puutterings
puutterings
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I don’t know just where we are now.
How many of us are abject slaves to “things.” It nearly kills me to clean house, says one, for I’ve so many “things.” They all have to be cleaned and dusted twice a year and a good many have to be repaired. It takes me all the time, says another, to keep my house even decently tidy. We’ve so many “things” it takes one woman all her time to care for them. And so we go, all of us, wearing our energy away, puttering our time away, enslaving ourselves to “things.” What kind of “things”? Oh, curtains and portieres and draperies and couch covers and sofa pillows and crazy quilts and vases and things you buy at the ten-cent store and cheap pictures and tag ends of dishes that you’ve no use for and which you bought at a sale, and rugs and carpets and blankets and birds in cages and artificial palms and wax flowers and enlarged pictures and statuettes and rocking chairs and big heavy wooden bedsteads and tabourettes and pedestals and knickety-knackety stands and all of those other things which installment stores advertise as making a house look “homey.” They make it look more like a second-hand store.
If we could work a reform in house furnishing we should have wrought a miracle in the health and spirits of the women who take care of the houses, and so in the care and training of children and in the happiness and success of the marital relation, and so to the next generation and then the millenium would be here. But women will keep on being the slaves of Things...
...I don’t know just where we are now. I’ve sort of lost interest in — Things.
— Della Thompson Lutes, “Things,” in her feature “’Twixt You and Me”
American Motherhood 35:2 (August 1912) : 102-104
U Illinois at Urbana-Champaign copy/scan (via google books) : link
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more at 423
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experiment mills; fine crops of weeds; the “forgettery”
Experiment watched him out of sight, then returned to his shop where he spent most of his time puttering over some experiment. He had a strong aversion to anything called work and an equally strong delight in experimenting — whence his name. He would spend days — weeks — elaborating some new idea that was to make his fame and fortune, only to throw it aside for a newer or more promising conceit. His mind was filled with these embryo inventions, his shop with unfinished models; yet he had neither the patience nor the perseverance to make a success of any one of his many unique or useful conceptions.
Meanwhile Mrs. Mills washed, ironed and scrubbed for the villagers, the children ran wild and the fertile acres were growing fine crops of weeds...
For a little time it seemed as if his contact with the outside world had done him good, had awakened his ambition, for he cleared up the yard, and worked steadily until for once, the hay was in the barn without any spoiling. Then a new idea began to take shape in his fertile brain and everything else was neglected until this next model was also in working order. Then Judge Love was importuned for another loan.
ex Willametta Preston, “Experiment Mills” in The Vermonter 17:6 (June 1912) : 543-547 (543)
(via google books) : link
Harvard copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
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rather more at 422
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all ready now
about the fire with a show of keeping himself occupied ₁
about the table, he came over to ₂
little lamps with steel instruments like knitting-needles. She saw ₃
parts of the gliders Humphrey had been puttering with for a long time.
Three years, he had once said ₄
over her make-up box.
She seemed really confused.
Finally she turned, said, with averted glance ₅
“Stop puttering. Come over here.” ₆
—
sources, all Samuel Merwin
1
The Road to Frontenac (1901) : 91
NYPL copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
2
His Little World : The Story of Hunch Badeau (1903) : 23
NYPL copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
3
The Charmed Life of Miss Austin (1914) : 17
NYPL copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
4
Henry is Twenty : A Further Episodic History of Henry (1918) : 215
NYPL copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
5
The Moment of Beauty (1925) : 294
U Michigan copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
6
The Citadel : A Romance of Unrest (1912) : 407
LoC copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
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more at 421
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spoil his hands, puttering around in the earth
“Why doesn’t he go away and really do something?”
“Well . . . for one thing, there’s his mother.”
“True.” The gray eyes softened. “But I wonder what she’ll say to this arrangement?”
“I guess she’s said it,” he replied, with a subdued twinkle. “He told me she was afraid he’d spoil his hands puttering around in the earth. A gentleman always has clean hands.”
