A week of events in Cambridge and Somerville, from Dragon Boat festival to days of Juneteenth

Sunday

Forty-Third Annual Boston Dragon Boat Festival from noon to 5 p.m. around the Weeks Footbridge, 948 Memorial Drive, in the Riverside neighborhood. Free. Nearly 20,000 spectators gather yearly to watch more than 48 teams from the United States and Canada compete in 500-meter races in sleek, colorful 39-foot-Hong Kong-style dragon boats and take advantage of Asian cultural performances, food and arts and crafts. Started in 1979, this is the oldest such festival in North America. Information is here.

Mozambican Music and Languages from 1 to 4 p.m. at Starlight Square, 84 Bishop Allen Drive, Central Square. Free. Albino Mbie fuses Mozambican rhythms, languages, traditions and culture with jazz and pop. Information is here.

Drop-in art project crafting sessions from 1 to 4 p.m. at the powder magazine of Magazine Beach, at the river end of Magazine Street in the Cambridgeport neighborhood. Free, but an RSVP is requested. Fiber artist Michelle Lougee and arts organizer Cecily Miller – Cambridgeport residents – invite help creating a Magazine Beach Tapestry warning of the environmental dangers of single-use plastic that will go in the newly opened Mass Audubon Nature Center in the beach’s powder magazine building. Volunteers of all ages are invited to participate, looping small plastic trash items such as bottle tops, packaging and discarded toys (all cleaned and safe to handle) to a mesh background. The work will be outside under a shady tree if the weather is good, inside the powder magazine if it is too hot or rainy. Information is here.

Poets Magdalena Gómez and Enzo Silon Surin read from 3 to 4 p.m. at the Longfellow House and Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle St., West Cambridge. Free. Gómez, the poet laureate of Springfield, and Surin, a Haitian-born, award-winning poet, educator, publisher and social advocate, take part in the Longfellow Summer Festival. Information is here.

Boston League of Wicked Wrestlers Presents “Welcome to Pride Corp” from 7 to 10:30 p.m. at The Center for Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville. Tickets are $25 to $40. Local wrestling with a kayfabe storyline of a forced corporate sellout. Timely. Valentine, The Bradlees Babes, Sheila: Attorney at Law, The Butcher, Shitty Wizard, Susie Newsie, Calypso Apocalypto, Rat King, Broox and more take to the ring to work through some stuff. Information is here.

Monday

Fresh Pond Nature Walk from 10:15 to 11 a.m. Free. Meet in the courtyard of the Cambridge Public Library Collins Branch, 64 Aberdeen Ave., West Cambridge, from which park ranger Tim Puopolo walks and talks about what’s growing, changing and blooming in the neighborhood. Information is here.

David Duchovny reads from “The Reservoir” at 6 p.m. at The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Square. Tickets are $27.75, which includes a hardcover copy of the book. Duchovny, the “X-Files” and “Californication” star, has written four novels and hit the New York Times bestseller lists; in this new novella, he takes an ex-Wall Streeter out of quarantine solitude into a “twisted rom-com” in which he tries to rescue a woman but descends into a world of global conspiracies and madness. Duchovny will be in conversation with Peter Swanson, author of “The Kind Worth Killing” and other books. Well-fitting masks are required. Information is here.

Tuesday

Unveiling of “HERstory: A CX Collection of Cambridge Trailblazing Women” art from 4 to 6 p.m. at The Shed at CX, 100 N. First St., North Point. Free, but you can register here. This installation at Cambridge Crossing honors trailblazing Cambridge women with portraits: Maria L. Baldwin, Julia Child, Gertrude Morgan, Harriet Jacobs, Amelia Earhart and Kittie Knox. A celebration follows with live music, guest speakers (promptly at 4:30 p.m.), games and snacks. Developer DivcoWest partnered on this project with the Boston nonprofit Artists for Humanity, which pays under-resourced teens to do art and design. Information is here.

Drop-in art project crafting sessions from 4 to 8 p.m. at the powder magazine of Magazine Beach, at the river end of Magazine Street in the Cambridgeport neighborhood. Free, but an RSVP is requested. This is similar to Sunday’s event (information is here), except that it segues into the …

Nature in the City Festival from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Mass Audubon Nature Center at Magazine Beach, 668 Memorial Drive, Cambridgeport. Free. The first of a planned series of monthly festivals timed to coincide with the full moon. There will be nature-based games and activities, art-making and community workshops suitable for all ages with the music of Lonesome Jukebox starting at 7 p.m. Attendees are urged to bring a picnic. Information is here.

