Last week, my younger (and much brighter) brother invited me to visit with him and his talented wife.

As many know, for the last year or so, I have been holed up in the house, so I thought why not go. They live in New Orleans, where it is warm, and the Jazz Fest is in full swing. Might be fun.

So I did and had a wonderful visit. And it gave me a chance to compare our quiet rural environment with their boisterous and unique city. For example, here in Maine, trees are sacrosanct. The idea that CMP would dare to bring a chain saw into the forest so they could send non-fossil-fueled powered electricity to the grid, sent my tree-hugging friends into a swivet.

Ditto in New Orleans’ fabled Garden District, where the streets are lined with thousands of ancient, majestic, live oak trees where few advocate their removal. Their spreading branches frame neighborhoods, shade homes, and force electric company linemen to thread wires in and out of their lush green canopy. The bad news is that the mighty trees produce mighty root systems that dislodge sidewalks, pitching concrete slabs and patterned bricks into a cockeyed jumble.

Pet walkers spend much of their time avoiding sidewalks where they might trip and do a face plant. Instead, they use the streets that feature deep potholes and rolling trenches resembling the battlefields of post-war France. The good news is that the streets discourage speeders.

Here in our village, hilly and narrow sidewalks provide easy access. Yet we carp about summer tourists forcing us to park and walk a half block to reach Grover's Hardware. By the way, I love Grover’s Hardware. It is a real hardware store. It is a place where you can still buy nails by the pound. Best of all, they have smiling clerks who are glad to assist you no matter if you seek $100 worth of paint, a new toilet seat, or a single nut to replace the one you dropped while trying to repair a gadget, as you attempt a skill that is above your pay grade.

Driving around New Orleans tests your skills as cars park on both sides of the narrow streets. To access the main roads, you must peek around dumpsters, parked cars and mighty trees festooned with leftover Mardi Gras beads. Venturing into the French Quarter, the streets get even narrower as drivers go slow  avoiding unsuspecting tourists backing into the road to frame a photo of this or that quaint joint.

Of course, that would never happen in beautiful downtown Boothbay Harbor where tourists from away always walk on sidewalks and never stray into the roads. Now, if you believe this statement, I will give you a good deal on an old steel bridge spanning the Townsend Gut.

In our village, coffee shop regulars usually muse about crime in other locations. You will find few crime stories in my favorite papers, The Boothbay Register/Wiscasset Newspaper. It is not that Kevin Burnham, the longtime editor, tries to hide local crimes from our readers. There is just little crime here. For example, over in East Boothbay, my sainted mother-in-law once lived in a home for years and never locked her doors. If you walk down the village streets today and glance into parked cars, you might find keys in the ignition.

Not so in New Orleans or any big city where street crime is a fact of life. You just learn to deal with it. Leaving the house, many NOLA residents routinely set the alarm before they lock their doors, reversing the process when they return. In the Garden District, many homes feature decorative iron fencing that requires keys tor electronic gizmos to enter.

But for all its drawbacks, New Orleans is a magical place. Die-hard residents say they would live in no other place. And their culture gives us all a graphic demonstration of American freedoms.

Around the world, you can find examples of political leaders jailing their critics. In some nations, even daring to wave a one-fingered salute towards a political leader might earn you a night in the crossbar motel. Down in New Orleans, some raucous Mardi Gras paraders openly lampoon city leaders in ways that are rude, crude, and decidedly socially obscene. Still, city cops happily direct traffic, protecting paraders and their right to openly criticize and make fun of officials. Isn’t that one reason the founders wrote the Constitution’s First Amendment? Sure, it is there to protect our speech, our newspapers, our religion. But it includes our sacred right to disagree with and make fun of  local and national officials. Down in New Orleans, they practice the First Amendment and have a ball doing it.

As the Cajuns say in New Orleans, Laissez les bon temps rouler!