ARTIFACTS: Juxtapositions sometimes make the world go 'round - and sometimes upside-down.

• First Friday P.G., founded by Artisana Gallery, commences 6-9pm this Friday with participating venues like Pacific Grove Art Center, Bookmark Music, Sprout Baby Boutique, Taft & Teak, Crack Pot Studios and Planet Trout. If this bears resemblance to the city’s Wine, Art & Music Walk, you’re not far off – the P.G. Chamber of Commerce sponsors both. 375-2208, www.pgartcenter.org.

• Trying to halt a “dramatic decline in literary reading,” the National Endowment for the Arts launched the initiative Poetry Out Loud six years ago, a sort-of spelling bee of poetry readings by high school students. Area schools are invited to compete to go to the state, then national, competitions. Monterey County has done well in this arena – in 2011 and 2013, our kids won state and went to DC for the championships. This year’s sixth annual regionals happen 1pm Saturday at Millennium Charter School, with high school champions bringing words to lyrical life before a panel of judges including Vicki Weaver, Diana Garcia and the guy whose name is at the end of this column. Watch for an Arts & Culture blog, forthcoming. www.PoetryOutLoud.org.

• Youth Music Monterey County sends their Junior Youth & Honors Orchestras (along with guest musicians from Youth Orchestra Salinas), featuring cellist Ari Freedman, to the Sunset Center to put on a concert called Diversity of Passion. The kids, under the direction of YMMC Music Director and Conductor Farkhad Khudyev, perform Haydn, Rimsky Korsakov, Brahms, Albeniz and Holst-Leidig. Their last number is going to be a barn-stormer. Tickets are $5-$30. 375-1992, www.YouthMusicMonterey.org.

• This month’s Networking Aloud: A Writers Open Mic, 6-8pm this Tuesday, at Old Capitol Books in Monterey, brings forth a writer of video game culture. Colin Campbell is a Santa Cruz video game journalist who’s written a novel called Piranha Frenzy about a gaming website and the people who work there, and the delusions that lead their “editorial integrity” astray. All comers are invited to sign up early to read from their own work after Campbell has powered down. 601-9195, 521-0375.

• Sometimes you just gotta be awed by the magnitude and the magnificence of the natural world within Monterey County. The artists of an new art exhibit at Garland Ranch Visitor Center would agree. The juried show consists of renderings of the Carmel River riparian corridor from Cachagua Community Park to the Pacific Ocean. It’s up, as a precursor or epilogue to a hike in the park, until June. 372-3196, www.mprpd.org