This page lists archived tumblr posts in my puutterings project (2022, ongoing). Numbers at left are links to the archived posts. Columns are sortable (may need to click twice). Reload to re-sort.
this index has given rise to a series of derivations, at asfaltics : link
| ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1912 | Chicago (South Park Commissioners) | nevertheless | economy; efficiency |
| 2 | 1916 | Collins, A. Frederick | not a bit of it, it’s only puttering around | electricity; experiment |
| 3 | 1910 | McGlauflin, Idabelle Handicraft for Girls | there is a difference | education |
| 4 | 1914 | Farnum, Royal B. | in one minute, and vigorous execution | education |
| 5 | 1860 | Clifford, Nell | who ever heard | vanitas |
| 6 | 1860 | Puttering, Judith | Judith | obituary |
| 7 | 1917 | Anderson, Sherwood | always | The Seven Arts |
| 8 | 1927 | Hull, Helen R. | past the need; she could spend all day in the greenhouse | solitude; The Seven Arts |
| 9 | 1911 | Watts, Mary Stanbery | the meagre remains | |
| 10 | 1911 | Dustin, S. T. | ESS-TEE-DEE | dandruf; hair |
| 11 | 1917 | Wyatt, Edith | an abundant element of | Elinore Pruitt Stewart |
| 12 | 1918 | Lewis, Sinclair | curious puttering studies, crackling coals | gray centuries |
| 13 | 1922 | Chen, Da (通夫) | as a “monstrous” creature, puffing | China; flappers |
| 14 | 1922 | Lockert, Lacy (on John Galsworthy) | the man of broad, clear, imaginative vision, not | experiment; vagaries |
| 15 | 2004 | Knopp, Lisa (on Frank Zyback) | metal things at the hardware store | center-pivot irrigators; invention |
| 16 | 1827 | Hedge, Mary Ann (M. A. H.) | about a bit, especially to wait | |
| 17 | 1843 | Emerson, Ralph Waldo | to use the country phrase | nails |
| 18 | 1841 | Seneca, The New Genesee Farmer | small potatoes; long manure | long manure; root culture |
| 19 | 1855 | Stephens, Harriet Marion | or, Passion and Reality | Hagar; race |
| 20 | 1849 | Knickerbocker, The | broke in with this searching remark | coincidences |
| 21 | 1863 | Adams, Mrs. G. H. (Elba, Wis.) | nothing that he would call any thing, or you either, taken separately | how any one could get tired |
| 22 | 1903 | Wright, Joseph English Dialect Dict. | to walk slowly or feebly; to halt, hobble... | lexicon |
| 23 | 1900 | Lowe, F. T. | reserves | telegraphic code; social code |
| 24 | 1924 | Hull, Helen R. | departed with his gloves | puer aeternus |
| 25 | 1843 | Johnson, Samuel; The Knickerbocker | I do not much wish well to discoveries, for | discoveries |
| 26 | 1839 | Pierce, Daniel Thompson | Oh, nothing very special — nothing of any great consequence — — | Vermont |
| 27 | 1860 | Soule, Caroline A. | my economy quilt | clergymen’s wives; economy |
| 27a | 1860 | Soule, Caroline A. | my economy quilt | transcription, ibid. |
| 28 | 1865 | Stoddard, Elizabeth | with gum-arabic and sea-weed | |
| 29 | 1921 | Anderson, Sherwood | about with a camera, nowhere into nothing | |
| 30 | 1866 | Alger, W. R. (on Madame Swetchine) | of time, and no exhaling vapor | |
| 31 | 1855 | Fern, Fanny (Sarah Payson Willis) | it would be stepping off your pedestal, you’ve got other things to do | antimonial; husbands |
| 32 | 1855 | Fern, Fanny (Sarah Payson Willis) | and, with the timely aid of a stray sunbeam | good-for-nothingness |
| 33 | 1897 | Root, Frederick Stanley | power through repose | Annie Payson Call |
| 34 | 1901 | New Mexico, Governor of | a visionary scheme, it was declared | date palm; desert; present signs |
| 35 | 1911 | Cameron, Ruth (Persis Dwight Hannah) | and they’ve rusted and most ruined the skirt | class; housekeeping |
| 36 | 1902 | Sylvester, Sara | the seams, with the comforting remark | sanitarium |
| 37 | 1898 | Lloyd, Alfred Henry | what he does or makes is wholly idle, being useless to him in the next minute | action; doubt; laboratories |
| 38 | 1897 | Herrick, Robert | She wondered what he had been so anxious to burn. | papers |
| 39 | 1904 | Clarke, Lulu MacClure | The exigencies of the case demand | feminist; some peculiar reasons |
| 40 | 1908 | Domestic Engineering | regular monkey and parrot time | Master of Mechanical Details |
| 41 | 1911 | Automobile Topics | that the electric is essentially a woman’s vehicle | EV; automotive; gender |
| 42 | 1903 | Hardy, Arthur Sherburne | But the life is so narrow, their interests so small... | socio-economic class |
| 43 | 1902 | Clark, Edward B. | And the meadows are green. | the forty-thousand dollar carnation |
| 43a | 1902 | Farmers’ Review | lightly and disappeared | negro, negroes; racism; whites |
| 44 | 1900 | Crockett, Montgomery A. | of hemorrhage, and the avoidance of “puttering” during the operation | gynecology; shock; surgery |
| 45 | 1901 | Marcy, Henry O. | the chief cornerstone in the new edifice | gynecology; instrumentalism |
| 46 | 1911 | Kimball, Atkinson (pseud.) | green to see what happens | conceptualist musing; amateurism |
| 47 | 1918 | Wallace, Emma Gary | so much of it fragmentary | clergy; philosophical pharmacy |
| 48 | 1991 | Waugh, Douglas M.D. | not only unnecessary but also of little or no immediate importance | mindless activity; recuperative |
| 49 | 1918 | Norris, Charles Gilman | the clink of glasses. presently | en passant |
