Letters

Thanks very much for the recognition of Sam Schuchat ’83, the California Coastal Conservancy and its sister agency, the California Coastal Commission (“Shades of Blue,” September 2009). You neglected to mention the other sister agency, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), the first-ever coastal management agency in the U.S. BCDC has won numerous awards for precedent-making coastal planning and regulation, including current efforts to prepare the San Francisco Bay shoreline for sea level rise caused by global warming. Continue the good reporting on Williams and the environment.

—Jonathan T. Smith ’66 (former BCDC chief counsel), Novato, Calif.

I have just returned from seven months teaching at Kathmandu in Nepal on a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship. So I read in the January 2009 Review with a renewed vision the article “Food for Thought.” Organic agriculture in Nepal refers to the use of cow dung and straw as the initial fertilizer each growing season followed by human defecation in the fields. Food for thought next time you pay premium prices for your “organic produce” in your local store.

—William S. Carter ’63, Cleveland, Ohio