World Diabetes Day points to often-ignored ailment

     The first reference to insulin in a Chicago newspaper was both late and maddeningly provincial.
     The Chicago Daily News debuted the name of the lifesaving hormone that regulates blood sugar on the Feb. 13, 1923, editorial pages, in this embarrassing piece of whimsy mentioning the city's king of electricity and rapid transit:
     "To quiet a tormenting doubt whether insulin, the new diabetes cure, was or was not named in honor of Samuel Insull, we asked a doctor about it. He tells us that insulin was named from the so-called island of the pancreas. What a delightfully-romantic ring there is to the islands of the pancreas! One might almost do a ballad about them: 'Twas off the pancreatic isles/I smoked my last cigar."
     The Daily News, perhaps significantly, was studded with advertising for quack diabetes remedies like Warner's Diabetes Cure, mineral baths in Texas promising relief, and Sulferlick Mineral Water for those who couldn't make the trip.

     Kellogg's Bran continually ran ads mimicking news articles, promoting itself as a "constipation corrective," pointing out that "90 percent of all illness can be traced to constipation! It is responsible for most cases of diabetes ..."
     The Chicago Tribune at least shared the reason that the Daily News was waxing poetic on the subject: Drs. Frederick Banting and John McLeod were in town to talk to the City Club about their 1921 discovery, which, in May 1923, the Daily News finally got around to explaining in detail.
     I mention all this because quackery is on the rise again and because Friday — Nov. 14 — is World Diabetes Day, the date chosen to coincide with Banting's birthday. In 1923, an estimated 1% of the American population had diabetes. Now, about 10% of adults do, with one-third prediabetic.
     Diabetes is divided in Type I and Type II. The latter — 90% of cases — is where a body can't use insulin produced by the pancreas to process sugar in the blood. It's caused mainly by obesity, with help from genetics, and can be controlled by lifestyle changes and drugs like Metformin. Type I, also known as juvenile diabetes since it often presents itself in children, is when the pancreas no longer makes insulin, and it must be injected.
      Regular readers know I contracted Type I a year ago — through some undetermined autoimmune disease. Diabetes is not bad, as far as chronic conditions go — no surgery, no radiation, you don't have to die early, necessarily, if you do what you're supposed to do. In my case, that means swallow four pills a day, inject long-acting insulin every night and short-acting insulin as needed, should I decide to, say, eat pizza or sushi or some other high-carbohydrate food.

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Happy Feast of St. Cabrini

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini's arm bone, on display at her Lincoln Park shrine.

    There are a lot of Catholic feast days — 25 in November alone, by my count. Starting with All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day, at the beginning of the month, all the way to St. Catherine Labouré and St. Andrew, at the end.  Most months have about two dozen such holidays. You can't celebrate them all.
    Well, not being Catholic, I don't celebrate any of them. Except for St. Valentine's Day, I suppose, though the Catholic Church removed that from the official calendar in 1969 due to lack of historical documentation —they weren't even sure which of several Valentines were being honored (I feel safe speculating that the Vatican was perhaps prodded by the gross chocolate-and-flowers commercialization of the day).

      But sometimes a feast day pops up to be noticed, and since today —assuming you are reading this on Thursday, Nov. 13 —is the feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, I think we can pause to notice her for several practical reasons.
     The tireless social activist —think Jane Addams in a habit —was the first American saint (Nov. 13 was the day she was beatified in 1938) and a resident of Chicago. There is a shrine to her in Lincoln Park, incongruously nestled within a luxury high rise, that EGD visited in 2018, and you can dive into that experience here. 
     St. Cabrini is the patron saint of immigrants, which of course makes her relevant as heck. Gov. JB Pritzker has taken to repeating himself when he talks to national media, and it might be a change of pace if he looked into a camera and intoned: "The upper right arm bone of Mother Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants, is on display in a reliquary on the North Side of Chicago, and it guides us as a beacon of shining moral clarity to do the right thing," Sure, he'd get laughed at, but it might give pause to a few of the Catholic revanchists who are cheering on the current administration.
    Mother Cabrini herself was something of a mess. Pathologically terrified of water after nearly drowning, she chose a vocation that prompted her to cross the ocean 27 times. She also had, in the carefully chosen words of one account, a "frail health and nervous temperament" and was frightened of failure. 
    You can get insight into her situation by considering the "peace prayer" credited to her which, if you want to mark her day, is supposed to be said in her honor, perhaps along with lighting a candle:
     "Fortify me with the grace of Your Holy Spirit and give Your peace to my soul that I may be free from all needless anxiety, solicitude and worry. Help me to desire always that which is pleasing and acceptable to You so that Your will may be my will."

