The Crab Chronicles

The Invisible Women

I had a writing assignment the other day that I thought would be easy, fashion tips for women over 40. I'm over 40. I'm a woman. I know about fashion because my mother has taught me well. 

Hours later I was in a very foul humor and ready to hit something.

Fashion tips? Easy. 

Finding photos of attractive women between 40 and 60, wearing flattering clothes? Looking happy? Looking reasonably attractive? Free images without copyright? Nightmare. 

I was so furious by 7:30 Friday night I could hardly be civil. Poor Mom. I had to apologize for being so snappish. 

I've been stewing over it all weekend. 

Women between 40 and 60 disappear. We might as well be invisible. 

Fashion magazines feature models who are under 25. 

Google "fashionable older women" and you get photos of celebrities like Helen Mirren. 

Guess what, world? There are lots of us out here in the world who aren't celebrities. We are not "babes" and we aren't all "district attorneys" either. We are all over the place, working and running our families and leading interesting lives, but we are not seen in the media. 

According to the media, we are invisible.

Maybe that's because the "ideal" of feminine beauty is a 20 year old girl. If one is being kind, maybe a 30 year old. By 40, you're considered shelved. 

I thank God for women like Helen Mirren, though. Helen is still vital at 73, still making good movies. She's attractive and intelligent, and she is carrying the torch for us. Of course, she never had children. Maybe that's how she has had such a hot career for so many years. I'm not criticizing her choice, but where are the women who did have children? We had to make terrible choices, some of us -- be a great mom or be a great career woman. Very few of us were able to do both really well. It's the eternal dilemma.

Oh wait - there's Sarah Jessica Parker, still going strong at 53. Wish I had her money...

In the 1950's and before, we were told we had to have children to have valid, fulfilled lives. Then the 1960's came along and everything was upended. Suddenly, careers were encouraged and motherhood was seen as dowdy and old-fashioned. We had to have careers, and if we had children we had to not get on the Mommy Track or our careers would be damaged irreparably. Some of us chose to be SAHM [stay at home moms] and we suffered as a result, because we were viewed as lazy or backwards. Then again, some of us watched our mothers go after careers and we decided we wanted to be home when our kids got in from school, and to hell with what society thought about it. 

We spent our 20's and 30's trying to balance it all. We became jugglers. We were supposed to look pretty at the same time, too. Then came the 40's and lots of us got divorced. Some of us were widowed. Life changed course radically, for many of us. 

I waited until I was 41 to become a mom -- not by choice. It was complicated. 

Life is complicated.

I have made my peace with being invisible. It's a relief, really. I was trying to explain to my son how I used to get hit on every time I went to the gas station, when I was young and hot. We used to actually have to walk inside and pay -- there was no swiping a debit card at the pump. Guys would ask me out often, during my "skinny" days.

I've been so relieved to get some extra pounds and gray hair, so I am left alone when I go out. I don't worry about hair or makeup or flattering clothes any more. I can get gussied up if the occasion calls for it, but I am happy 90% of the time to slop around in elastic-waisted pants and sensible shoes. 

I like myself a lot more now. I am not twisted into knots trying to compete. I am not worried about looking attractive to men. I do what I want, when I want, and I make no apologies. 

I will probably never marry. That's okay. I don't let it depress me. In many ways, it's a relief to have jumped off the Husband Hunting Train years ago. This version of Both Sides Now pretty much encompasses how I feel about all of it. ["something's lost but something's gained in living every day" sing it, Joni, for all of us...]

Am I the person I wanted to be when I was a little girl? Nope. I could never have envisioned who I became, however, and that's fine.

Book Review: A Time to Gather Stones

It isn't often that I read a book that has been self-published and get to intrigued that I find myself sitting up late at night to finish it, because the characters and story have captured my imagination, but North Georgia author Mike Ragland's book A Time to Gather Stones accomplished that feat. 

My mother ordered the book for me for Christmas last year, based on the recommendations of several folks in the Facebook group I Grew Up in Acworth/Kennesaw Before Town Center Mall. It's a good group, particularly of interest to us, because my Hasty and Butler forbears were from the Cobb County and Cherokee County part of North Georgia.

