Anyone interested in attending a hometown-style Fourth of July should put the celebration at the South Portland Historical Society at Bug Light Park on his calendar for next year. Benjamin Franklin reading the Declaration of Independence at noon is the main attraction – John Kierstead, dressed in appropriate garb, plays the part to perfection. I particularly like the way he gestures towards the city of Portland while announcing the list of the colonists grievances against the King, stating, “he has ravished out Coasts, burned our towns and destroyed the lives of our people,” a reminder for his audience that Portland was burned by Royal Navy Lt. Mowatt on Oct. 18, 1775, in a bombardment that lasted eight hours.

The Tricky Britches provided the music, and volunteers manned the grills, cooking hamburgers, hot dogs, veggie burgers, and sausages, starting at 11:30. Old-fashioned games – sack, three-legged and wheelbarrow races – were organized for the kids in the afternoon and of course, kite flying was popular. The museum was open to visitors as was the gift shop which stocks various items made locally and throughout Maine. Many families stayed on to enjoy the evening fireworks by the city of Portland – a fitting end to a great celebration.

Tops on my bucket list ever since retiring to Maine has been a visit to the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. I finally made it on a gorgeous summer day and was charmed with the location of the museum – it sits on a rocky outcropping overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by landscaped lawns dotted with sculptures and highlighted by little pocket gardens in full bloom. Several benches allow the visitor to savor the view out to sea and to watch the boats entering nearby Perkins Cove.

The museum is the handiwork of Henry Strater, painter, art collector, and philanthropist, who first came to Ogunquit in 1919, drawn by the thriving artist colony that had existed in this sleepy fishing village since the 1890s. In 1925 he bought a home in Ogunquit and in the early ‘50s he purchased the oceanfront property that now houses the museum. It opened in 1953, as a gallery to display Strater’s collection – it has since expanded into six galleries with more than 1,000 items. The current show, “60 Works – 60 Years,” is featuring works from the beginning years to those most recently acquired. Marsden Hartley is one of my favorite artists and I was thrilled to see “Mt. Katahdin, Winter, 1940” an oil painted on panel. The mountain looms above the steel-grey lake, two pine trees stand like sentinels on the shore, solid snow-filled clouds dot the sky.

The end of June brings the wonderful three-day festival at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Portland on the corner of Park and Pleasant streets. Music, dancing, food and people watching – it is a combination that can’t be beat. We arrived just as the festival opened, but patrons were already lined up for lunch and tantalizing smells assured us that the cooks were in high gear. Everything was well organized – a large menu board described all of the delicious entrees available – after making your choice, you paid the cashier and received a ticket for that particular item, you proceeded to the proper table, picked up your freshly cooked lunch, and then found a seat at the rows and rows of tables laid out under the big tent.

I was tempted by the lamb souvlaki or the gyros, but succumbed to the loukanico, spicy Greek sausage with sizzled sliced onions and green peppers, topped with tiziki sauce and wrapped in a circle of soft flat bread. For dessert, I indulged in loukoumathes – golden puffs of fried dough, bathed with sweet syrup and sprinkled with cinnamon and walnuts, washing it all down with Greek coffee. A meal to be remembered through the cold winter months!

A tour of the church is a delight. Built in 1828 by Methodists, it has also served Unitarians and Presbyterians. In 1926, after almost 100 years, the Greek Orthodox Community of Portland and Westbrook bought the church, as by then there were a sizable number of Greeks in the area who had fled their deeply depressed homeland after World War I. It was adapted to Orthodox use by the addition of icons, a consecrated altar and an iconostasis or screen separating the nave from the sanctuary. The screen displays icons of Jesus Christ, Mary, Mother of God, St. John the Baptist, and other saints important to this particular congregation. Our guide reminded us that for its first thousand years, Christianity existed in two primary forms – an Eastern, Greek-speaking group of churches centered in Constantinople, and a Western, Latin-speaking church united by allegiance to Rome. The Orthodox Church of today is that Eastern half of the Christian Church and is found primarily in Eastern Europe and on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Tom Allen, former U.S. congressman, representing Maine’s 1st District from 1997 to 2009, came to Scarborough Public Library to discuss his new book, “Dangerous Convictions: What’s Really Wrong with the U.S. Congress.” Allen, a Bowdoin graduate, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and with a law degree from Harvard, spoke with conviction and passion. He described the current situation in Congress as enormously frustrating, divided into two groups – those who believe that citizens must be self-reliant, strong and committed to pulling themselves up by their own boot straps without help from the government versus those who believe that membership in the community, bringing people together to debate problems and then acting for the common good, based on facts, is the proper role of government. His book addresses such problems as climate change, the budget, taxes, and the invasion of Iraq, outlining the differing approaches by the two political parties.

Allen is presently CEO and president of the American Association of Publishers, at the moment primarily concerned with the protection of copyrights. He spends three weeks in Washington, D.C., every month.

Marta Bent lives in Scarborough.