Sunday, Jan. 22

Opera Bites: A Feast of 10-Minute Operas at 3 p.m. at the Longy School of Music, 27 Garden St., Harvard Square. $25.Eight small operas – seven of them new commissions – are presented cabaret-style with food and drink, in English and accompanied by small ensemble by the Boston Opera Collaborative. Information is here.

Ultimate Beyblade Tournament from 10 a.m. to noon at Lilypad, 1353 Cambridge St., Inman Square. $2 suggested donation, with registration required. This competition is for 5- to 12-year-olds, but don’t doubt there are bookies somewhere making odds. Information is here.

Monday, Jan. 23

A cardinal spotted at Cambridge’s Fresh Pond in 2012. (Photo: iluvgadgets via Flickr)

Fresh Pond nature walk from 10:15 to 11:15 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.

Meet Mastodon, the Twitter alternative at noon at the Somerville Media Center, 90 Union Square, Somerville. Free. Participants will sign up for an account and learn how to navigate this free, noncorporate alternative to Twitter. Information is here.

Artz Underground Show at 6 p.m. at The Jungle, 6 Sanborn Court, Union Square, Somerville. Free to attend this 21-plus event. Music, vendors and art populate this series curated by R&B/soul artist Eva Davenport. Information is here.

Ilyon Woo reads from “Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom” at 7 p.m. at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Harvard Square. Free. The story of how in 1848 young, enslaved Ellen and William Craft achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in U.S. history – posing as master and slave to travel across more than 1,000 miles from Georgia to free states in the North. The author will be in conversation with Kellie Carter Jackson, author of “Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence.” Well-fitting masks are required. Information is here.

Monday Movie Night at CX – “Shrek” Edition from 7 to 9 p.m. at Lamplighter CX, 110 North First St., North Point. Free to attend this 21-plus event. Come early to get set up in a “Shrek”-themed drinking game. Information is here.

Tuesday, Jan. 24

The Moth Story Slam from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at The Center for Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville. Tickets are $15. This open-mic storytelling competition on the fourth Tuesday of each month is open to anyone who can share a five-minute story on the night’s theme – this time, “juggle,” in which participants are asked to tell of “keeping everything in the air. Multiple projects, people, and tasks – you can do it all! Balancing acts, spinning plates or the comedy of errors when it all starts to wobble. Love triangles, extra shifts, multiple jobs. School, work and parties? All it takes is one little slip …” Information is here.

Elinor Lipman. (Photo: Michael Benabib)

Elinor Lipman reads from “Ms. Demeanor” at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Porter Square. Free, but registration is suggested. The prolific novelist (“On Turpentine Lane,” “Rachel to the Rescue” and “Then She Found Me,” which became a 2008 feature film directed by and starring Helen Hunt) tells of a lawyer who is fired and given six months of home confinement after being spotted having sex on the roof of her New York apartment building. Masks are required. Information is here.

Wednesday, Jan. 25

Larry Spotted Crow Mann (via author website)

A conversation on Native American sovereignty from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Cambridge Main Library, 449 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge. Free, but reservations are required. Indigenous artist and author Larry Spotted Crow Mann speaks. Information is here.

Stephen Markley reads from “The Deluge” at 7 p.m. at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Harvard Square. Free. This is speculative fiction that feels uncomfortably close, with a “stark backdrop of accelerating chaos” in which a scientist and activist try to “salvage humanity’s last chance at a future.” Well-fitting masks are required. Information is here.

Drag Night at 8 p.m. at Aeronaut Brewing, 14 Tyler St., near Union Square, Somerville. $15 for a 21-plus show. Queens Coleslaw, Severity Stone, and Harlow Havoc perform. Masks are required when not actively eating or drinking. Information is here.

Thursday, Jan. 26

Harvard Art Museums at Night from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., near Harvard Square. Free, but reserving a visit is suggested. Browse the galleries, mingle in the Calderwood Courtyard and enjoy the sounds of a DJ. There’s food and drink available for purchase. Information is here.