     The word that leaps out of that, for me, is "needless." A lot of worry is protective — am I being scammed? Is it safe to cross the street? Has this milk gone bad? Should I go see a doctor about this? Is there something else I could be doing to help my country?

     The key is not to let anxiety become a default position, the low level hum that sours your waking moments without really helping at all. But we are getting into the realm of St. Dymphna, a 7th century Irish teenager who is the patron saint of mental illness. Her feast day is May 15. Until then.

     

'Days of Rage' evokes protests of 1960s and resonates today in a big way

 

Dontaye Albert (left) confronts Olivia Tennison in Steven Levenson’s “Days of Rage.” 
Photo by Sam Bessler

     "Standing up and saying 'no' is the least I can do," says Jenny, part of a three-member, cash-strapped Ithaca commune trying to get themselves — and anyone else they can enlist — to Chicago to protest the Vietnam War in "Days of Rage," the Steven Levenson play on stage last weekend, and next, at the Greenhouse Theater Center on Lincoln Avenue.
     After weeks of effort, they've signed up two people — five if they count themselves.
     Current events have a way of resonating with history. America's undeniable current slide into authoritarianism evokes the 1930s: all-powerful, venerated leader with his thumb jammed in every aspect of public life? Check. News media condemned while ridiculous lies are promoted and believed? Double check. Powerless groups blamed unfairly for social ills and persecuted in public displays of random cruelty? Yup, got those too.
     Meanwhile the reaction, of some, to that slide harkens back to the 1960s, when youth took to the streets to raise their voices and tell themselves they were accomplishing something.
     It's an awkward fit, as the whole-world-is-watching grandiosity of the 1960s is generally missing from the inflatable-frogs-will-lead-us "No Kings" rallies, where the whole point seems to be registering massive opposition while demonstrating that sending in the military is unwarranted. They're trying to shore up the American system, not smash it.
     "Days of Rage" opens with the show's focal point, Jenny, played with understated mastery by Olivia Tennison, leafleting outside a Sears store on a cold day. She's confronted by employee Hal (Dontayecq Albert, in a fine post-college stage debut) whose younger brother is in Vietnam. Her face is a symphony of disgust as Hal at first tries to get her to move on, then trots out his own paltry revolutionary bona fides: "I broke a toaster oven."
     Hal is stirred into their distinctive mix of political agitation and sexual drama, as what starts as a love triangle turns into a love pentagram. He becomes the voice of the outside observer with a foot planted in the real world while his new radical friends quote Engels and spin their schemes.
     "This is how the process happens. Revolution," says Quinn (Amanda Hoople backstopping the cast with unshowy precision).
     "By yelling stuff at people?" Hal wonders.
     Though set in October 1969, "Days of Rage" makes scant attempt to capture the era — from pre-show punk rock a decade in the future, to language mostly devoid of 1960s lingo while including a few anachronistic touches —"Totally!" — to Spence's Warby Parker-ish eyeglasses (Matt Tenny brings energy to the role, but not authenticity: he's a buff 21st century man cosplaying his grandfather).
     The anachronistic aspect annoyed my wife, while it merely puzzled me. It's not like 1960s-era dress of threadbare radicals would be expensive to replicate, prompting me to check when the playwright was born: 1984.
     It starts slow, but Levenson picks up the pace in the second half, and "Days of Rage" builds in force and well-deployed surprise. Throughout is much oblivious ridiculousness.
     "I hate white people," says Peggy, the manipulative new convert, oddly eager to join their ranks, and herself white (played with scheming glee by Aliza Broder). "I can't help it. I always have."
     But Jenny grounds us back in why this tumult is happening — napalm burning children alive in Vietnam. While Spence wonders how the towns around concentrations camps could go about their lives pretending nothing was going on.

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Retirement doesn't mean veterans stop helping their comrades or their country

 

Brig. Gen. Thomas Kittler, U.S. Air Force (retired).