| 50 | 1918 | Bulletin of Photography | makeshift things, things that are | a day of doers, of men who see |
| 51 | 2021 | Fitbit | for a plurality of moments of interest | metabolic equivalent of task (MET) |
| 52 | 1922 | Sies, Alice Corbin | all bound up in the use of the hands | Spontaneous and Supervised Play |
| 53 | 1920 | Clum, Woodworth | ultimates and confiscation, pink variety | A. W. Calhoun; W. E. Zeuch |
| 54 | 1920 | Cooke, Edmund Vance | to train the ants to play and dance, to teach the toad to stutter | verse; recuperative |
| 55 | 1918 | Tuttle, W. C. | around, and writing letters | loitering; suspicion; westerns |
| 56 | 1942 | Parks, Robert O. | it was raining outside. | the arts of war; recuperative |
| 57 | 1915 | Hale, Louise Closser | some dull wooden station, muddy town | motoring; mud; recuperative |
| 58 | 1915 | Universal Drafting Machine Co. | enemy to accuracy, and produces bad habits of thought | drawing; mental hygiene |
| 59 | 1912 | Austin, Mary Hunter | fairly bristling with an objectionable maleness | anger; offensiveness; retail |
| 60 | 1864 | The Country Gentleman, N. J. C. | any single thing which can be enumerated | agriculture; Mr. Anti-putterer |
| 61 | 1878 | Bell, Mrs. Lucia Chase | here a little, and there a little of | learning; reading; recuperative |
| 62 | 1961 | Caillois, Roger | wan... detached and idle, certain | game theory; orientalizing |
| 63 | 1879 | Tourgée, Albion Winegar | legislators and theorizers have been puttering and quibbling upon the idea | racism; reconstruction |
| 64 | 1980 | Tyler, Anne | a tinkering, puttering, hardware sort | hardware; tinkering |
| 65 | 1884 | Pierce, L. B. | that all skilled work is puttering | the cheapness of land; recuperative |
| 66 | 1886 | Jennings, Thomas | with this burlesque as a consequence | residential schools; Menominee |
| 67 | 1892 | Thwaites, Reuben Gold (on Lyman Draper) | and as for generalization he abhorred it | American border history |
| 68 | 1891 | Eggleston, Edward (and A. S. Winston) | a readjustment of the relations between the moon and tides | aërial therapeutics |
| 69 | 1895 | McConnell, Alice Barber | and she began the “puttering” rambling over the foot-hills | relief; temperance |
| 70 | 1897 | Powers, S.; Clute, Oscar | with water and shade and perhaps, after light frost in November | strawberries; casava; the ministry |
| 71 | 1902 | Wilson, Harry Leon | absolute zero | on fortune, and spending it |
| 72 | 1903 | Cotton, Alfred C., M.D. | the man who intends | breastfeeding; maleness |
| 73 | 1912 | Snow, Mary S. | the less money, the more need for psychology | comparative puttering; economy |
| 74 | 1906 | Kuyper, Abraham | varnish and plaster... the well-known mirage of the desert | anti-modernism; jeremiad |
| 75 | 1913 | Flandrau, Charles Macomb | the reduction of puttering to a science | minimalist living |
| 76 | 1907 | Horn, P. W. (Houston, Texas) | and so long as a blind trail | education; habit-formation |
| 77 | 1913 | Weed, Clarence Moores | on my “abandoned farm” | herpetology |
| 78 | 1905 | Whiting, Maisie B. | that Sobriety was puttering around here | The Pink Swan Pattern |
| 79 | 1913 | Johnson, C. N. | an ingenuity not to be despised, a material of which we are never certain | decay; dental; pyorrhea alveolaris |
| 80 | 1906 | Miller, Charles C. | when in a good season there ought to be lively work | apiary; starvation |
| 81 | 1907 | Indian School Journal (Chilocco) | the most genuine surviving relic, their wares spread out about them | residential schools; wrinklings |
| 82 | 1905 | Austin, Mary Hunter | oners. Besides | — |
| 83 | 1908 | Sweet, Frank H. | big clump of tickle grass and flung | ageism; puttering as obligation |
| 83a | 1908 | Sweet, Frank H. | A New Start | transcription, ibid. |
| 84 | 1919 | Treves, André | about’; and not until long after does he awake | idleness; rehabilitation; war |
| 85 | 1921 | Perry, Ralph Barton | Domestic Superstitions | gender politics; domestic economy |
| 86 | 1921 | Collins, Harrison | black threads for lines | Japan; mistranslation |
| 87 | 1921 | — | cynic stock, petty mire | H. D.; The Bookman |
| 88 | 1922 | Black, Alexander (and Esther Brock Bird) | the peering, puttering analyses of subject, the apprehensive discrimination | What’s in a Place?; The Bookman |
| 89 | 1921 | Riess, John | as he is today; and his duty toward | engineering; labor; AFL |
| 90 | 1996 | Gornick, Vivian | in a drawerful of little cardboard boxes | gender; hardware; small anxieties |
| 91 | 1911 | Fay, Charles Norman | with details. a live issue. another plain tale. so long. | Chicago; “Is Democracy a Failure?” |
| 92 | 1916 | Stone, George E. | tamping and troweling | shade trees; unscrupulous workers |
| 93 | 1914 | Caldwell, Daniel E. | that he should do this and do that | Pacific Poultrycraft; rabbit-keeping |
| 94 | 1915 | Pattison, Harold | arch enemy to highest usefulness | clergy; ministry; distractions |
| 95 | 1920 | Corbett, Elizabeth Frances | up to a certain point; that point passed | painting; procrastination |
| 96 | 1918 | Burroughs, Edgar Rice | a hopeless endeavour | north; The Gods of Mars |
| 97 | 1918 | Adams, Edward F. (Commonwealth Club) | It does not get anywhere. | immigration; race; California |