Judith laughed. “She’ll probably insist upon his wearing gloves...”
ex Margaret Cameron, Johndover (1924)
U California copy/scan (via google books) : link
same (via hathitrust) : link
Appeared, in different and abbreviated form (and minus the passage with “puttering”), in Woman’s Home Companion, in three parts :
1 : (February 1924) : link
2 : (March 1924) : link
3 : (April 1924) : link
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more at 420
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over test-tubes and crucibles, no woman anywhere
For — women! there was no sheik-stuff in Nol’s limp fragility. Ridge looked back over all those thin gray years and saw the Chase’s ugly duckling puttering near-sightedly over test-tubes and crucibles, no woman anywhere. Only that damned hussy whom Nol had hoped to marry and who had run away from him with another man. And then, six months after the arrival of Aunt Pittman’s fortune — Venus!
ex Virginia Tracy, The Moment After (1930) : 124
google books preview snippet : link
The book is dedicated to Hettie Gray Baker (“Not forgetting anything”)
(1880-1957), a librarian, scenarist, film editor, writer, aelurophile
wikipedia : link
see also Marsha Gordon’s profile of Hettie Gray Baker at the Women Film Pioneers Project : link
Baker was editor for the silent historical film Nero (1922, since lost), directed by J. Gordon Edwards, and written by Charles Sarver and Virginia Tracy. That film (120 minutes in length!) was filmed in and around Rome.
wikipedia : link
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Virginia Tracy (1874-1946), stage (and cinema) actress, screenwriter, essayist, novelist
wikipedia : link
This is Tracy’s second appearance in these putterings — see also “the gray stage, the gray” : link
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our preference for the overtly neat and tidy
a symbol
Of rationality taunted.
Symbols make at best
A puttering sort of logic.
Aerosol does the trick
— Donald Davie, “Northern Meters” (for Tony Harrison in Florida)
found in Collected Poems (1991) : 436-437
google books preview : link
more at 418
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chunks of justice
Tanner’s store was in a double house and he owned it all, though he occupied but half. The other half was rented to Abe Willis, who did a little puttering business, selling coffins, canned clams and confectionery. By and by Willis died from eating the clams and was buried in the only coffin in the shop — for he made them to order, and never kept any in stock, except one with a glass top, which he used as a show case for the confectionery. After he was gone there was nothing left but the candy, and no place to put that in, so his widow ate up what little there was, in order not to waste it, and then closed out the business.
ex Howard Fielding, “Chunks of Justice,” in The Rocky Mountain News (December 11, 1892)
via the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection : link
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Howard Fielding was the nom de plume of Charles Witherle Hooke (1861-1929)
wikipedia : link
full transcription at 417
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it works backwards as well as forwards, sometimes
Daddy shook his head kindly. “No, honey, you wrong. Pizen ain’ to be trusted. Sometimes, it works backwards as well as forwards, you might be de one to dead. Hatin ain’ good for you, neither. It’ll pizen you breast milk an’ make you baby sick. It’s better to go easy wid conjure. You must stop frettin an’ bein scared. Keep you belly full o victuals, make you mouth smile, laugh an’ be merry if you can. Don’ never let people see you down-hearted, or a-hangin you head, an’ lookin sorrowful. Dat ain’ de way. No. Mens don’ crave a sorrowful, sad-lookin ’oman. Don’ never let a man feel sorry for you if you want em to stick to you.”
