Mobs and poetry is an oxymoron these days. So who could resist attending Poetry Flash Mob, an event in which the public is invited to join poets for the reading of poems in unison down the 16th Street Mall. Head over there between noon and 1 p.m. Tuesday. (The walk begins at Glenarm St.) "Despite the date," quips one of its organizers, Jake Adam York, about the April Fools' Day event, "it's no joke."

Swerve three times in Alabama, and you're liable to run into a roadside barbecue joint. The tastes of one restaurant's slab compared to another can be as different as the Alabama terrain, which stretches from the Gulf Coast near Mobile, to the central piney woods, and northward into the Appalachian range...

In an ode to 'Bama barbecue' at The Southern BBQ Trail website, Jake Adam York celebrates the influences that arrive from neighboring states, whether mustard mixing with tomato for an orange sauce near the Georgia border, or chicken in a white sauce up near Tennessee.

"Whether the influence is Cherokee, Appalachian, Georgian, Mississippian, Floridian, Tennessean, Texan, or just plain Alabamian," York writes, "barbecue springs up everywhere, with significant variation."