ARTIFACTS: Take a hike, watch people dance like no one's watching.

• Marina Public Library has its finger on a few racing pulses here. They host a panel discussion called “Race, Gender and Identity: The Economics of Inequality,” centered around women and the myriad challenges they face, and policies and legislation that might alleviate some of it. It’s moderated by Alexandra Navarro, with panelists Karina Cervantez Alejo of Watsonville City Council; Nancy Kim, director of the Asian American Pacific Islander Resource Center at UC Santa Cruz; JT Mason, co-founder of Demeter Women’s Magazine; and Jacqueline C. Simon of Transitions for Recovery and Re-Entry Program, Inc. It’s free, but RSVP to 866-679-3367.

• The National Park Service is 99 years old this year (on Aug. 25). To celebrate, the Pinnacles National Park offers up a bevy of events this Friday-Sunday including art activities, clean-ups, guided hikes, walks and ranger talks. Oh, and the Pinnacles are a good example of plate tectonics, having been carried along the San Andreas and traveling 195 miles northwest over 23 million years. For those in Monterey County, the mountain really did come to us. 389-4485.

• At 2pm and 4pm on Saturday, the Candid Side Performance Group promises to “investigate the space at the Henry Miller Memorial Library through dance, allowing the outdoors to affect their movement choices.” They do a free-form and in-synch kind of nature-dance that one can imagine wood fairies would do. 667-2574, www.candidside.org.

• Start the day with a Darwinian struggle for survival in a morning dodgeball tournament. That’s not the only thing going down at Rancho Cielo’s Family Fun Day this Sunday, 9am-3pm. Check out this laundry list: a fun run, garden adventure, carne asada barbecue, bike polo (bike polo!), fishing derby, live music, tractor rides, face painting, cow patty bingo… you don’t even know what that is but you’re sold, right? It’s free except for the dodgeball tourney and the food, the cost of which benefits the youth job and life skills facility. 455-3680.

• After a fun family day at Rancho Cielo, how about some baseball? Or at least some free talk about baseball by Molly Knight, author of The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse (she’s also the great, great niece of John Steinbeck). She directs her writing talent to an account of the 2013 Dodgers of Don Mattingly, Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Yasiel Puig, Ned Colletti and others. “She knows the science of the game,” says Kirkus Review. She steps up to the plate 3pm Sunday. 775-4721.