Wednesday

Ada Calhoun reads from “Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me” at 7 p.m. at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Porter Square. Free. After stumbling on old cassette tapes of interviews her father – art critic Peter Schjeldahl – had conducted for a never-completed biography of poet Frank O’Hara, Calhoun set out to finish the book he’d started 40 years earlier. She thought it would be fun; instead, things got messy, and she had to face not just O’Hara’s past, but also her father’s and her own. She’ll be in conversation with Alysia Abbott, author of “Fairyland, A Memoir of My Father.” Information is here.

Jack Parlett reads from “Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise” at 7 p.m. at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Harvard Square. Free. Parlett lands neatly in the nexus of Pride Month and the release of the Hulu film “Fire Island” with a look at a vital space in the queer history of America that’s drawn to its shores Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, Carson McCullers, Frank O’Hara, Patricia Highsmith and Jeremy O. Harris, among others. “Both utopian and exclusionary, healing and destructive, the island is a locus of contradictions,” the event text says; the author will be in conversation with Michael Bronski of Harvard University. Well-fitting masks are required. Information is here.

Songwriters in the Round from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at The Center for Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville. Admission is $10. Inspired by the “guitar pulls” of the Bluebird Café in Nashville, Tennessee, these regular events (every first and third Wednesday) have host David Thorne Scott and musician friends seated in a semi-circle and taking turns playing songs, occasionally joining in with each other and chatting as if in their own living rooms. Information is here.

“This Might Get Weird” podcast recording at 8 p.m. at The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Harvard Square. Tickets are $39.50 for this 18-plus show. A few years ago, Grace Helbig and Mamrie Hart lost their daily video show – they were “the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler of YouTube,” Entertainment Weekly dubbed them, and the show was “Pee-wee Herman Meets Hoda & Kathie Lee,” according to Variety – and went right into podcasting. That meant they had to pivot from stunts such as flossing each other’s teeth to talking through their week, but the pair “have a natural tendency to get ourselves into strange situations,” Helbig told Create & Cultivate. Expect part podcast, part standup comedy. Information is here.

Thursday

Jade Moynihan sings at 7 p.m. at The Burren, 247 Elm St., Davis Square, Somerville. Admission is $16 for this all-ages show. This 18-year-old singer-songwriter from Randolph released her first full-length album, “Werifesteria” – it refers to the impulse to wander a forest longingly – June 1. Information is here.

“Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet” screens from 7 to 9 p.m. at Starlight Square, 84 Bishop Allen Drive, Central Square. Free. This family-friendly animated film couldn’t compete with Pixar’s just-released “Inside Out” in 2015, but it has an all-star voice cast that includes Salma Hayek, Liam Neeson and Quvenzhané Wallis and got three out of four stars from Day reviewer Allyson Johnson. She praised its “grand and beautifully animated” vignettes that “nearly capture” the majesty of the source material: poetry that’s sold 100 million copies in 40 languages since its publication in 1923. Information is here.

Linda Holmes reads from “Flying Solo: A Novel” at 6 p.m. at The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Square. Tickets are $29.75 including a copy of the book or $6 without. The host of the “Pop Culture Happy Hour” podcast and author of the New York Times-bestselling novel “Evvie Drake Starts Over” naturally forces her heroine to solve a family mystery by delving into the world of antiquing and libraries in Maine. It’s a “tender novel full of big-hearted characters, small-town charm and deep truths about life … a perfect book for anyone who feels a little separate from the flock,” author Rebecca Serle blurbed. Holmes will be in conversation with Katie Cotugno, author of “9 Days and 9 Nights.” Well-fitting masks are required. Information is here.

Friday

Kitty Beer reads from “Marriages and Other Dilemmas” at 7 p.m. at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Porter Square. Free. Sixteen short stories (“dynamic, dark, sexy and humorous”) with a 50-page memoir (“frank and open”) – a break for the Harvard- and Cornell-educated author and environmental journalist from her usual eco-thrillers. Information is here.

The opera “Venus & Adonis” from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second St., East Cambridge. General admission is $45. The 10-piece Cambridge Chamber Ensemble accompanies 15 singers and four dancers in presenting John Blow’s charming and poignant baroque chamber opera about love, passion and loss among the Olympian gods. (Cupid shoots his mother, Venus, with his arrow, and she falls in love with the mortal Adonis – and somehow things don’t end well.) Information is here.