| 98 | 1918 | Sharp, Dallas Lore | in some Minnesota pasapoplectic struggle, plover though it be | Birds of the Salt Marsh |
| 99 | 1922 | Boddy, Luther | the exhaust? that noise? | the Black body; racism |
| 100 | 1923 | Schwimmer, Rosika | another puttering utpouring | Cécile Tormay; Hungarian politics |
| 101 | 1959 | Van Gogh, Vincent | silly theory, in four columns | — |
| 102 | 1925 | Jones, Marc Edmund | planing away the surface | Codex Occultus; Sabian Assembly |
| 103 | 1912 | Wells, Kate Gannett | needless ironing. | domestic economy; efficiency |
| 103a | 1912 | Wells, Kate Gannett | Tangible Present, Thoughts of Strange Things, A Silent Appeal | ibid.; context |
| 104 | 1883 | Champney, Lizzie W.; The Continent | and, strange to say, he went over the mountain this evening | woman’s work; Albion W. Tourgée |
| 105 | 2010 | Schulenberg, Thomas S., et al | pee’i’i’i’i’i’i’i’i’i’i’i’i’i’i’i’i’ew. | birdsong; ornithology; Peru |
| 106 | 1875 | Pollock, Frederick | sparing of words, yet by a condensation | William Macready; putterance |
| 107 | 1782 | Baker, David Erskine | styled in the ride; page one of Levell’d. Wood | putterance; “like will to like” |
| 108 | 1915 | Silas, Uncle | puttering light in the leaves | efficiency; poetry; stenography |
| 109 | 1911 | Mulford, Clarence Edward | And there was that geologist; he must have slipped one noon | innocent or suspicious puttering |
| 110 | 1904 | Bryant, Lilian True | under the trees in the hay fields, with the same Latin grammar | education; Nathaniel T. True |
| 111 | 1881 | Dall, Caroline Wells Healey | a sort of angry impatience, a uniformity of change | proto-influencers; California |
| 112 | 1900 | Lee, Jennette (Barbour Perry) | afraid of being laughed at. It was his conscience. | gender; woman’s work |
| 113 | 2012 | Summerfield, Mark | with a map | Go; ordered map; Philip K. Dick |
| 114 | 1977 | Babitz, Eve | the world got slower | baseball; Los Angeles; motoring |
| 115 | 1994 | Eigner, Larry | sundry times, around | Larry Eigner; Baruch Spinoza; ToC |
| 116 | 1975 | Ashbery, John | a lot of here and there | dust; method |
| 117 | 1923 | Kelley, Edith Summers | of much commoner clay; a mere clod | pestilence |
| 118 | 1868 | Blood, Benjamin Paul | these simple imitations, as dissimilar as a horse and an intuition | alphabet; poetical engines |
| 119 | 1913 | Jennings, Al; Irwin, Will | Dick, engage this person in conversation while I look around. | ineptitude; lawnessness; Oklahoma |
| 120 | 1915 | Lockhart, Caroline | thick, and a safe distance from the work | mining; Wyoming |
| 121 | 1903 | Jamieson, Malcolm McGregor | ever so far removed from mere | the most elemental, the highest art |
| 122 | 1920 | Chatham, Dennis and Marion; A. L. M. | anything that is frankly trivial | dictionaries; woodpeckers |
| 123 | 1902 | Chicago Dry Goods Reporter | lines on a side street, circling | Ray Bradbury; Oklahoma |
| 124 | 1929 | Wolfe, Albert Benedict | both virgin wool and shoddy | Foundation pennies; insignificances |
| 125 | 1910 | Gilman, Charlotte Perkins | talking machines; alphabets of dead languages | ageism; humanness |
| 126 | 1912 | Clark, Mary Gail (Gomez) | and they turned their attention to the drama | gender-fluid; nuclear; abstraction |
| 127 | 1960 | Nash, Jay B.; Fyodor Dostoevsky | a bridge; a character of uselessness | leisure; work, purposeful |
| 128 | 1925 | Simmons, Charles Finlay | or a whe-e r r r r o o o of a more sudden low goop-goop | birdsong; ornithology; Texas |
| 129 | 1922 | Lee, Gerald Stanley | a saw and a nail, a passing word | exercise; unkrinkling; walking |
| 130 | 1875 | Hering, Constantine | Borax. Plumbum. Sepia, can scarcely. | homeopathy; materia medica |
| 131 | 2015 | Baume, Sara | Here’s my driftwood. joining the swatches. | pottering |
| 132 | 1913 | Lagerstedt, Albert | by blowing out the gas | filibustering; W. K. Rogers |
| 132a | 1913 | Lagerstedt, Albert | a cup of cream. I belong to no church | William Kissane Rogers |
| 132b | 1919 | Juda, Miss Fanny | California Filibusters | filibustering; William Walker, et al. |
| 133 | 1933 | Olson, Charles; Herman Melville | stranger lands, disturbed the dust would be | presentiments; rovings |
| 134 | 1890 | Hamsun, Knut; Lyngstad, Sverre | puslende pusler, pusle, pusled | some strips of paper |
| 135 | 1874 | Perkins, Frederic Beecher | the huge dark ungainly mass of | order; disorder, daughters |
| 136 | 1991 | Adams, Alice; Norris, Charles Gilman | but he was unaccustomed to it | gardening; orts; Berkeley |
| 137 | 1977 | Handke, Peter | then silence. in the end | — |
| 138 | 2013 | various | suttera puttera; ja, doch, schon | putterance; and followed by a pause |
| 139 | 1989 | King, Florence | sputtering, instead of | gardening; orts |
| 140 | 1909 | Tracy, Virginia | the gray stage, the gray | grays; theatre |
| 141 | 1924 | Seabury, David | gray-haired men, their contraptions and strange sentences | bench vs desk; grays; telegraphy |
| 142 | 1903 | Ford, Guy Stanton | utterances of, hopeless | Prussia |
| 143 | 1925 | Levick, M. B. | I guess that’s taking dictation | putterment |
| 143a | — | Levick, M. B. | writings, sorted | ibid.; context |
| 144 | 1878 | Woodruff, George H., et al | all conspired to divest the wilderness of its romance | puuttering; Joliet; “Fort Nonsense” |