He got up and went out of the door into the yard and Mary could hear him puttering around, scratching in the earth as if he were digging up something. Presently he came back smiling and poured her out a cup of tea from another one of the several pots boiling on the hearth. “Drink dis, honey. It’ll do you all de good whilst I fix you someting to try. If July ain’ conjured too bad already e won’ never get shet o’ de spell we’ll work on em. I ain’ never seen no man get loose from a ‘oman what wears dis mixtry. It’s de powerful-est one I knows.”
ex Julia Peterkin, Scarlet Sister Mary (1928) : 123 : link (hathitrust)
—
Julia Mood Peterkin (1880-1961)
wikipedia : link
more at 416
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a repetition of the blunders of
...It will be cheaper and better got along with every way to do it by the job instead of by the piece. Puttering with it is what is the matter now. It is time it were taken hold of as Grant did of the campaign against Richmond — is time we raise an ample force and go against the Indians with a fight it out till they are crushed and rendered harmless if it takes all summer or all of half a dozen summers.
ex front page editorial, at The Rocky Mountain News 10:48 (October 20, 1868), via digitization at the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection : link
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full transcription at 415
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a knife here, a rag there; padded depths to, and fro
For a while, not noticing her, he fussed about his canvas, using a knife here, a rag there, passing to and fro across the scaffolding, oblivious of the flight of time, until at length the waning light began to prophesy dusk, and he came to himself with a guilty start.
Below, in the studio, Valerie sat, fully dressed except for hat and gloves, head resting in the padded depths of an armchair, watching him in silence.
“I declare,” he said, looking down at her contritely, “I never meant to keep you all this time. Good lord! Have I been puttering up here for an hour and a half! It’s nearly eight o’clock! Why on earth didn’t you speak to me, Valerie?”
“It’s a braver girl than I am who'll venture to interrupt you at work, Kelly,” she said, laughingly.
ex Robert W. Chambers, The Common Law, Illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson (1911) : 71
U California copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
same (via google books) : link
—
Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) : wikipedia
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and soon flickered out altogether
...But if so it was more or less a puttering description. It got nowhere, was not seriously intended to get anywhere, and soon flickered out altogether. Santa Rosa died when the Judge left Florida, an embittered man, in 1832, and retired to Tarentum, Pennsylvania. A good half century was to elapse before government was to engage seriously in the planting of trees — years after the topsails of the last “74” had faded into the horizon line of history.
ex Jenks Cameron, The Development of Governmental Forest Control in the United States (1928) : 67
U Michigan copy/scan (via google books) : link
same (via hathitrust) : link
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from the close of Chapter III, “Santa Rosa,” which concerns the projected creation ca 1827-32 of a government plantation for the cultivation and propagation of live oak on the Santa Rosa peninsula, near Pensacola, Florida. Live oak had strategic importance in the construction of warships (specifically, “stern posts, heart hooks, and knees”), and thus of a strong navy. The project failed.
this and other titles by Jenks Cameron (1879-1957) are listed at his online books page : link
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with odds and ends, and every now and then
He wasted time puttering uncertainly with odds and ends, and every now and then he went to the telephone.
ex E. J. Rath, “The Inventor and the Wasteful Process : The story of a man who tried to eliminate the human equation.” Collier’s 48:11 (December 2, 1911) : 25-26, 45, 46
full transcription, info, links, &c., at 412
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but not in the way you may think
Puttering with Transgenic Plants
from a three-snippet preview of Tara Rodden Robinson, Genetics for Dummies (2005)
(probably from a search involving author:Robinson + “puttering”) : link
another, from a later search, within same volume —
source
Something close to the same text (for this passage) — but not the word “puttering” — appears in the third edition, Tara Rodden Robinson and Lisa Cushman Spock, Genetics for Dummies (2020), which is inexplicably (and without doubt inappropriately) available via archive.org : 318 : link
Here is that passage, minus the OCR confusions —
Plants are really different from animals, but not in the way you may think. Plant cells are totipotent, meaning that practically any plant cell can eventually give rise to every sort of plant tissue: roots, leaves, and seeds. When animal cells differentiate during embryo development, they lose their totipotency forever (but the DNA in every cell retains the potential to be totipotent). For genetic engineers, the totipotency of plant cells reveals vast possibilities for genetic manipulation.
Much of the transgenic revolution in plants has focused on moving genes from one plant to another, from bacteria to plants, or even from animals to plants...
aside —
Maybe “puttering” was jettisoned to lose some of the informality in what is, IMHO, a good book.
