Language

Language

Author: Joan Harman
October 21, 2021

KIMCHI, SILO AND ME

Language is a living entity, and just forget the delineations on chemistry charts.  Words go away, words introduce themselves.  Words change meanings.
My generation’s, “Just do whatever works best,” has morphed to, “Game on!”
The staff or faculty we worked with became our cohort.
Where we used to say, “Look it up in the encyclopedia,” we now ask, “Don’t you have an app for that?”  or “Did you Google it?” to “I’ll send you a link to a YouTube video of that.”
Social services that referred to counsel, therapy, perhaps medicine have become scaffolding, the structure of helping all varieties of people recover from the neglect or the long covids of life.
Silo, an old word from our agricultural –based economy, has been adapted to our post-industrial political life.
One of my grandchildren once asked me if I went to school with Abraham Lincoln.
When Abraham Lincoln and I farmed and raised cows, especially milking cows, silo was a round above ground structure attached to or connecting to a barn.  Chopped green plants like timothy, trefoil, and alfalfa were blown into the silo after the prime cutting had been baled for barn storage.  This provided rich minerals, vitamins, and green energy.  At the end of harvesting grains, any leftover stalks and cobs were chopped and lofted into the silo, adding necessary fiber and trapped sugars.
Raw materials and time in above ground holders………and Voila!  Kimchi for Cows.  Silage aids digestion and milk production in the cold winters where no grass is available for grazing.   A Kimchi Cow is a Happy Cow.
While my husband and I were farming, the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union led to proliferation of various nuclear weapons.  The shape of the ICBMs led them to be housed in silos for security and ease of launch.
And the nuclear torpedoes mounted in tubes in submarines or deck-mounted on other ships were also cylinder shaped.  One could write memoirs or stand –up comedy jokes about how these did not tend toward tranquility, but instead led to protests.
Which now brings us up to the current use of silo, also leading to protests of various kinds.   The political-cultural meaning of silo now is a place (as a noun) or an action (as a verb).  Each of the following entries is quoted from   The Joan Dictionary of 2021.
Silo n. a place of storage for ideas, usually indicating ideas held by individuals but may also indicate the same idea held by whole groups of like-minded people.  The space is pictured as circular, perhaps because no one is exactly sure how any of the ideas blew in.  The “How did we get here from there?” syndrome.
Silo v. To store a certain set of ideas and values to make them secure against other opinions intruding into the enclosed space.  These ideas spiral around for some length of time.
Could we follow the farm analogy to think of silos as nutritious containers?  The silos we are now in while we foment, OOPS ferment, new ideas, might discharge some nutritious future food.  Could this time of unhelpful energies and leftovers lead to future health and productivity in our political and social life together?

P.S.   If it sits in the silo too long, it can spoil..

Blessings of food,
Joan K. Harman <><<><
 joanharmank@gmail.com


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