Om on the Grange

The key is to align all rooms to take full advantage of the sun as it moves overhead, he explained. The kitchen is usually best in the southeast corner; the living room should face west; and the master bedroom should be in the southwest corner.

Interested to see these rules applied, I was delighted when Jorgenson and her husband, Chris, invited me to visit their home, a spacious one-story structure with sweeping ceilings and vast open areas. "It sounds like a cliche," Chris Jorgenson said, "but living in a place like this makes you feel healthier and more balanced."

Beyond their living spaces, Vedic City residents are big on healthful foods. A Vedic City ordinance bans the use of chemicals in plant production; most of the produce is grown by a few organic farms.

I visited one, a 12-acre sprawl of vegetables perched on a hillside, and Steve McClaskey, the horticulturalist who runs the farm, guided me around. In the outdoor garden and adjacent greenhouse, there were vines hanging heavy with cherry tomatoes, clusters of broccoli and rows of Swiss chard. With this heavy accent on healthy living, it's no wonder that Mother Jones magazine, the bible for the ecologically minded, earlier this year named Fairfield among the dozen best places to live that you've never heard of.

Back in Fairfield, I met with Malloy and asked how his town had merited such a distinction. He cited the unusual mood of tolerance for diversity, the heavy support for the arts and the myriad small businesses. "If small-town America has a future," he said, "it's going to look something like this."

It sounded like the kind of thing a mayor would say.

But as the day wound down, I paused to look at the town square with its gazebo, at a nearby row of ethnic restaurants, at a woman dressed in a bright blue sari walking past. Perhaps there was something in the mayor's words, I thought.

And then, suddenly, a parade of cars started moving past in the direction of the golden domes. It was meditation time again.