Saturday

Paint the Path from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Alewife Linear Park, North Cambridge. City staff will have paint and chalk on hand to entertain kids and adults – but with an ulterior motive: They want to hear from residents about a Linear Park redesign project. This meets at the Harvey Street side of the path. Information is here.

Gallery 263’s birthday bash from noon to 4 p.m. at Gallery 263, 263 Pearl St., Cambridgeport. Free. Stop by for cake, coffee, kid-friendly activities, hand-printed gallery merch and, of course, some exhibited art at this 14-year-old nonprofit home for visual works, yoga classes, art auctions, foraged banquets, comedy shows, workshops and other events. Information is here.

Cambridgewide Juneteenth Celebration from noon to 9 p.m. There’s plenty going on to commemorate June 19, the day in 1865 that slaves learned they’d been proclaimed free in the United States. From noon to 5 p.m. stop by Green-Rose Heritage Park, 155 Harvard St., The Port, for events led by Margaret Fuller House that include yoga, storytelling and a Black Business Fair, with the action switching to Hoyt Field (Gilmore and Montague streets off Western Avenue), Riverside, for fun until 9 p.m. Activities from noon to 2 p.m. at the Cambridge Public Library’s Central Square Branch, 45 Pearl St., include a craft table, storyteller Valerie Stephens and sidewalk chalk drawing, cupcakes and a summer jam to the Afro-pop and Mozambique-inspired jazz sounds of the Albino Mbie Band. Information is here.

Block pARTy from 1 to 3 p.m. on the black-and-white striped Shapiro Family Plaza and nearby Lunder Arts Center courtyard and sidewalk of Lesley University in Porter Square. Free. The Cambridge Plays program and Lesley Art + Design school offer art, music and more: “Mini Meets” by Karsen Andrews, which uses sculpture, comedy and history to encourage discussion about the area; A Trike Called Funk pop-up dance tunes; the “Our Place” interactive ecological art exhibit (make a nest out of upcycled materials); and more. Information is here.

Flying High Dogs from 2 to 2:45 p.m. at Rindge Field, 105 Pemberton St., North Cambridge. Dogs do tricks with frisbees with trainer Mike Piazza, with lots of audience participation promised. Information is here.

The Bridgeside Cypher from 6 to 9 p.m. at Starlight Square, 84 Bishop Allen Drive, Central Square. Free. Artists and musicians – rappers, singers and a band – perform in an often improvised format; there’s an open mic part of the evening too. Information is here.

“The Paper Lined Shack” song cycle at 7 p.m. at The Center for Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville. Tickets are $30. Composer Jeff Beal set out to craft work for soprano Hilá Plitman and wound up using texts from the memoirs of his own great-grandmother, a widow who raised six children in a single-room shack in turn-of-the-20th century Idaho. The work was commissioned by the St. Louis Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin, but this world premiere chamber arrangement features the New Hollywood String Quartet (and projections of century-old images from the memoirs) ahead of an album release. Information is here.

Chris Gethard at 7 and 10 p.m. at The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Harvard Square. Tickets are $26. The earlier show is a podcast taping for ”Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People” (“One phone call. One hour. No names. No holds barred”) and the late show is standup from Gethard, an author and star of the Mike Birbiglia film “Don’t Think Twice” and seen in “Broad City,” “Inside Amy Schumer,” “Parks and Recreation,” “The Office” and the film “The Heat.” 

The opera “Venus & Adonis” continues from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second St., East Cambridge. General admission is $45. Information is here.

Sunday

Juneteenth Celebration continues from 1 to 3 p.m. at Starlight Square, 84 Bishop Allen Drive, Central Square. Free. The Cambridge Families of Color Coalition hosts live performances to celebrate the emancipation holiday. Information is here.

The opera “Venus & Adonis” continues from 3 to 4 p.m. at the Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second St., East Cambridge. General admission is $45. The show repeats Sunday. Information is here.

Juneteenth Gathering from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at Longfellow House and the Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle St., West Cambridge. Free. After a drum call, processional and poetry reading by Akili Jamal Haynes comes a screening of a documentary produced by Boston’s Museum of African American History, “Jubilee Juneteenth and the Thirteenth.” Information is here.

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