     Soldiers. Sailors. Marines. Each Nov. 11, when Veterans Day rolls around, crews of GIs, leathernecks and swabbies get trotted out and rightfully honored.
     Somehow the Air Force often gets overlooked, though Air Force vets are not the sort to complain.
     "I never feel slighted," said Tom Kittler, a retired Air Force brigadier general from Northbrook, allowing that, "I think it's a valid argument."
     Kittler immediately speculated why that might be.
     "The Army, the Navy, have been around for quite a long time. The Air Force is relatively new to the show."
     Relatively new, it became a separate branch of the Armed Forces in 1947. Before that, you had the U.S. Army Air Corps.
     The Army and Navy cast a wide net. The Air Force is more focused, looking for recruits like Kittler, who joined the Air Force ROTC in 1984 as a student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Why? He was already flying, having earned his wings at 16.
     "It was my dream to fly airplanes," he said. "My dad was an avionics engineer. He'd take my Cub Scout troop out to the hangar, we'd climb over the old airplanes. That's how I got the bug."
     Americans give to the military; the military gives back. Kittler not only got a career out of the Air Force — he went on to become a commercial pilot — but a wife and family: He met his future wife Jennifer because she was an Air Force nurse.
     Which put her in a position to understand the demands of the job, like at Christmas 1989.
     "My folks were visiting," he said. Duty called. "We took off Christmas Eve. My parents were aghast — 'Where is he going? When is he coming back?' My wife said, 'He's going to work; he'll be back.'"
     The mission? Operation Just Cause, the effort to unseat Manuel Noriega and restore  Panamanian democracy.
     At least that was over quickly. He was in the reserve during the Second Gulf War, called up for a two-year activation.
     "That was hard," said Kittler. "I was away from my girls — I have two daughters," then 6 and 8. "But you get called, you have to go."
     Does service encourage patriotism?
     "Absolutely it does," he said. "I think the individuals you train to fight with, to go to war with, to spend Christmas Eve on an airplane with, these are your lifetime heroes. You do it for your buddies. You don't want to let them down. That's why I'm so involved with the Northbrook Veterans Center."
     Kittler, 64, a Northbrook resident, would prefer today's piece focus on all vets and their needs.
     "We want to spread the word. It's veterans helping veterans," he said. "Veterans don't know about service and benefits. We want to make sure everybody who is entitled to them is knowledgeable."
     Among The good that Kittler has had been able to do includes was mentoring Cameron Jones, an Air Force major and member of NASA's latest class of young astronauts.
     "My best friend's son came to me, when he was 12, and said, 'Hey Uncle Tom, I want to do what you do,'" recalled Kittler. "This past year, he just got tapped to be the latest of 10 astronauts. He's very bright, did extremely well at test pilot school. It's my understanding he will be selected for our effort to get back to the moon. He's very excited, and I'm very proud of him."

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"Always happy to save a reporter's ass"

A Vanitas Still Life, by Pieter Claesz (Franz Hals Museum)

     Sixty-five is not 57. That's for sure. While living through my 50s I felt I was bustling around the anteroom of age, now I feel I've entered in, found a comfortable chair, and am contemplating the effort of getting up while watching the clock tick.
     COVID must have had something to do with it. Society shut down. More than a million Americans died —a fact our nation just shrugged off. We all stopped going to work and despite continual corporate vows to the contrary, never really went back.

     It's not just perception. The world is definitely more menacing. In his second term, Donald Trump has gotten better at destroying America, and has an army of lapdogs and sycophants eager to help him. But life also just seems more disordered, chaotic, confusing, objectionable.

     Last Wednesday I wrote a column analyzing the word "fuck," since Gov. JB Pritzker told our loathsome leader to "fuck all the way off." It was dashed in the paper, f - - -, but I was amazed they ran it at all. These are desperate times, and I think the general timidity that can affect newspaper editors is being sandblasted away by children being snatched off the street and sent to detention centers in Texas. Now is not the time to debate fine points.
     Regarding "fuck," a number of readers felt Pritzker shouldn't have said it. "I was taught casual swearing is laziness at best and a corrupted heart at worst," one sniffed. Which did not strike me as odd until I noticed this post, from 2018, "Is Ivanka Trump a feckless cunt." It had ... just a more buoyant spirit to it. No one in the comments dabbed a perfumed hankie to their lips and recoiled in horror from the term. 

     Sure, maybe it was because I wrote it exclusively for the blog, with none of the toning down that a newspaper requires. That could be it.