| 145 | 1859 | Ainsworth, Robert; Anthon, Charles | a strawberry. a puuttering or sound | puuttering; to have nothing to do |
| 146 | 2011 | Sutherland, John | do not fall happily from the lips | putterage (bricolage); method |
| 147 | 1913 | Thorndike, E. L. | aimless in the sense | all; because it is what it is |
| 148 | 1957 | Du Bois, W. E. B. | What became of him? | race |
| 149 | 1952 | du Bois, William Pène | Not at all. | interior décor |
| 150 | 1950 | Du Bois, Theodora | planning this improvement and that | Next year we’ll do so and so. |
| 151 | 1972 | Gorky State Pedagogical Institute | graphomania; in the way, in the same way, not the most important ones | putterage; разговорной речи |
| 152 | 1922 | Forman, Henry James | Oh, there’s Boccaccio | even moves to the country |
| 153 | 1973 | Audio-Visual Education Center, UMich | a rainy Thursday; the washing machine won’t start. | boredom; bricolage; French |
| 154 | 1998 | Clover, Carol J.; Douglas, Stan | a zero point much like | gardening; mud; out of synch |
| 155 | 2008 | Storr, Robert; Taylor, Al | at this juncture | ad nauseum; exhausts its utility |
| 156 | 1927 | Noyes, Pierrepont | comparing passages, yesterday and tomorrow | — |
| 157 | 1902 | Noyes, Charles Johnson | several things, nothing much | Uncle Silas; old lame darkey |
| 158 | 1923 | Noyes, John Humphrey | little signs and omens, devil’s providences they might be called | repudiations; Oneida Community |
| 159 | 1938 | Frontier Bees and Honey | we talked about margins, the necessary rule of | Alfred Noyes; apiary; fit and fill |
| 160 | 1914 | Young, Rose Emmet | got drowned in the dishwater | apophony; lumber; middle age |
| 161 | 1889 | Mulford, Prentice | two hours a day | apophony; “Thoughts are Things” |
| 161a | — | Mulford, Prentice | writings, sorted; and about | his was a wanderer’s life |
| 162 | 1871 | Blackwell, Antoinette Brown | a late sense [of] sand, and barnacles still | apophony; clergy; mementos |
| 162a | 1980 | Leach, William E. | its discursiveness, its failure to define | Antoinette Brown Blackwell |
| 163 | 1886 | Farmers’ Review | on a northern or northwestern slope, this need but little further | agriculture; apophony |
| 164 | 1911 | Pier, Florida (Mrs. Scott-Maxwell) | easily shown up, Umm! | picturesque destitution |
| 165 | 1870 | Harper’s Weekly | kick bim and bling into ruins, re | itineracy; tinkering |
| 166 | 1906 | Hale, Louise Closser | speranza, the delicate construction of | a passing hansom; cogs; motoring |
| 167 | 1909 | Sanders, Grace Boteler | so much racket; why, and why | apophony; temperance |
| 168 | 1957 | Lageman, John K. ; Remington, Frank L. | puttering spirits, a 1½ pound wrench | blimp; Coronet; sleep |
| 169 | — | Pier, Florida | writings, sorted; and about | — |
| 169a | 1909 | Pier, Florida | The Blessed Ambient | the deepest importance to lyricism |
| 169b | 1910 | Pier, Florida; Henry James | Pale Adventurers | old gentlemen... his real heroines |
| 169c | 1908 | Pier, Florida | The Passing of the New England Conscience | The door is open. |
| 169d | 1911 | Pier, Florida | Emotions Attendant on Acquiring a Desk | the understanding between you |
| 169e | 1911 | Pier, Florida | Happiness | too elusive... to be even named |
| 169f | 1912 | Pier, Florida | The Mental Pendulum; Projects of the Future | and by its borrowed light |
| 170 | 1950 | Seymour, Wilfred E. | another object; still another | garden cutting tool; scratches; tears |
| 171 | 1910 | Pier, Florida | People with Gardens | gardening; “gomerels” |
| 172 | 2019 | Skubik, Marjorie, et al; Univ of Missouri | in some embodiments | restlessness; surveillance |
| 173 | 1941 | Dunham, Ethel Collins | at her easel, wandering | leisure pursuits; unexceptional |
| 174 | 1942 | Hearst’s International | just as it should be, (somewhere) a thousand miles away | gardening; “lucky, lucky, lucky” |
| 175 | 1996 | Casanova, Ronald; Stephen Blackburn | a puttering kind of old | social work |
| 176 | 1920 | Lee, Gerald Stanley | a puttering kind of store | post office |
| 177 | 1899 | Westcott, Edward Noyes | kind of an ole foozle, but... skunk bus’nis, an’ though | education; putty; skunks |
| 178 | 1919 | Blackford, Katherine M. H., M.D. | always busy but never | the ‘fit,’ the ‘unfit,’ and the ‘misfit’ |
| 179 | 2020 | Tobar, Héctor | asphalt, sea lanes away | asphalt; Peruvian potato patches |
| 180 | 1944 | Saturday Evening Post | The color scheme was her idea | asphalt; blue; soft blue walls |
| 181 | 1997 | Florida Wildlife | in a her made island | asphalt; this particular morning |
| 182 | 1918 | Eichhorn, Theodore | close to the question | asphalt; patching and puttering |
| 183 | 1994 | Huddle, David; Garrett, George | I don’t too much like | prose; and you really meant it |
| 184 | 1937 | Bledsoe, Mary | puttering rocks, shadows slant | North Carolina; “rural fiction” |
| 185 | 1938 | Benjamin, Walter | for like the names of the deceased | desk; desks; exercise books |
| 186 | 1976 | High Fidelity | errant emanations, the unidentified aside | But be philosophical. |
| 187 | 1993 | Ebmeier, Larry | closeted so long | AIDS; philosophical puttering |
| 188 | 2006 | Crease, Robert P.; Lutterbie, John | each moment, a making-explicit of | interpretation; technique |
