Issue: January 2010

It’s a household item you probably take for granted. Maybe you never even thought about it before and you’ve certainly never realized its limitless potential. That is, until you’ve made the leap into remodeling or building your dream home and opened your eyes to the progressive world of countertops. As an integral and highly utilized…

Laura Castleberry of Edmond began to notice something wasn’t quite right with her mother, Carolyn Crawley, in 2005. “Mom started showing signs of real forgetfulness,” Castleberry said. “Not necessarily ‘Where are my car keys?’ but ‘I have these things in my hand, and I don’t know what they’re used for.’” Crawley and her husband of…

Stage lights illuminate a man on a high table, 14 feet above the stage. He’s bound with shackles, struggling against his chains. Above him, rows of 18-inch, solid steel spikes point downward. He has seconds to free himself before they drop. The audience waits in silent expectation. The spikes fall and crash onto an empty…

Independent progressive rock band, Eden Sharmaine, is constantly experimenting. First they added a saxophone, then a violin. Now, they’re blending metal breakdowns into folk songs and tinkering with other genres in unexpected ways. Something must be working, because on December 14th, exactly one year after their first concert at a tiny Oklahoma City venue, Eden…

Most people would be discouraged by a high wall or drainage ditch in their path, but such things are welcome obstacles for practitioners of a French martial art called parkour. It’s been around for decades, but it wasn’t until James Bond chased discipline co-founder Sébastien Foucan through a Madagascar construction site in Casino Royale that…

Each born in a foreign country with early careers that began before the age of 10 – the three new Kickingbird Tennis Center  instructors seem to have a lot in common. All three were enticed to Oklahoma by local universities with sports scholarships and each landed the perfect job at the same facility, as though…

When one hears the name Federal Bureau of Investigation, secret files, wire-tapped conversations, complicated investigations and even the image of the symbolic Hoover Building in Washington, DC come to mind. A number of movie scenes and famous characters might pop up as well. The boundaries between reality and fiction in stories about the FBI are…

It started in 1951 with a gas station owned by Tom and Ada Beam. In 1953, they sold and installed seat covers and by 1955 they manufactured and sold seatbelts as an aftermarket safety device.    Today the 60 employees of Beam’s Industries create 850,000 seatbelts per year for amusement park rides, construction and agricultural…

“Some pursue happiness, and others create it.” That’s what Army Sergeant Tom McShane tells the teens in his church youth groups. “He says it all the time,” says girlfriend Mallory Thurman. “It’s what he models his life after.” This life motto has taken him from the safety and security of Edmond’s city limits, across the…

Whether you create a complete outdoor living space or simply desire a chiminea to keep you warm, your family and guests can enjoy a unique experience. A recent trend in outdoor living is custom-built kitchens, usually featuring gas which is more convenient and safer than wood, says Rick Jackson with House of Fire because, “The…