Johnny Hodges, right, plays with Al Sears circa 1946. (Photo: William P. Gottlieb via Wlkipedia)

The Cambridge Black History Project Honors Black Trailblazers from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Cambridge Main Library, 449 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge. Free, but registration is required. The launch of eight new Trailblazer Bookmarks honoring the lives of Black Cantabrigians whose accomplishments have often been overlooked: artist and musician Barbara Ward Armstrong; hair-care entrepreneur Olive Benson; artist and teacher Calvin Burnett; public health pioneer Dr. June Christmas; scholar and minister Cheryl Townsend Gilkes; saxophonist Johnny Hodges; bicycle racer Kittie Towle Knox; and dancer Gus Solomons Jr. The opening reception features jazz and classical musician Joel LaRue Smith, followed by a talk. Information is here.

Life is a Cabernet at 8 p.m. at Somerville Theatre’s Crystal Ballroom, 55 Davis Square. $25. The farewell performance of Celia Smokinbutts and Patty Bourree’s “all lip-syncing, all box-stepping musical review nobody asked for,” described as providing “mystery, danger, romance, bloodshed, heartbreak, hysteria, diarrhea, upset stomach, spontaneous combustion – and that’s just the first act!” Information is here.

Friday, Jan. 27

“Marking Their Place in History” exhibit of Cambridge Black Trailblazers from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Cambridge Main Library, 449 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge, and continuing through March 1. Free. Fifteen extraordinary Black Cantabrigians whose lives and accomplishments have often been overlooked are featured. Information is here.

A statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Nashville, Tennessee, was removed in 2021. (Photo: Brent Moore via Flickr)

Kristin Hass reads from “Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums and Patriotic Practice” at 7 p.m. at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Harvard Square. Free. Everything from the American Museum of Natural History to the Edmund Pettus “Bridge to Freedom” in Selma, Alabama, and even Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Cemetery gets examined to reveal the meaning behind “everyday landscapes and cultural practices that are designed to seem benign or natural.” The author will be in conversation with Tiya Miles, author and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. Well-fitting masks are required. Information is here.

Comedy x Music from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. at The Rockwell, 255 Elm St., Davis Square, Somerville. $25 for a 21-plus show. Comedians and musicians and comedian-musicians perform in this variety show. Masks are required. Information is here.

Saturday, Jan. 28

“Marking Their Place in History” exhibit of Cambridge Black Trailblazers (continued) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Cambridge Main Library, 449 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge, and continuing through March 1. Free. Information is here.

“A Journey Backward” faculty artist recital by Dana Varga at 8 p.m. at the Longy School of Music, 27 Garden St., Harvard Square. Free, with registration and donations of $10 or up welcomed. Varga, a soprano and founder of MassOpera who made her Carnegie Hall debut last year, mixes personal stories with performance. Information is here.

There, There, a Radiohead tribute band based in New York. (Photo: There, There via Facebook)

There, There tribute to Radiohead at 8 p.m. at The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Harvard Square. $25.  You’re not going to see the actual Radiohead perform anytime soon, and certainly not for $25, so get your fill here. This faithful tribute to the band even has an opening act in seminal alt-rockers R.E.M. (well, fellow tribute band Murmur). Information is here.

Sunday, Jan. 29

“Marking Their Place in History” exhibit of Cambridge Black Trailblazers (continued) from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Cambridge Main Library, 449 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge, and continuing through March 1. Free. Information is here.

“El Canto del Caballero” from 3 to 4 p.m. at the Somerville Museum, 1 Westwood Road, in the Spring Hill neighborhood. $20. Renaissance music from Spain performed by the Duo Maresienne – works by Cabezon, Vasquez, Selma, Ortiz, Guerrero and  Trabaci, among others, from between 1530 and 1630. Information is here.