Aug. 5

Friendship Firehouse Festival

Friendship Firehouse, 107 S. Alfred St., Alexandria; Sat., 9 a.m.-2 p.m., free.

Heed the siren song (get it?) of the annual Friendship Firehouse Festival. You can visit the historic station (built in 1855) and check out firefighting activities, cool vehicles and some olden-days equipment that will make you very, very grateful you live in the modern age of firefighting. For example, there’s the suction pumper fire engine, which was pulled BY HAND. You also get a free fire hat!

Aug. 6

Signature Theatre’s Open House

Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington; Sun., noon-8:30 p.m., free, tickets for free performances distributed one hour prior to showtimes.

Signature Theatre is kicking off its 2017-18 season with a day reserved for 81/2 hours of pure pandemonium. (We mean that in a good way.) This includes free performances — singalongs, dueling guitars, choruses and the like — every 15 minutes; all sorts of dance classes; and a huge outdoor party with a snacks, a cornhole tournament and — brace for it — balloon twister! All that is in addition to special discounts on tickets for Signature’s upcoming productions.

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Aug. 6

‘Fierce Women’

National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Ave. NW; Sun., 1-2 p.m., free.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is bringing back the “Nasty Women” guided tour of the museum that it presented around the time of January’s Women’s March, except now it’s rebranded as a tour of “Fierce Women.” Same idea, though: The museum is spotlighting works by and about women who basically gave the finger to the norms of society and blazed their own trails as female artists, activists and all-around badasses.

Aug. 10

Akua Allrich

Franklin Park, 1332 I St. NW; Aug. 10, noon-2 p.m., free.

If you never caught Akua Allrich’s annual tributes to Nina Simone and Miriam Makeba at Bohemian Caverns, now is the time to get hip to this rising star of a soul singer. A D.C. native and Howard University graduate, Allrich imbues every song she takes on with a palpable sense of history as well as depth of feeling. She brings an intellectual interpretation to a wide array of music, including post-Reconstruction chain gang songs, jazz standards and modern hip-hop. Bassist-composer Tarus Mateen will also perform during this double-header concert.

Aug. 14

Mushroom Hunting for Beginners

Deanwood Recreation Center, 1350 49th St. NE; Aug. 14, 6:30-8:30 p.m., free, registration at dcdpr.asapconnected.com.

Imagine an Easter egg hunt where certain eggs could kill you — that’s what mushroom foraging is like. In this workshop, Tara Geiger, co-founder of the DC Urban Gardeners Network, will teach you to safely hunt for the good kind of fungi while avoiding the poisonous ones. As for the OTHER kind of shrooms, find another class.

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Aug. 18

Black Masala

City Municipal Building, 4310 Gallatin St., Hyattsville, Md.; Aug. 18, 6:30-8:30 p.m., free.

D.C.’s self-described “gypsy punk brass band” headlines this month’s edition of Hyattsville, Md.’s outdoor Summer Jam concert series. Lately, the group has been releasing a series of EPs that feature remixes of songs from 2015’s “I Love You Madly.” At this show, you can expect a dance-friendly mix of New Orleans funk, Balkan brass and maybe a little D.C. punk.

Aug. 20

‘Beyond What the Eye Can See: Using the Technology of NASA’s Rovers to Explore Paintings’

National Gallery of Art, East Building, Fourth Street and Constitution Ave. NW; Aug. 20, 2 p.m., free.

Plenty of things can help you unlock the secrets of classic paintings: an art history degree, that book on impressionists in the gallery gift shop, or the imaging equipment used on Mars. In this lecture, National Gallery of Art imaging scientists John Delaney and Kathryn Dooley will demonstrate what you can learn when you use NASA technology on priceless pieces of art — for example, you can see what work Pablo Picasso started on the canvas that he later used for “Le Gourmet.”

Aug. 21

Watch the solar eclipse at the Air and Space Museum

National Air and Space Museum, Independence Avenue and Sixth Street SW; Aug. 21, 1:17-4:01 p.m. with maximum eclipse at 2:42 p.m., free.

For the first time in a century, the moon will block our view of the sun and cast a shadow across the entire continental U.S. Here in D.C., the sun will only be about 82 percent blocked, so you’ll need special eclipse-viewing glasses to safely watch the rare phenomenon. Pick up yours for free at the National Air and Space Museum’s eclipse viewing party. You can also peek at the moon and the sun through the museum’s observatory telescopes, and watch a livestream of the total eclipse as viewed by scientists in Liberty, Mo.

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Aug. 23

‘Live From the Lawn: Uke Fest’

Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, Md.; Aug. 23, 7 p.m., free.

If one ukulele can conjure up trade winds and mai tais, imagine what a few dozen can do. Pack a picnic and bring your blanket to see the students of the Strathmore Uke Orchestra strum songs together at Strathmore’s Gudelsky Gazebo for “Uke Fest,” the grand finale of Strathmore’s five-day Uke & Guitar Summit. Also performing: summit instructors Benny Chong, Craig Chee and Sarah Maisel.

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