A Time to Gather Stones was the book I grabbed and stuffed in my tote bag last Wednesday, to have something to read while waiting on my mother to get her cataract surgery completed. I didn't have high expectations because, frankly, the cover art is unimpressive. (The old saying "you can't judge a book by its cover" would apply here, obviously...) The book languished on my To Be Read pile for months because of my misjudgment, and I feel a bit guilty about that, honestly. 

The story is anything but simple. It's pretty complex, but that's okay. I like complex. The main character is Jack Barker, a young history professor who is grieving because his wife has died. He goes to see his mother in Texas and learns that his grandfather has left him several items, including one that has the power to transport him back in time, to 1715. The spirit of his grandfather appears to him and tells him he must go back to that time and rescue a maiden who is trapped in a cave and cannot escape. Jack goes back in time. 

His adventures are fascinating, for a number of reasons. One, I love time travel stories, in books or on film. The notion just intrigues me. Two, author Mike Ragland has obviously done a lot of research into the Native American tribes in North Georgia, East Tennessee, and South Carolina during the 18th century. Fascinating subject, and he handles it well. He also writes about Jewish communities in those areas during the 17th and 18th centuries -- a fascinating topic and one I knew nothing about. Three, Ragland writes fight scenes very well. Four, his female characters are complex and unique. Five, I know some of the places he talks about, and from my childhood I know the Blue Ridge mountains are beautiful and mysterious.

Finally, I am always fascinated by the genesis of great stories.

From the Foreword to the book, this fascinating note from the author:

"There is a stone at the Track Rock Gap National Park near Blairsville, Georgia. It is a small area with six stones covered in petroglyphs. Many theories exist as to where they came from... There is a name on stone four that is almost unreadable... The name is Liube. It is a Hebrew name meaning Beloved. It was usually reserved for daughters of rabbis. Next to the name is the date 1715."

Ragland saw the name and wondered about it, and it sparked his imagination. The book A Time to Gather Stones is the result.

It isn't a perfect book. He skimps on describing places, a good bit, and sometimes the action gallops by at a dizzying pace. There are a number of typos, and grammar and usage errors. (Next time, Ragland needs to get his manuscript copy-edited more carefully. However, those are probably not annoying to anyone except English geeks like myself.) 

I told my brother on the phone the other day that I want him to read this book. He is fascinated by history and likes sci-fi and time travel books. He is also a retired Army major and likes books with good fight scenes and interesting weaponry, and this book has those. 

Mike Ragland is a retired officer with the Rome (Georgia) police department. For someone who is not a trained/educated writer, he has accomplished something really admirable -- written a fascinating, informative, and captivating story that I can wholeheartedly recommend. You can order it here on Amazon.  

  Right: photo made in the North Georgia mountains

by my friend Lisa Amos. (It is not in the book.)

Goodbye Aretha

Not long ago I heard a quote that I really loved, and I am going to paraphrase it badly but it went something like "Music is what emotion sounds like." I thought of that the other day after Aretha Franklin died, because I felt like I had lost a family member. 

"Soul" music was an early influence of mine. Don't laugh. Yes, I grew up as a white middle-class kid in the suburbs, but I was aware of the wide world of music from an early age, despite my parents' love of Broadway musicals and Frank Sinatra. We had black maids who introduced me to soul music (via the radio) and what a blessing.

Music was like magic to me, everyday accessible magic. I heard it all. My mother played Bach, Beethoven, Chopin. My dad loved Herb Alpert and Willie Nelson. Even as a small child I heard rock and roll music blasting from car radios and transistor radios. My parents would turn on the radio and we would have impromptu "dance parties" when I was small.

My mother played the piano and sang, and sang in the church choir when I was small. My father sang around the house. My grandmother played the piano and sang. My uncles sang. I went to church and was expected to sing. My parents sang me to sleep at night.

My mother used to put a stack of LP's on the turntable and I would sit and listen for hours. 

My adolescent and teenage years were tough. I was short and chubby, and I realized very quickly that I was never going to be a cheerleader or one of the popular kids. I wasn't going to be an athlete. I was smart and I made good grades, but I wasn't really a whiz kid. 

Even though I exited the fog of childhood during the 1970's, not a high point in musical history, music was a refuge. I loved the radio. Long before I ever had a boombox or Walkman, I listened to the car radio. I listened to Kasey Kasem's Top 40 countdown every Saturday. I also filched my brother's records and listened to them. Like me, he had eclectic taste. We liked The Beatles, Supertramp, Bachman Turner Overdrive, and Diana Ross and the Supremes -- just to name a few. 

