Arrow Street Arts opens its Black Box Theater – once the American Repertory Theater’s Oberon – with a Boston Opera Collaborative production of “Carmen.” After that, several groups move in for performances throughout the spring and summer.

An informal group of approximately 20 families in Somerville is directing newfound wealth into an initiative to invest locally, seeking to blunt some effects of gentrification and ensure that properties and businesses remain in community hands.

Public meetings this week look back at the years experienced at The Foundry community building in East Cambridge and the work of the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority, including its upcoming development in partnership with the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House nonprofit.

Meet two extraordinary women born and raised in Cambridge who broke barriers and extended the boundaries of their respective careers.

Many families are still struggling and unable to meet the most basic needs. Inflation, housing costs and day-to-day challenges continue to take their toll.

With a name change in December, the Somerville Education Foundation is now The Somerville Foundation and looking toward next steps.

We continue Black History Month with Emory Clark, who dreamed of owning his own pharmacy and made it come true (with a sideline in ice cream), and Charles Lenox, whose quiet work helped build Cambridge business community in the early 1800s.

Covid’s social distancing accelerated trends toward remote everything. Many corporate employees are rarely at the office. Health risks pushed a stable group of regular volunteers – retirees – to quit, en masse. Other people lost touch with nonprofits when programming paused.

The Bryn Mawr Bookstore was founded in 1971 as one of 10 used bookshops in the Northeast opened by Bryn Mawr College graduates. Today, two remain: The Lantern in Washington, D.C., and Cambridge’s.

We begin Black History Month with Rowena Taylor, a midcentury Cambridge assistant city solicitor and a lawyer in private practice with an office in the Abbot Building in Harvard Square; and Dr. Mary Crutchfield Wright Thompson, a 1930 Tufts Dental School grad known as “Dr. Mary” to generations of Cambridge students.