I’ve contended that locale can be beautiful. But the reality is that many are stripped of the opportunity.

As my wife points out, a town where the railroad tracks run down the middle of the main street through town is, well, bound to be ugly.

Put another way, the presence of beauty or ugliness is a reflection of other values. Is there a degree of generosity and restfulness, for instance, or is it more stingy and pinched? There’s rarely any financial return in planting flowers, after all, and even trees take years to mature.

Still, even when I lived in some pretty gritty factory towns, small corners of beauty could be found, even if they were the exception rather than the rule. And Dover, where I am now, has undergone a renaissance from its days of boarded-up abandoned textiles mills downtown only decades ago.

To have a sense of beauty and grace proliferate, I’m sensing, is really a matter of religion – or at least heightened spirituality. Where would a community be, after all, without artists and skilled crafters who embody their holy visions?