Excellent interview.

I would like to thank Managing Editor Amitabh Pal for the interview with recent Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai of Kenya (May issue).

Her straightforward statement, "Nobody would have bothered me if all I did was to encourage women to plant trees," demonstrates there is still hope for apposite environmental and sociopolitical change in Africa.

With the notable exception of the British Broadcasting Corporation, few mass media outlets in the United States have given her the exposure she truly deserves.

To The Progressive: good show!

Ronald Clark

Hamtramck, Michigan

Thank you for Amitabh Pal's excellent Wangari Maathai interview. Maathai continues to challenge herself, her country, and the world to be environmentalists and peacemakers. Through her encouragement, wisdom, steadfastness, and peace-filled heart, she continues to urge others to act.

The Progressive serves as a powerful megaphone for her message and that of the Nobel Peace Committee.

Maathai Makes me proud to be a member of Mount St. Scholastica and to live with the sisters who taught her, and to be an English professor at Benedictine College, formerly Mount St. Scholastica College, where Maathai received her science degree in 1964.

Sister Thomasita Homan, OSB 

Atchison, Kansas