| 189 | 1926 | Anderson, Frederick | the discovery of a fact | the subtle fluid; the new kind of air |
| 190 | 1958 | Howells, J. Harvey | without drive, the hidden terror | gardening; slough of cordiality |
| 191 | 1968 | Plasencia, Peter P.; and Stone, and Siegel | one piece rather; what holds | paper; scissors; mereology; conatus |
| 192 | 1907 | Wells, Carolyn; Herzog, Felix | teleseme, spoonless; the hand flies back when your want is known | Yassum, said the maid. |
| 193 | 1993 | Caldwell, Bruce J. | thus, and not in vain | philosophy and methodology |
| 194 | 1968 | Rodgers, Andrew Denny; Asa Gray et al | studying roses considerably as he journeyed | botany; Georg Engelmann |
| 195 | 1880 | Frank Leslie’s Pleasant Hours (anon) | season after season be-still tinkered | patents; blacksmithing; inventions |
| 196 | 1912 | The School Journal (anon) | fine-spun arithmetic, sure and exact | sojuring; progressive education |
| 197 | 1908 | Hall, G. Stanley | the alternative, if, as, must | telepathy |
| 198 | 1909 | Hughes, Rupert; Hall, G. Stanley | the spirits could not séance, pocket-mirror scribes | indictment; occultism; spiritualism |
| 199 | 1899 | Hughes, Rupert | The whole problem was reversed. | wrestling |
| 200 | 1915 | Hughes, Rupert; James M. Flagg | He thought its outline was familiar. | chase scene; obstacles; 641416 |
| 201 | 1917 | Hughes, Rupert; James M. Flagg | the superlative human luxury | sparrows; unwarrantably defaced |
| 202 | 1919 | Hughes, Rupert; Raleigh, Henry Patrick | a circle that cannot be quite squared | marriage; quandaries |
| 203 | 1926 | Hughes, Rupert | She had kept it alive by soothing it to silence | bluffs and bottoms; hardware lit |
| 204 | 1920 | Hughes, Rupert; Snapp, Frank | the defects of his qualities and the qualities of his defects | sculpture |
| 205 | 1923 | Hughes, Rupert; Keller, Arthur Ignatius | almost pleasant at this distance | glaciers; shame; walls |
| 206 | 1798 | Immanuel Kant | the thread between her fingers | unbedeutenden gesprächen |
| 207 | 1845 | Douglass, Frederick; anon. | every day, and every where; nothing about it | slavery; race; racism |
| 208 | 1909 | Pier, Florida | and he gave his thoughts a loose reign | |
| 209 | 1910 | Payne, Will | speaking at random... sneaked off to the library | domestic harmony; idiocity |
| 210 | 1921 | Payne, Will | or rather, a divided mind | baffling plot; detective story |
| 211 | 1867 | Hamilton, Gail; Hauck, Jack E. | Quite a big boat, for such a relatively small pond. | wool-gathering; boat, eponymous |
| 212 | 1999 | Donniger, Wendy (ed.) | a thread of blue. | Deuteronomy; Numbers |
| 213 | 1924 | Dakin, W. J. | “Respiration in fishes” and “Putterism.” | differences of opinion |
| 214 | 1957 | Jernigan, Muriel Molland | the thousand and one tasks a working girl neglects | Katharine Carl; 慈禧太后 |
| 215 | 1900 | Zwilgmeyer, Dikken; Holter, Clara Alice | in utmost astonishment | — |
| 216 | 1957 | Corbett, Elizabeth Frances | We won’t stay a minute. Where’s the rest? | a new reason to live |
| 217 | 1928 | Flint, Leon Nelson | said it felt like spring | dance; trite subjects |
| 218 | 1915 | Boot & Shoe Workers Union | and dancing around / to the hard place | dance |
| 219 | 1921 | Science and Invention | and mussing looking wish lay upon a cushion | the quiet suburbs of Los Angeles |
| 220 | 1920 | Science and Invention | a rheostat. a condenser. a lifetime’s work, and tightening of screws. | Frank R. Paul (illustrator) |
| 221 | 1872 | Smith, William; B. F. W.; S. C. B. | invisible sometimes a place of | Bible, dictionary of |
| 222 | 1921 | Greg, Albert Sidney; Rowland Haynes | spare time, a brace and a bit, an entirely new groove | Invisible University; hobbies |
| 223 | 1919 | American Lutheran Survey | in the files, some of the invisible around | visibles; a narrow limited circle |
| 224 | 1914 | Lyman, Olin. L; LeBlanc, Maurice | specialized reading, a new line even more insoluble | visibles; “Picture the situation.” |
| 225 | 1926 | Mortimer, Lillian (Naillil Remitrom) | Dusts chair, dusts books; farming or something | Anita Loos; Emma Augusta Sharkey |
| 226 | 1974 | Loos, Mary (Anita); Fred Pfeiffer | always the lab, tending his roses. | Hollywood |
| 227 | 1872 | The College Courant; Bronson Alcott | in large innocence grave, puttering with the stars | an empty and useless stare |
| 228 | 1919 | Black, Alexander | hidden river; a heap of notes. | diagramming; sidereal spark |
| 229 | 1923 | Titus, Harold; Stockton Mulford | went too far. well after dark. the inch the story | Tuesday |
| 230 | 1900 | Christian, F. W.; The Critic | who really knows something; the same | Caroline Islands; missionaries |
| 231 | 1918 | Repplier, Agnes; C. M. Flandrau | an island in the sea, unwarranted eruption; even the delicate tracery | writing |
| 232 | 1890 | Scientific American | withouting proof, machinist he | areca nut; knowing how |
| 233 | 1922 | Watson, Herbert | on Friday’s part, then, and only a letter | island; sincerity; Robinson Crusoe |
| 234 | 1924 | Irwin, Inez Haynes | mysterious minor pursuits | amateur dressmaking |
| 235 | 1896 | Kitchel, Cornelius Porter | pasteboard and painted | purple patchery; toys |