     Still, I thought to myself: "We're growing old, all of us, me and the readers combined, a bunch of seniors in a barrel going over the falls of life, heading to the rocks."
     Too stark? Maybe because a certain reader weighs in, in a footnote, brushing off my concerns, "Honey, I'm your mother. C'mon," and I realized again how much I miss her. Maybe because another colleague died the other day, Mo Cotter. Almost a quarter century on the copy desk. I remember her only vaguely: no-nonsense, in a good way, with just a crinkle of humor at the corner of an eagle eye. I plugged her name into gmail, and years of interactions came up, mostly her telling me I'd made some goof and she was fixing it, half courtesy, half reprimand. In 2012 I'd quoted a St. Josephinum English teacher Haley Coller. "I find a Hayley Keller on the school's faculty list," Cotter wrote. "OK if I change it?"

     Shit yes. I felt like a man, about to step off a cliff, who felt a sudden tug on his shirt. Mistakes are bad and screwing up names is particular bad. The scar of the Medill F stung. I thanked her profusely.
     "That's my job," Cotter replied, with customary terseness. 

      "Nevertheless, not everyone would look that up — I should have and didn't," I continued, "— so I appreciate you sparing me a lousy day tomorrow."
     "If I don't know a name or if it just looks funny, I look it up," she wrote back, subtly reminding me: do better. "I'm always happy to save a reporter's ass."

     Mo was 64. A year younger than me. 

     I made that last quote into the headline of today's post, as a kind of tribute, looked at it, and realized there was no possessive in "reporters." Had Cotter made a mistake herself? I thought, with a flash of something like excitement — we reporters secretly loved the rare-to-almost nonexistent times it is the copy desk in error. I glanced at her email. No, the fault was mine, of course. She used it. I dropped the possessive, typing the line in. Should have cut and pasted. We have to be so careful not to drop things, in the shortening period before, one fine day, everything simply drops.

Works in progress: Donald Colley — 'Honesty should guide the pen'

     Usually I run "Works in progress" on Saturdays, such as Lane Lubell's well-received post yesterday. But this week I got two submissions, and — my blog, my rules — decided to extend the practice to Sundays, when necessary.  Readers met Donald Colley in 2022, during the R. Kelly trial. He's been attending the court hearings of ICE Sturmbannführer Gregory Bovino, and files this report:

     In court today. So too one Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, Chief of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, present to appear before Judge Sara Ellis.
     Whether I go to court for myself or as the eyes of the public, the moment I pass thru the metal detector and retrieve my satchel with sketchbook and drawing gear, I look to be disinterested, as though I haven’t got a dog in the fight. Not so easy today. Today, I will draw and listen as the chief Federal law officer will address the questions posed by a judge concerned about tactics and practices of the Federal agents charged with apprehending undocumented immigrants and alleged criminals. Sent by the current POTUS and directed to ferret out those we’ve been told are here illegally, these Federal agents' stated targets are a criminal element that took advantage of a porous border, many of whom are described by current U.S. Secretary of homeland security as the worst of the worst.
     In the weeks since September, when Cmdr. Bovino and the CBP and ICE agents under his command initiated “Operation Midway Blitz”, daily coverage by media, thousands of videos documenting citizens and residents caught up in incidents related to these maneuvers, and criticism of this Federal directive by, among others, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, have caught the attention of the courts. It will be thru today’s inquiry that Judge Ellis will determine if, in the execution of “Operation Midway Blitz”, the Constitution that both she and Cmdr. Bovino are sworn to uphold, is being followed. This in a city I’ve called home for 26 ½ years.
     I find it imperative, should I feel the tug of personal interest, that I fall in line with what most of us want in a judicial system: impartiality, fairness, a high standard of practice, and an effort in earnest for veritas. So when I open my sketchbook and set pen to paper, I avoid caricature, refrain from giving added pugnaciousness or ghoulish cast. (However, if the lead lawyer has a Nixonian, bluish cast 5 o’clock shadow, so be it. Honesty should guide the pen). If I take license to hang a lantern jaw on someone, turn a slightly furrowed brow into a freshly plowed field, or grow a lawyer’s loose jacket into Emmett Kelly’s overcoat, then I come off as a clown in a forum where much is at stake for plaintiffs, defendants, and the people who care for and may depend upon them, not to mention my making light of the integrity of the institution. My brother spent some extended time incarcerated and the family pain and concern for the duration of his sentence was real. Yet another reason for veracity.
     Courtroom artists are present when Rule 53 is in effect, which forbids the presence of cameras, and sometimes all electronic media. One district attorney told me that some of the cases are enough of a circus that the inclusion of teams of photojournalists and AV equipment would only add to that. Note taken. Therefore, I work smaller than most, leaving large sketchpads and drawing boards at home. I prefer fountain pens and nonvolatile markers of various brush widths for detail and broader coverage in lieu of dusty pastels or pencils that need sharpening. At times I have been seated in the jury box, which affords a closer view of witnesses, questioning lawyer and judge. Mostly, I find myself seated among journalists, family members of plaintiffs and defendants, and interested members of the public. I call that perspective embedded, and it may have its own benefits.
     I first entered a courtroom as a 21-year-old art student whose brothers had found themselves in a fracas with music venue security guards. My sketchbook went along. The concert security guards took issue with me drawing them. I was summoned to the bench to hand the judge my sketchbook. A wide grin broke out over his court officer’s face as he recognized himself in my sketches. The book was handed back to me with the judge’s verdict, ”You’re fine. He may continue.” In the years since, my sketchbook and I have been the occasional visitors to a courtroom and it has always been engaging. I highly recommend it. We also like to go to city council meetings, and political rallies. I think of it as my continuing adult education and merger of Art, Politics and Civics lessons.

