage, I started baking an ice cream cake. Not the usual kind, with yummy layers of Mocha Almond Fudge and hot fudge sauce layered into graham cracker crust and left in the freezer, but my own invention–a variation of “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Fans of Shrinkrapped may recall that our emergency preparations for the “safety” power outages PG&E implemented as fire control mostly involved grabbing a spoon and enjoying our dozen or so pints of premium Haagen Dazs. We lost our power a bit before 8:30 Saturday night, and since I failed to set my alarm to get up at 2:00 to dig in, my Sunday breakfast consisted of a fantastic, very thick Chocolate-Chocolate Chip and Cookies and Cream ice-cold milkshake, rivaling the Creamy Dreamies we used to get at the Lagunitas market on our way back from a day at the beach.

Jonathan, insufficiently committed to self-destructive acts for the greater good, left most of the dirty work to me. But between the two of us, we managed to polish off close to three pints while the ice cream was still in this near-perfect state of soft serve. I nobly continued for another pint or so after the melted stuff resembled chilled creamy soup. But hey, if people get excited about vichyssoise, what’s the difference? Eventually, however, even I had to admit that suffering indigestion and weight gain for this salvage operation might not be the best idea.

“It’s mostly cream, isn’t it?” Jonathan asked as we forlornly surveyed our losses. “Couldn’t we use it to make cake when the power comes back on?”

Right away I thought of my recipes that used milk. The one that uses the most—chocolate chip cake—is also Jonathan’s favorite. I figured the melted ice cream also contained a fair amount of sugar and butter, so before we could reset our clocks, I was measuring out ingredients. I wanted to get that sucker into the oven in case we lost power again.

“I’m not making the frosting until we know how it’s turned out,” I told Jonathan. We had a test slice after dinner—our first meal not cooked on our Coleman camp stove in three days. Yum! I wasted no time in making the frosting to complete my masterpiece. Unfortunately, I had only one-quarter of the amount of confectioners’ sugar required—not because of power outages, but because of a lapse in my usual hoarding of staple ingredients (i.e., anything used for baking). So I made glaze instead of frosting, and the cake was even better. The only improvement would be to serve it up with a big scoop of ice cream.

Which, unfortunately, we no longer have.

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Here’s the original recipe, with comments for how to improve it, with or without salvaged ice cream:

Real Chocolate Chip Cake—12 servings (make in a 10-inch high-quality Bundt or tube pan; if poor quality, there’ll be hell to pay in the form of a lot of yummy chocolate-laden cake top sticking to the pan, which you then have to pry loose and patch onto the rest of the cake. Or eat from the pan, and call it a day.)

3 cups flour                                                 1 tsp. vanilla

3-1/2 tsp. baking powder                          1 cup butter or margarine, softened

`1 tsp. almond extract                                ¾ tsp. salt

1-1/3 cups milk                                          1-3/4 cups sugar

4 eggs                                                        12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips–mini best

Preheat oven to 350. In small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In large bowl, combine butter and sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in vanilla and almond extracts. Gradually add in flour mixture alternately with milk. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour into greased and floured 12-cup bundt or tube pan (approx. 10-inch). Bake at 350 for 60-70 minutes (I recommend checking at 50—it’s invariably overbaked if it goes for a full hour). Remove from oven and cool in pan 10-15 minutes. Then turn onto serving plate. If you have failed to use a high-quality pan and it doesn’t come out in one beautiful piece, enjoy the patching or gorging job ahead of you. Cool completely, then top with chocolate frosting or glaze (I recommend either doubling or at least increasing by 50% for good coverage of the cake; or, if you use less sugar to keep it at glaze consistency, you can attractively drizzle it over the cake assuming you don’t need to disguise broken cake from using a cheap pan).

Chocolate Glaze: Combine ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, ¼ cup boiling water, ½ tsp. cinnamon, and 1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar. Blend until smooth. I find it easiest to do in a food processor or blender, but if you double it, be careful so it doesn’t blow chocolate liquid all over your kitchen. (I doubled all the ingredients before I realized I had very little confectioners sugar, so only used about half cup of that–it made a fine glaze, though good to refrigerate it a little bit before topping cake so it isn’t so runny.)

Waste-Not, Want-Not Adaptation: Instead of the milk, I used 2-1/2 cups melted Haagen Dazs ice cream (I used Cookies and Cream, but any vanilla-based ice cream should do. You’re on your own if you favor minty or fruity flavors.) I used only one cup of sugar, and about 12 tbsp. of butter. I baked it for 60 minutes, and wish I had taken it out at 50 or 55 minutes—it will bake a bit longer as it cools in the pan.

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Also, the best things to have during a power outage: a portable solar phone charger; a Coleman stove; a sense of perspective; and a profession that doesn’t depend on electricity–in my case talk therapy.