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and some already
These dowsing techniques do not just scout out the electromagnetic fields that lace our environment. They lead toward the sacred, as does a meditative practice that also interlocks with the telluric power structure...
I went about seeking more tools, especially the Bovis biometer.
It was exciting to find myself puttering around on the cutting edge of new science. It was frustrating not to know more, to be able to do more, right away. More seeking was clearly ahead of me. There were more books to ferret out and read, and some already on my shelves needed to be studied again.
ex Michèle Burdet, Stumbling Down the Shamanic Path : Mystic Adventures and Misadventures (iUniverse, 2007, 2010) : 76
google books : link
Alfred Bovis (1871-1947), “Commerçant itinérant en quincaillerie, Bovis développe une passion pour la radiesthésie.”
fr.wikipedia : link
Par Auteur inconnu, La Vie à la campagne, 1er août 1935
source
see “Bovis Life Force Bioenergy Units Dowsing Chart,”Orgonomic Sciences Handbook (2019) : 81 : link
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An Inquiry into Idleness. Quite well known in the field.
“But the Appendix isn’t known for its accuracy,” said Aunt Lily. “Accuracy isn’t the point.”
“‘It is an Appendix of dubious facts, rumors, and myths,’” recited Colonel Korsakov. “‘A repository of questionable knowledge, and an opportunity to dither about.’ That’s from our charter,” he said to Jo. “The bit about dithering is the most important. We are a society of ditherers.”
“Dithering?” said Jo.
“You know — fiddling about, puttering, loafing. The Order of Odd-Fish has a long and distinguished history of dithering. Sir Oliver is the world’s foremost authority.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that!” protested Sir Oliver.
“He wrote a six-hundred-thousand-page dissertation on dithering,” said Aunt Lily. “Puttering, Muddling, and Mucking About: An Inquiry into Idleness. Quite well known in the field.”
“I make no claims,” said Sir Oliver.
“Don’t be so modest! Your work was years ahead of its time.”
“Is it worth reading?” said Jo.
“Nobody’s ever read it,” whispered Aunt Lily.
“Please!” Sir Oliver smiled.
“Honestly, he can’t take a compliment,” said Aunt Lily.
The cockroaches swooped in, snatched away the soup bowls, and served plates heaping with a gooey stew...
ex James Kennedy, The Order of Odd-Fish (2008)
google books preview (2010) : 86 : link
—
wikipedia (on the book) : link
author’s website (opens to “about”) : link
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without branching into the hinterlands. But / that
If I were sensible, I would give the whole idea a miss. I would stick to the dissertation outline I had already submitted to my advisor, focusing entirely on the spies’ European operations, without branching into the hinterlands.
But I was curious. Let’s be honest, I was also looking for excuses to avoid writing up what I already had. Needing more research is always a brilliant reason to postpone actually writing your dissertation. After all, no one can accuse you of being lazy when you’re working. There’s a reason why you meet fifteenth-year grad students still diligently puttering away in the archives, amassing huge stockpiles of entirely undigested information. I knew one guy who spent nine years filling five file cabinets with notes without ever writing a single page of his dissertation.
Of course, there was no way I could justify my incursions into the Selwick photo albums as work. That was a different type of curiosity entirely.
ex Lauren Willig, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily : A Pink Carnation Novel (2010; NAL pb 2011) : 200-201
short excerpt at google books : link
—
Lauren Willig at wikipedia : link
author’s website (opens to about) : link
(some) more at 408
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not to lose it. If nothing else
Image is a google books preview snippet to Calvin N. Mooers, “Seven System Models,” being Part II. of his Information Retrieval Selection Study (Zator Company, 1959) : link
The excerpt is from “Mooers’ Law; or, Why some retrieval systems are used and others are not,” Zator Technical Bulletin 136 (December 1959), a two-page document and its manila folder, Stanford University Libraries, Dept. of Special Collections : link (pdf)
the text is widely available, btw.
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The man who does not fuss with information is seen at the bench, plainly at work, getting the job done.
more at 407
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