At a time when teenage hormones and angst were tearing me up, just like my peers, I learned to listen to music, sing along, and let it transport me to somewhere else, somewhere where I was beautiful, and happy, and nobody called me fat or ugly. Music was then, and still is now, a haven. 

I'm not exactly sure when I discovered Aretha, but it was probably when The Blues Brothers introduced her to a new generation of fans, in 1981. I'm sure I had heard her music now and then before that, but that version of "Think" is incredible. I had already had some romantic disappointment in my life by then and I could relate. 

I bought tapes, and then CDs of her music, and I would listen in the car on the long drives back and forth to Augusta to see my parents. I would play a song like "Dr. Feelgood" over and over until I could match her note for note, in my amateur way of course.

For lighter times, I would groove along to "Until You Come Back to Me."

Over the years I was always delighted to find Aretha popping up in movies or even, memorably, in a Murphy Brown episode where Murphy sang (hysterically badly) "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman." I think that song was also in the movie The Big Chill.

When Aretha's song "Chain of Fools" popped up in the wonderful movie Michael , it made me want to jump out of my seat and dance in the movie theater. (I didn't. You can watch the scene here, though.)

Even the regrettable movie My Best Friend's Wedding (not a favorite of mine) contained "I Say A Little Prayer," classic Aretha, one of my favorite songs of all time. Of course, I much prefer Aretha's version to anyone else's.

I dated a lot when I was in my late 20's and into my 30's. No relationship lasted very long. A few times I was left feeling horribly depressed and defeated. I would pour a glass of wine, pull out the Aretha albums, and play "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)." Aretha expressed the despair, the self-loathing ("you got your hooks in me") and the emotions I couldn't express otherwise. 

When I was singing with Aretha I felt less alone. I felt like less of a loser. I felt like I had an older sister who totally understood me, and comforted me. Her music wasn't black or white or old or young. She sang about topics that are universal, and timeless. Heartbreak is heartbreak, no matter who you are or when you're going through it.

The day she died I went to pick up my son from a friend's house. I flipped on the radio and they were running a story about Aretha on NPR. I heard her voice and just broke down crying. When Michael got in the car he said "MOM! What's the matter?!" and I said "Aretha died. She's gone." I pointed to the radio. He just frowned and looked at me like are you nuts?! "Mom, you didn't know her. Why are you so upset?"

I couldn't explain it. I tried. I said "I feel like I do because she was there during so many important moments of my life." 

How to explain to a 22 year old what it feels like to have a friend die, a friend you've never met in person, but who was there with you when you were lonely, and in despair, and who made it okay? How to explain to someone so young how it feels to be running out of time to get married and have a baby? How to explain to any male the bond of sisterhood that I felt with Aretha? Words fail me. 

Music, though, like love, doesn't fail. 

The eternal legacy of Aretha is that she had a voice that could express a multitude of emotions -- anger, heartbreak, defiance, and joy -- sometimes all in one song. Her voice captured raw pain that was almost embarrassing, at times, but she did it without the unmusical caterwauling of a Janis Joplin, for example. She expressed things in her music that we all feel. She sang us out of darkness and showed us light. She was never cheap or corny either. Aretha was always a lady. Always a consummate musician. Always a class act. Always holding a hand out in the darkness, as though saying Sister, I'll get your through it.

I'm very sad that she is gone, but oh what a light she shone on the world. 

There will never be another one like her.

Fun Work

There aren't a lot of sources of cheap entertainment in the world but I am here to testify that job ads have gotten quite entertaining. Looking for a job is a nerve-wracking activity, but oftentimes I find myself giggling when I read certain ads. 

I read an ad today for a copywriter and the cover letter was supposed to mention the word "pumpernickel." Now, I am a professional writer and I've written just about everything in the world. However, that "pumpernickel" insertion was too tempting. I would have likely ended up saying something like this, at the end of the letter: "Thank you for the opportunity to explain how my skills and experience make me a good fit for the position. Now I will return to my corned beef on pumpernickel sandwich, and leave you to marvel at my brilliant letter writing skills, and wonder what fabulous sum you could offer me to come work for your company."