Works in progress: Lane Lubell — The Intervention of Dictionary.com

     EGD is interested in many things —politics, culture, products, birds. Words themselves merit special attention. Today we welcome a guest voice, Chicago teacher and family friend Lane Lubell, who in 2023 took a look at the Academy Awards. He asked to comment on Dictionary.com's Word of the Year. The platform is yours, Lane:

“The English language is losing it. Maybe I should have treated her better.” 

              — Buffy Summers

     Hey Dictionary.com. Don't be alarmed. We are gathered here today because we all care about you a lot, but your behavior lately has made us very concerned.    
     That’s right. We are here because you chose “6-7” as your Word of the Year (WOTY). I know it seems like a silly award, but you and some of your friends sitting here — Oxford, Merriam, Collins, Macquarie — you’ve done some great work with it in the past. Remember when Merriam bestowed 2006’s title to the Stephen Colbert-coined “Truthiness?” Unbelievable! Or when Oxford chose “Post-Truth” following Kellyanne Conway’s first utterance of “fake news”? Or when they —
     No, no. You’re right. This isn’t about them. You’ve done great work, too. But, frankly, we’ve been worried for a while. Last year, you really scared us when you chose “Demure” just because some TikToker used it weirdly, but at least people were still using you to find out a good vocab word. But this year… I don’t even know where to begin. 6-7?!
     Dear God! Dic! What are you doing, bud? Just because you talk like a kid doesn’t mean they’ll use you.
     I know you expect me to tell you some things you’ve probably already heard: firstly, that you can’t release a year-end list in October. (If you can’t hear Wham! on the radio, it’s too early.) And yes, “6-7” is not a word so much as two digits uttered consecutively, but, Oxford, you chose the non-vocalic “😀” in 2015, so we’ll give you a pass. At least we can all say this one! (Sorry, Ox, but you know you had it coming.)
     But this is much more concerning than not abiding by convention. This is some anti-dictionary type shit. This is Gen Alpha slang.
     Oh, Harper! Sorry, I forgot you were here. You’ve been so quiet. I know you haven’t received a new edition since 2011, so let me get you caught up.
     The phrase “6-7” is extremely popular among Generation (or, Gen) Alpha (who were only one when you were last published), who represents kids born after 2010, meaning all of them are 15 and under. Here’s how it works: whenever anyone says either the words “six,” “seven,” or –God help you! – both, every child within earshot must scream “6-7!” while making an indiscernible gesture akin to mimicking the scales of Anubis. Most freakishly though, not one of them will be able to tell why they do this peculiar ritual. It’s a Rod Serling nightmare. All we know is that it possesses them with a fervor of joy so strong that South Park (hilariously) was forced to conjecture “6-7” to be apocryphal numerology so inscrutable that not even antichrist expert Peter Thiel could stop it. (Yes, the PayPal guy. Harper, you need to be updated more often.)
     What’s the etymology of “6-7”? That’s a great question, Mac. “6-7” has its origins in a 2024 song by a rapper named Skrilla entitled “Doot-doot.” (That title alone should give you an indication that he may not be the preeminent wordsmith of our time.) The lyric in question goes, “6-7, I just bipped right on the highway (bip, bip) / Skrrrt, uhh. (bip bip bip).” If you found that lyric confusing, don’t feel bad. Skrilla said he doesn't know what he’s talking about either (after all, it’s not like a rapper, for whom wordplay is paramount, should be concerned with things like… the meaning of their words). The phrase was further popularized through teenage TikTok videos and Hornet’s point guard LaMelo Ball, but no one is exactly sure how it exploded to the scale that it did.
     Gen Alpha however doesn’t care. They’ve become notorious for repeating stuff without knowing what they’re saying. And that’s precisely the problem here.
