LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
ments and a school, there is widespread sympathy for those who
run the plant — longtime West
residents who were pillars of the
community. Ted Uptmore, who
has managed the plant for half
a century, also owns a livestock
business. And Donald Adair, the
plant’s owner, has served on the
local school board.
Like the schools and churches
of West, the fertilizer plant was a
part of the community. “It’s been
there so long that you just take it
for granted,” said Jeanette Karlik,
a columnist for the local newspaper, the West News.
But as Ben and Chris write,
both the regulatory agencies and
the people of West — everyone,
it seems — shared a “notion that
an explosion at the plant was not
something to worry about.”
Elsewhere in the issue, Mallika
Rao looks at Santa Monica’s Local Wellbeing Index, a new way
to help city leaders redefine the
way they craft policy. As radical as
the idea may sound, there’s precedent, and many countries around
the world are way ahead of us in
terms of, as Mallika puts it, “worrying about how their people feel,
HUFFINGTON
04.28.13
not just how much they produce.”
In the 1970s, the king of Bhutan
famously called for a measurement of his country’s Gross National Happiness. England’s annual government survey now asks
This is a story of
breakdown. The deadly
explosion was the end
result of a staggering string
of failures on the part of
the regulatory agencies.”
questions like, “How happy did
you feel yesterday?” And American states and cities are slowly
adopting similar programs that
bring us nearer to governing, as
Mallika puts it, “with a citizen’s
inner life in mind.”
Finally, our continuing coverage of ways to reduce stress in
our lives includes houseplants as
a way to purify your air, calming
colors to de-stress your house,
and slowing down at home
by cooking from scratch.
ARIANNA