 

Fun Work

Here's a phrase I never would expect to see in an ad for a paralegal: "This is a fun and young team environment." Now, I have worked in large and small law firms, and two multinational corporations, and I can promise you, any law firm that describes the environment as "fun and young" is likely run by lawyers who have not been out of law school very long. I'm also pretty sure they are not looking for a short fat old lady to hang out in their Fun Young Office, so I'm not going to send a resume -- but I doubt they will be in business much longer. 

A lot of ads use the word "fun" [I know because I did a word search on Craigslist]. 

"When Was the Last Time You Had FUN at Work?" - Dental - Orthodontics [anyone who can make orthodontia FUN is a magician]

"In search of FUN, Creative Party people to join our team of Art Entertainers!" [the company encourages people to drink alcoholic beverages and paint stuff -- brilliant idea]

"We Put the FUN in Fundraising" [how is begging for money fun?]

 

Must Be Fluent

I am accustomed to ads that want someone fluent in Spanish, but I just read an ad insisting that the applicants be fluent in.... [wait for it] English. Yep, clearly they have been beset by applicants not fluent in English. Multiculturalism has gone too far.

 

Proofreading Counts

I just read an ad for a company that says "This is a temperately position." Further down, the ad states  "Be able to communicate in English fluently." If only the ad writer could meet that qualification...

 

Bring Your Dog to Work

"Come join our agency and unique, dog-friendly environment!" This is so tempting. I know Lola would have a blast at that company -- they included a photo of their lobby and I saw someone had left a poo poo on the floor... [just kidding] I scrolled down and saw why they encourage dogs at work - they want people to do phone sales from 8 in the morning until 10 at night. Yikes. 

 

Tell Me A Secret

Saw an ad for a tour guide -- because obviously tourists flock to Atlanta -- and the company said on their ad: "Tell us something about yourself that you've never put on a job application before?" I am so tempted to reply to that and say...

I can sing all the words to "Georgia On My Mind," sounding exactly like Ray Charles

I can sneer out of either side of my mouth [known as The Elvis Syndrome]

I was born with a head full of red hair and we had a red-haired mailman at the time

I consider my entire house a bra-free zone

I once got paid to sing the National Anthem

I bet no other applicant can say "Where is the bathroom?" in 5 different languages

My accent is so southern I make Foghorn Leghorn sound Yankee

I am related to Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Merriwether Lewis, and Queen Elizabeth [a lot of fun people]

 

 

Observations About the South

My grandmother Memaw Hasty was from a wealthy family in Marietta, Georgia, but she loved pig's feet. That always seemed really bizarre to me. How could someone who never went out in public without wearing a corset and full makeup love to eat pig's feet?

She would correct improper English in a heartbeat but she liked to eat pigs feet.

I realized that her love of pig's feet makes her a unique person right about the time I realized that Southern stereotypes abound in books and movies, and if we are going to dispel them, we best get busy. Makes me want to pitch a fit, just thinking about it. Or I might need to have a tantrum. Or throw a hissy fit. Pick your favorite. [right, Memaw as a young girl in a tree]

The New York Times published an article yesterday entitled Is It Southern Food, or Soul Food? and it's a pretty provocative article, albeit one that makes a lot of observations without really delving very deeply into them. Take a minute to read it. 

I love this: "A lot of Southern cooking comes from just figuring out how to keep things from spoiling in the heat." So true. It's hotter in the summer here. Southern cooking, like everything else, evolves. Most buildings are air-conditioned now, thank God. So we can cook a pan of biscuits in the middle of the day without fainting.

"You had to know how to clean a fish or kill a squirrel" is another great quote from the article. So true. My dad used to talk about eating squirrel, or brains, or other things I wouldn't touch. My Thompson grandfather shepherded his family through the Depression really well, though, and his kids always had food [he owned a country store] and shoes for school [he would go into Augusta sometimes and hustle pool for money]. Southern life fifty or a hundred years ago wasn't just about dealing with hot weather, it was about survival, especially in the late 19th century after the devastation of Reconstruction. 

Food stereotypes are hard to dislodge, but there are other stereotypes equally as annoying to southerners.

So are southerners more lazy because of the heat? You normally don't see southerners out running in 90 degree heat in the middle of the day. I've known my whole life that in the summer it's best to stay indoors or at the pool or lake in the middle of a summer day. There is a stereotype, however, that we are lazy because we let the heat slow us down, but not everyone fits that. My father used to try and mow the lawn in the middle of the day and he got heat exhaustion several times, and came close to heat stroke. Common sense had nothing to do with it. 