| 236 | 1968 | Wolfe, Bernard | all the shirts returned; a few readymades | personal |
| 237 | 2019 | Berg, Aase | babbling for the sake of babbling, a kind of music | garbage heap; patriarchy |
| 238 | 1895 | Gleanings in Bee Culture | partially water, but position these entwines | islands; apiary; water |
| 239 | 1993 | Muske-Dukes, Carol | a cry here, a comment there, bits of lives outside | women in science |
| 240 | 1925 | Safford, Victor | both at rest and in motion | disability; immigration; race |
| 241 | 1985 | Rosenthal, Stephen | accumulated junk, devious permutations | abstraction; glossary; paint |
| 242 | 1926 | P. T. A. Magazine | Jack, Jane, an Old Man. Rows of books. | and any pictures |
| 243 | 1925 | Norris, Kathleen | inaccurate fingers; desire so dreary | dysfunctional Irish-Catholic families |
| 244 | 1917 | Photo-Era; John J. Enneking | and dry bones failing | failures; tinware |
| 245 | 2003 | Augustine, Sue | some semblance of order | |
| 246 | 1989 | Stoddard, Alexandra | around me and in my mind times when | Happiness Movement |
| 247 | 1938 | Ueland, Brenda | sharp, staccato ideas; by action at last | slow big ideas; Plotinus |
| 248 | 1938 | Hartmann, Sadakichi | a good listener though | Albert Pinkham Ryder |
| 249 | 1990 | Pilcher, Rosamunde | “Just that.” | gardening; method; style |
| 250 | 1857 | Graham’s Illustrated Magazine | without the slightest idea; rivening, ’riv | Balearic Islands; arriv; arrov |
| 251 | — | Norris, Kathleen | a baker’s dozen blue, sort of, to see | extinguishing what fire there was |
| 252 | 1939 | Hauser, Heinrich | puffing blubblub pfft pfft turned primitive | at sea |
| 253 | 1998 | Norris, Kathleen (poet) | a kind of daft doing the dishes | housewife; quotidian mysteries |
| 254 | 1844 | Marryat, (Captain) Frederick | when the rain came | apophony; wreck of the Pacific |
| 255 | 1845 | Hardman, Frederick | put tering eye, blue cap and pale; the ball as it fell | Carlism; Spain |
| 256 | 2000 | Dunning, Jennifer; Vicky Shick | certainly not | chairs; dance; sleeves |
| 257 | 1915 | Davenport, Charles B. | seclusive and inclined | eugenics; manicule |
| 258 | 1931 | Capra, Frank; Robert Riskin | others can never master it | one’s mind must be at ease |
| 259 | 1899 | Garland, Hamlin; E. W. Deming | to wait and mark it the other way | corn; planting; prairie |
| 260 | 1886 | McClelland, Mary Greenway | surprise and rebuke, and dodging | forest taint; author of oblivion |
| 261 | — | Sondheim, Stephen, et al. | puttern sleeve | enjambment; clutter humming |
| 262 | 1923 | Grey, Zane | You expect pay for this ? | desert; desert philosophizing |
| 263 | 1923 | Newton, Stanley | And winging over and through this Babel | Sioux; diapason of the rapids |
| 264 | 1982 | Seltz, David D. | pencan make, certain voids in their lives | make-believe social letters |
| 265 | 1870 | Warner, Charles Dudley | holes and hills. But, after all | gardening; misogyny |
| 266 | 1909 | Tyler, John Mason | light work these evils, she never learns to play | hygiene and physical education |
| 267 | 1678 | Sandys, George; Ovid | puttering light, mythologized, snatcht | Metamorphosis |
| 268 | 1892 | Porter, Sarah H(arvey) | outside matters; consonant interruptions; vowels, hieroglyphics | deaf education; forest-trained eye |
| 269 | 1897 | Wells, Amos Russel | no indecision, a paradox, and nailing him | attention; attention getting |
| 270 | 1988 | Stevens, R. C.; Christian Gottlob Knauss | Would she be interested? | instincts; the puttering instincts |
| 271 | 2012 | Kuberski, Philip; Stanley Kubrick | with bones, the pensive Moon-watcher moves | darkness; emptiness; C. G. Jung |
| 272 | 2008 | King, William Davies | one object beside another, and then another | collections of nothing; depression |
| 273 | 1920 | Gardiner, Almon Henry | air hollow, working north, a feely morning | deer hunting; brain-pictures |
| 274 | 1928 | King, Rufus | odds and ends, various little | placidly; Sweden; whodunit |
| 275 | 1908 | Thomson, Permelia Corey | unbleached cotton, a caution to the rest | indigo; and nankeen pantalettes |
| 276 | 1923 | Rath, E. J.; Edith Rathbone Jacobs | all the valves out, something on impulse; a more engaging occupation | Chauncey Brainerd; G. H. Watt |
| 277 | 1917 | Ostrander, Isabel | idle theories or chimerical clues, and the wide world in which to forget it all | intuitionism; anticipatory shades |
| 278 | 1915 | Hale, Louise Closser | not of the theater, the heap of garments, the violet-tinted note | water, anathematized |
| 279 | 1919 | Hurst, Fannie; Blanche Colton Williams | or a chance word be the seed of an idea, but most often | method; the short story |
| 280 | 1925 | Hurst, Fannie | haggling days, liability days. asset days. | stretching classes; assimilation |
| 281 | 1903 | McCutcheon, George Barr | puff ! no matter | gardening; museum pieces |
| 282 | 1906 | Holmes, Sherlock; Punch | as it was, he was of mustard . quite | method; child is father to the man |
| 283 | 1906 | Johnson, George | or it withers ex and the ablative groove | ablation; theory and verification |
| 284 | 1925 | Black, Alexander | Hence certain prejudices. Curves. | differences; logic; raiment |
| 285 | 1907 | Crewdson, Charles N.; Amy Richards | some puttering kind of job — what became of John | scattering |