      No, Dic! I’m not anti-slang! We all know how important slang is. Every generation uses words in weird ways that contort their meanings to create completely new lexicons. Indeed, slang has been around as long as language, itself, and is the primary way that languages develop within a society without stealing or appropriating terminology from other cultures. But this generation has done something dangerous with its slang.
     Take any piece of slang from cultures past. “Rad.” Originating from “radical” — itself a product of ‘70’s surf culture — it originally meant “extreme,” but it very quickly became synonymous with “awesome” and “cool.” “Groovy” literally refers to the grooves in vinyl records, which led to songs being described as “groovy.” Soon, other, non-musical objects and feelings acquired the same attribution, which was able to make sense via connotation. Even wacky, constructed slang, when done right, has origins and clear definitions. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, always rife with wordplay, coined “Five-by-Five,” which originated in HAM radio lingo as a reference to signal strength, was contorted to mean “got it” or “OK”.
     Notice the rules? No matter when the slang was started, it always has some definitive origin, and, most importantly, a trackable definition. These rules should be inevitable. Words must mean something. otherwise, they shouldn’t exist. (Bip, bip.)
     Gen Z understood these principles. For example, “Rizz” is a valid example of slang. Though odd, the phrase is simply a shortened, phonetic form of “chaRISma” with a nearly identical meaning. Wonderful!
     But, Gen Alpha went too far. They started using nonsense words when there should be silence. Now kids are just saying stuff that means nothing as if it meant something.
     Even adding “6-7” to a dictionary presents our editors with a paradox: define a word that has no meaning. Numerology will get you nowhere. “6-7” is neither onomatopoeic nor substitutable nor advantageous. Indeed, it lacks all semblance of meaning. It is then, axiomatically, impenetrable per se.
     Your choice has brought heartache to a lot of good dictionaries, like myself, who you’ve hurt. After all, why are kids ever going to use us if we can’t show them that the meaning of words matter?
     To paraphrase Paddy Chayefsky: You, Dictionary.com, have meddled with the primal forces of English and you must atone!
      We have set you up with an appointment at a rehab center led by Britannica. We all believe in you. Now, go. Get help and good luck, Dic.
      Like any good reference material, I’ve included a bibliography below.

Works Cited:

Chayesfky, Paddy (writer) and Sidney Lumet (director). Network. Speech performed by Ned Beatty. MGM/United Artists. 1975. Streaming.

“Dictionary.com’s 2024 Word of the Year Is...” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, 28 Oct. 2025, www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year-2024/#recent-words-of-the-year.

“Dictionary.com’s 2025 Word of the Year Is...” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, 28 Oct. 2025, www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year-2025/#recent-words-of-the-year.

Djajapranata, Cliff. “What does '6-7' mean? We don't know either, so we asked a linguist.” Cynthia Gordon (interviewee). Georgetown University. 23 Oct. 2025. https://www.georgetown.edu/news/six-seven-meme-linguistics/

“Twisted Christian.” South Park. Written & Directed by Trey Parker. Created by Trey Parker & Matt Stone. Season 28, episode 1. 15 Oct. 2025. Comedy Central/Paramount+.

“Sigma.” Merriam-Webster.com. 2025. Web. 31 Oct. 2025. https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/sigma.

Whedon, Joss. Time of Your Life. Penciling by Karl Moline. Inks by Andy Owens. Colors by Michelle Madsen. Cover Art by Jo Chen and Georges Jeanty. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Comics. Print. 2009. Vol. 4 of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8.

"Word of the Year 2015". Oxford Dictionaries. November 16, 2015. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2015/.


“Word of the Year 2023”. Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved 4 Dec. 2023. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2023/.