I don't think we are lazy, just because we don't have to shovel snow all winter. Are all New Englanders thrifty and industrious, as movies would have us believe? I doubt it.  Is everyone in California a pot-smoking, aged hippie? I've never been there but I doubt it.

In my mind stereotypes are fun to joke about but they can also be harmful. I always wonder when I apply to work for a company outside the south if I am perceived as a dullard or a jerk.

The other stereotype I encounter all the time is that Southerners are portrayed in movies as usually evil or stupid. I was watching the movie Kingsmen: The Golden Circle recently, and enjoying it, and the character of the US president, played by Bruce Greenwood, was as southern as fried chicken [based on his awful accent] and an utter jerk. The character played by Channing Tatum wasn't much better, although he was more idiotic than evil.

It's gotten to where when I am watching a movie and the bad guy character is introduced I am waiting to hear if he has a British accent or a redneck one. The British accent usually happens in the higher-budget movies, just FYI. 

One of my favorite movies is Forrest Gump, but the chief annoyance there is that so many of the Southern characters are either stupid or mean. The nicest character, in the long run, is Captain Dan, because he takes care of Forrest financially for the rest of his life, and of course Captain Dan was not southern.

I remember trying to watch the movie Cape Fear, years ago, and I found the southern bad guy so annoying I turned the movie off because the bad guy was both stupid AND evil.

The final stereotype I want to address is that all southerners are racist. The south is a very culturally diverse place and if we are all racists, why are so many African Americans moving back to the south? Why are there so many Hispanic people here, and Asians? Turn on any TV station in the South and you will see a lot of brown faces. 

Tyler Perry is a southern guy and a brilliant writer/filmmaker and he chose to build his new state of the art studio in suburban Atlanta.

I am always amazed when non-southerners come here for a visit, or even live here for a few years, and presume to know everything there is to know about us. If I did the same thing with any other region and tried to hold myself out as an expert after only a short time there, it would be laughable.

The longest I've ever lived outside the south was the 3+ weeks I spent in Kazakhstan adopting my son. Does that make me an expert on Kazakh culture?

Lord no.

How do we combat the insane notions that outsiders have about us?

I keep plugging away, writing novels, that hopefully one day will be turned into movies, and maybe in some small way I can dispel the ridiculous stereotypes about the south. We are all different races. We are good folks and bad folks. We are rednecks and we are high falutin' folks. We like NASCAR and we like museums. We eat fried chicken and sushi.

Most of our teenagers don't even sound Southern any more, because of TV and movies and the influx of folks from other places. 

I am not alone in my quest to end the stereotypes. Others have paved the way for me.

National publications like Bloomberg have noticed others are moving here all the time, as evidenced by New Yorkers Flock to Booming Sunbelt as Trek South Resumes. If we were all all evil redneck idiots I doubt anyone would want to move here.

My friend Chuck Reece over at The Bitter Southerner is destroying stereotypes right and left. He was featured recently in Meet the 31 People Who Are Changing the South, in Time magazine.

This guy below, Andy Griffith, is my hero. He built a career on actually using the southerners-are-idiots stereotype to his advantage. Every time a city slicker went to Mayberry and tried to best Andy he showed them he wasn't an idiot. Ditto for Matlock. He looked like a stupid country redneck lawyer but he always won because non-southerners underestimated him.

So what can be done? I don't know the full answer to that. I plan to keep writing about the South, and embracing the wonderful things about this place I love, and I will try not to vent too much about how we're portrayed in the media -- just enough to stay sane, not sound too bitter.

Y'all be sweet, and stay in the air conditioning.

Sharing Recipes

 

I was thinking the other day about how some cooks will not share recipes. Me, I love to share recipes. I get a great deal of happiness knowing I gave someone a recipe, they prepared it and served it, and it was a hit. My friend Judy recently took my recipe for Rocks [a sweet/savory nut and raisin cookie] and prepared the cookies and took them to a function in California, and the cookies were a big hit. That made my heart sing with joy. 

A friend of mine who bakes a lot of cakes told me recently she has used my Apricot Brandy Pound Cake recipe a lot and it's always a hit. That made me so happy, to hear that.