| 286 | 1900 | Lee, Gerald Stanley | or thought of having a thought, at every turn he cannot see | habit; love; letting one’s self go |
| 287 | 1921 | Hardware World | take paint for example | harmonious and artistic effects |
| 288 | 1921 | The Christian Diadem & Family Keepsake | while the land at the puttering all | John Dowling; Zephaniah Paten |
| 289 | 1934 | Baldwin, Faith | Art makes me tired. | geraniums; zinnias |
| 290 | 1934 | Hughes, Rupert | indistinguishable syllables, a kind of coma intervened | musical fiction |
| 291 | 1918 | Coast Banker and California Banker | I stooped to pick up a stone that lay on the walk. | Arthur Mann. “I don’t know.” |
| 292 | 1919 | Hale, Susan | meanwhile, a study of Rocks in Sepia | prodigalities |
| 293 | 1955 | Hale, Nancy | the entire showing | and caution |
| 294 | 1906 | Forman, Justus Miles | I drift. Sometime I shall strand somewhere, I expect. For the present, I drift. | like a man in a book |
| 294a | 1906 | Forman, Justus Miles | Ulysses McCleod / hold that thought | ibid.; context |
| 295 | 1912 | Markham, Edwin | of sound mind, did not answer. | Sophronia; of unknown origin |
| 296 | 1912 | Chapple, Joe; Flynn Wayne | not worth uttering | spring; “Tickleweed and Feathers” |
| 297 | 1937 | Motion Picture Review Digest | right out of thin air | melodrama; William McGann |
| 298 | 1926 | Ostenso, Martha | it was no mere curiosity, however | melodrama; novelist from nowhere |
| 299 | 1968 | Hitchcock, Alfred; Leo Braudy | They could pull down their blinds, but they never do. | It’s none of my business. |
| 300 | 1927 | Lindsay, Vachel; Ernst Hofer | floating oceans the whole sentence comes out | mosaic; barbering and bobbing |
| 301 | 1939 | La Farge, Christopher | of words, in the long fields dipping down | crises; distances; shooting |
| 302 | 1925 | Ostenso, Martha | about haphazard trifles, at a standstill | omnium gatherum |
| 303 | 1935 | Harding, Bertita | among the bottles, the flowers, the tiny laboratory; this confusion of identities | Some people need no stimulants |
| 304 | 1911 | Richards, Laura E. | what she called her puttering, searching mainly for dust | knots; omnium gatherum |
| 305 | 1927 | Breder, C. M. | more or less given to wandering, in comparatively barren fields | ichthyology; anuran life habits |
| 306 | 1926 | Greenber, A.S. and Simon Broder | without any idea, an account of | C. F. Schönbein; nitrocelluose |
| 307 | 1986 | Purdy, Al | in a workshop jammed with hypotheses | Antonie van Leeuwenhoek |
| 308 | 1938 | Nash, Jay Bryan | choices, one on top of another | bridges; rhythm, own; sandpile |
| 309 | 1920 | Durkin, Douglas | on a farm? | railroad construction; silence |
| 310 | 1856 | College Journal of Medical Science | a burlesque upon chemistry, the preparation of Alnuine ! | the ableist ability; eclectic medicine |
| 311 | 1919 | Yezierska, Anzia | an empty desert of enforced idleness | rags-to-riches, so-called |
| 312 | 1997 | Dixon, Wheeler W.; Jean-Luc Godard | bent over his notebooks, the lamplight glowing softly | cage; cinema; grids; method; prison |
| 313 | 1904 | Alzheimer, Alois; Konrad & Ulrike Maurer | all manner of objects, hid; appeared not to know her way | method; plight; telegram style |
| 314 | 1909 | Webster, Jean | prostrated about the shrubs, a cheerful two-step | much ado; the carriage room |
| 315 | 1943 | Shirley, Jean (?) | weird boxes that hummed; that none could understand | laboratory; why in the world |
| 316 | 1919 | Stewart, Alexander A.; United Typothetae | unless perfectly justified and firmly held | compositing; working at the case |
| 317 | 1887 | Saur, Prudence B., M.D. | without method, without system; a very upas tree | deafness; defect of vision; nursing |
| 318 | 1917 | Sibley, Walter “Hi” | the most flagrant errors; the proper method. this | foundry; chance; chills; geometry |
| 319 | 1938 | Lyon, Jean | arguments, other ways than | manners of the moment |
| 319a | — | Lyon, Jean (1902-1960) | writings, sorted; and about | — |
| 319b | 1920 | Lyon, Jean | Sonnet; “Lizzie”; Mokanshan — My Birthplace | cockfight; orogeny; missed calling |
| 320 | 2007 | Goffette, Guy; Marilyn Hacker, trans. | I’ve left | incomprehensible writing, kinds of |
| 321 | 1915 | Morrison, Roger Leroy | a tub full of mud and water, a drain under a boggy place | earth roads; underdrainage |
| 322 | 1996 | Lasswell, Steven | calingssagtuq .to.no.particular.end | Central Alaskan Yup’ik; mood |
| 323 | 1953 | de Camp, L. Sprague | pois nāo? | exoplanetary fashion; machine shop |
| 324 | 1923 | Sawyer, Ruth | clay and tools and doing nothing; better than argument | melodrama; useless words |
| 325 | 1913 | Gates, Eleanor | no search of the dictionary; seven, she murmured, seven | tongues; time, no great amount of |
| 326 | 1919 | Gates, Eleanor | and blue eyes, and hunting worms, and moving-pictures yearning | melodrama; fateful telegrams |
| 327 | 2001 | Robinson, Perry (and Earl, and Morris) | the passage of time, saving everything; all junk is valuable. but. | gardening; philosophy |
| 328 | 1923 | Street, Julian | some papers on his blotting pad; just a condition. | difficulties? Boreas; North Wind |
