A book that rocked my spring sabbatical was “Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene” (pronounced THUlucene), by CC’s own Donna Haraway ’66 (she triple majored in zoology, philosophy, and literature while here on a Boettcher). Her “trouble” is with the era most of us call the Anthropocene — and refers to decisive anthropogenic (human-caused) effects from climate change to mass extinction. She finds naming the era after ourselves, when we’re the problem, to be the height of arrogance and ignorance, and instead offers Chthulucene as an alternative, tied to the idea of making kin with earth’s critters — both human and not. All of this she sees as learning to “live and die well,” with “response-ability” in the Chthulucene, or to avoid paralysis as the only middle ground between the poles of “sublime despair and sublime indifference” with regard to the trouble. It’s a creative, at times quite fanciful, volume by a scientist who has vowed to always work in collaboration with artists, and like her earlier work (think “Cyborg Manifesto,”) it can be a bedeviling read. I think she sneaks the word “bumptious” into every chapter!