I am of the school of thought that recipes should be shared. After all, sharing good food is a joyful experience, and we all need more joy in our lives, right?!

Not everyone would agree with me, however.

A friend on Facebook posted photos of herself making an Italian dish called Caponata. I had never heard of it so I Googled it. According to the New York Times: "Caponata is a Sicilian sweet and sour version of ratatouille. Because eggplant absorbs flavors like a sponge, it’s particularly good in such a pungent dish. Like most eggplant dishes, this gets better overnight. It’s meant to be served at room temperature, and I like it cold as well. It makes a great topping for bruschetta."

I would love to try it. I dropped a comment and asked if she would share her recipe. She did not reply. Now, she has a job and two small children, so I am not going to jump to the conclusion she didn't want to share. Maybe she just didn't have time to sit down and write it out. A lot of times cooks have been shown family recipes and they don't share just because it's a pain to sit down and puzzle out exact measurements for other cooks. 

However, some cooks are just not going to share. They want all the glory. 

Or they are caterers and their recipes have to be secret, because that's their livelihood. I totally understand that. 

However, the most famous example in my family of not sharing a recipe is my aunt Ceph [rhymes with "beef"]. She was the one who devised the original recipe for Rocks. They became her signature. She became famous in her small southern hometown for making these cookies, and she was certainly famous for them in the Henderson family. Rocks are delicious, and they are sort of unique. They meld the pecan and raisin flavors so beautifully, even a person who doesn't particularly care for cookies will likely love Rocks. [the recipe is below]

Ceph almost always had a tin or Tupperware container of Rocks in her house but she was miserly about sharing them. I recall one time when I was a small child going to her house and she pulled my father back into the kitchen and gave him Rocks -- his favorite cookie, which she well knew. For me and my brother, small children? No Rocks. After practically begging we got a glass of tap water and some stale Saltines. 

Ceph was likely related on some level to the Soup Nazi, made famous on Seinfeld.

Ceph didn't want to give up her recipe but my aunt finally got it. I'm not sure what cajoling she had to do, but it has become the go-to cookie for the holidays in my family.

ROCKS

NOTE FROM MY AUNT: I copied this directly from either Cordelia or Ceph. I still have the original which I wrote on the back of a card asking voters to support W.R. Loflin and Frank H. Turner for Board of Education Election to be held on November 2nd, 1954! Frank Turner was a friend of theirs so I got this card from one of their houses and jotted it down as told. - Diddy

1 t. soda                                                      1 t. cinnamon

2 egg yolks                                                   1 t. cloves

3/4 c. butter                                                1 t. vanilla

1 1/2 c. flour                                                1 t. to 1 T. water

1 1/2 c. sugar                                               1 box raisins [the large box]

1 c. chopped pecans

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolks, well beaten. Sift flour, spices, and soda together, and blend well with butter and sugar. Add water, nuts, and raisins. Mix well. Drop by teaspoon on cookie sheet and bake in 350 degree oven for approximately 15 minutes. I use part butter and part margarine, and rarely add water unless the dough is too stiff after testing a few in the oven first.

left, my grandmother Cordelia, her sister Annie, and her sister Ceph [there were a total of 7 sisters] I don't know why, but Ceph was famous for sticking her tongue out in photos, which was actually ironic since in most ways she was a properly dignified, matronly person

 

 

 

A few years ago I compiled a recipe book of recipes famous in the Henderson family and below is Aunt Ceph's spice cake recipe, which sounds pretty similar in flavor to the Rocks recipe. I am sure Ceph is blessing this blog from on high, happy her recipes are getting shared. 

 

Aunt Ceph’s Spice Cake

Recipe of Cephia Henderson Adkins, Courtesy of  Elaine Zachary McElyea and Julia Embry

1 cup butter (2-1/2 sticks)                                         2 cups sugar

3 cups self-rising flour                                              4 eggs

2 cups pecans                                                          1 box raisins

1 tsp. Vanilla                                                           1 tsp. cloves

1 tsp. cinnamon

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time.  Sprinkle one cup flour over pecans and raisins…set aside.  To remaining flour, add cloves and cinnamon… then add to first mixture, one tablespoon at a time.  Add vanilla.  By hand, mix in pecans and raisins.  Bake in tube pan at 275 deg. For 1-1/2 hours or until cake test done