| 329 | 1926 | Street, Ada and Julian | of cycles, streets, tides | Oakland; Chicago; real estate |
| 330 | 1919 | Sinclair, May | agaye. agaye. get away, to agaye. | consciousness, “if it was even my” |
| 331 | 2011 | The New York Times | in the order they present themselves | consciousness, stream of; purpose |
| 332 | 1897 | Fifield, Edwin W. | could not speak as good as I had at times before | beards; Kawaihapai |
| 333 | 2002 | McCloskey, Molly | In no time at all, I think, I will know something about everything. | abstracts, writing of; The TLS |
| 334 | 1914 | Fuller, James C. (& Sally Brown) | Vimedia | nostrum evil and quackery |
| 335 | 1877 | Leigh, Edgerton | as if it had paper under it | state, unhealthy; Cheshire |
| 336 | 1904 | Sharp, Dallas Lore | on up we wound; by noon I had completed a circle | Hingham; meadows; walking |
| 337 | 1905 | Peterson, Rachel Wild | as many do. so many | Holiness mission; Denver |
| 338 | 1912 | Schauffler, Rachel Capen | and lost there were lost to the world | missionaries; Persia |
| 339 | 1932 | Survey Graphic | surfeit of agendas, his fool way the way out | that’s the worst |
| 340 | 1919 | American Lutheran Survey | that never gets beyond a new order | the light might show him a crevice |
| 341 | 1919 | McCorkle, Paul | another example of a miracle | expensive nuisance, to his surprise |
| 342 | 1913 | Thompson, Carl W. and G. P. Warber | no matter how cold it is, even though | abiding sense; Southern Minnesota |
| 343 | 1513 | Mauri de Ascha (Aschheim) | reabes legenda, you will be repaid | horizon; arise |
| 344 | 1923 | Music Trade Indicator | aeolian occasionally | Standard Pneumatic Action Co. |
| 345 | 1923 | Hunt, Richard | rustle legato slur | birdsong; ornithology; phonetics |
| 346 | 1945 | Hometown Daily Newspapers | just as good as having gone, as soon. nearby. earby | readership study; reading |
| 347 | 1907 | Noyes, Frederick Kinney; Helen Rowland | and compasses, and tiddle-um things; sewer systems or what not | architecture; futures; marriage |
| 348 | 2007 | Fairman, Huck | perpetual motion... a way, he supposes, of dealing with being ever on display | mixology; unstunting |
| 349 | 1923 | Betts, Leston W. | guessing at the distant letters... entangled | ageism; optometry; refractionism |
| 350 | 1917 | Ward, (Charles) Henshaw | preliminary flourish, phlegmatic correction, puttering close | thobbing; fear, of oneself |
| 351 | 1923 | The Maritime Farmer & Co-op Dairyman | puttering dust, at any time weeds | weeds; Herbert Groh |
| 352 | 1926 | Walrond, Eric | of puttering water. he paused | foetic blur; debris of an exotic kind |
| 353 | 1947 | Murray, Joan (Vincent); John Ashbery | and puttering water sounding | incompleteness; “uncollectedness” |
| 354 | 1927 | Jackson, Lyle Wendell Redverse | puttering we booke beneath the scars avows all | aspen; south and encautive |
| 355 | 1937 | Mack, Reba G.; W. A. McCall; J. C. Almack | too-too-too-too-too-too | slow reading; implied facts |
putterings what
I cannot recall what caused me to malinger over the word “puttering” — was it the Sherwood Anderson appearance in The Seven Arts ? — and to engage in another of my trawlings. But this one is different.
The lexical and etymological aspects of the word, although various, are one thing; its uses and contexts another. Who uses which of its senses, to what ends. Who gets to putter. Who must not. Who is accused of puttering, and who does the accusing, or assumes entitlement to do so. Who has permission to putter, who not. Where is it the theme of reflection, and where used as shorthand, and in both wheres, for what. Where does its inclusion in alliterative chains — congeries — owe as much to sound as sense. Some extended ruminations on the word putter would redeem it; others condemn. So much policing.
Gender and class enter into this. Maybe race.
Concerns of this sort have not much occupied or driven my previous google books-search based trawlings. Here, they are at least part of the work. With only a few exceptions, usages don’t go back far, so while the findings were many, they are relatively finite. These tumblr posts (and this html archive) are primarily a personal aide-mémoire intended to keep me from getting buried under my own heap of findings. I only publish them, so to speak, as a way of pushing them away, keeping them at bay for the time being. And too, this project itself is only another temporizing instance of my puttering.
afterthoughts (a few months following the above) —
And then — inevitably? — there came the derivations of these derivations, second-order derivatives? : link.
These involve the putterings titles, and some of their respective notes, with occasional occlusions and reorderings. I had not anticipated these, and even resisted the idea for a while. They are limited to the available language. I do not sequence my landings/findings to a some pre-arranged idea. They fall where they fall, and thus their derivations. Their glue is more music than sense.
I’ve lingered on some authors, well beyond their respective usages of the word “puttering” — M. B. Levick and Florida Pier (Scott-Maxwell) above all (so far). These detours, and the derivations just mentioned, were not foreseen when this project got haltingly under way in January 2022.
21 September 2023