Life + Culture

How Cleveland County Gives Back

Where to donate, volunteer or find help this Thanksgiving Article by Kylie Caldwell | Photography by Provided November has a way of providing perspective. We count the things we would hate to lose — a warm house, a full table, kids who feel safe in both. What makes this community remarkable is not that those needs exist; it is that four organizations here have spent decades answering them, quietly, one home at a time.  This month, we are thankful for them — and for the neighbors who keep them...

Life + Culture

Born and Bred

Milena Govich, The Girl from Keith Street Article by Kylie Caldwell | Photography by Provided by Milena Govich Broadway's Sally Bowles, Law & Order's first female detective and a Dick Wolf director says Norman gave her everything she needed to leave and a reason to keep coming back. When Milena Govich made her first film as a director, she didn't shoot it in Los Angeles or Atlanta, where she was working. She went home to Keith Street. It was 2016. She had spent most of two decades as a...

Food + Beverage

The Table Is Only The Beginning

Beth Ketchum on the draperies, chairs and fabrics that finish a room for holiday entertaining. Article by Jeff Weber and Kylie Caldwell | Photography by Beth Ketchum A beautiful table setting is only the beginning of holiday celebrations. That is how Beth Ketchum thinks about the season, and she has spent more than twenty years making the case. When family and friends gather, the entire room becomes part of the celebration. Custom draperies, Roman shades, upholstered dining chairs and...

Finance + Legal Services

Built and Bred

Why McKesson Bet $179 Million on Cleveland County Article by Jeff Weber Economic development rarely makes for glamorous reading, but it shapes almost everything close to home — the jobs your neighbors hold, the tax base behind good schools and smooth roads, and whether the next generation can build a career without leaving town. For years, Cleveland County has been quietly working to become more than a university ringed by bedroom communities: a place that competes for major employers and...

Life + Culture

Every Team, Every Town

How Cleveland County's football programs bring us together Article by Kylie Caldwell | Photography by Kyle Phillips/Norman Public Schools Saturdays in Cleveland County belong to the university. Norman fills with visitors, the streets change, and for a day the town's attention points toward campus. That's the identity most people outside the county know. The night before, a different set of stadiums fills up. That's the identity most people inside the county know. The lights come on at Norman...

Food + Beverage

Cleveland County's Only Certified Neapolitan Pizzeria

Inside Volare, where a Naples-built oven, 900-degree heat, and 90-second bakes earn an international designation. Article by Jeff Weber | Photography by Provided by Volare Anthony Compagni flew to California to learn a pizza he already knew how to make. He spent a week with a master pizzaiolo who had taken second at the pizza Olympics in Italy, and by the fourth day he had stopped studying and started producing — pie after pie, stacked one on the next, until the motion became muscle memory. He...

Food + Beverage

Taste of Cleveland County

Article and Photography by Kylie Caldwell A handful of dishes and drinks in the county have earned their place as certifiable local institutions.Here's a taste of what makes Cleveland County's food scene one of a kind. APPETIZER   Graze Craze  The shop builds customizable grazing boards and boxes — meats, cheeses, fresh produce, and house-made dips and jams — assembled by staff the company calls "grazologists."  RAW BAR Hokkaido Scallops at Juliette Oyster Bar & Steakhouse Housed in...

Food + Beverage

Amy Cakes

Amy Cakes: Behind One of Norman's Longest-Running Bakeries Article by Kylie Caldwell | Photography by Lauren Beau Photography Amy Cullifer started decorating cakes at 19, working part-time at a grocery store bakery. It wasn't the plan — art and interior design was always the original passion — but the job became something else entirely. "This is my creative outlet," she said in discovery of that early job. "And then the passion for baking came with it." She and her husband, Mike, later moved...

Life + Culture

Coaches Corner: Skip Johnson

Article by Kylie Caldwell | Photography by Whitney Stilwell It's been a big summer for OU baseball coach Skip Johnson, fresh off leading the Sooners to the College World Series title. A national title, a grandbaby, a sandwich named in his honor- the coach's summer had a little everything. At Midway Deli near campus, there's a sandwich called the Skip. It's been official since June, the same month Oklahoma baseball won its first national title in over thirty years, and the same month Johnson...

Professional Services

Rockwell Holidays on Main Street

In a Norman private studio, families spend twenty minutes in true Christmas spirit. Article by Jeff Weber | Photography by Whitney Stilwell For the past seven years, photographer Whitney Stilwell has run The Santa Experience out of Red Stiletto Studios in downtown Norman: a private, “storybook-style” take on the traditional Santa photo session. She traces the idea to Norman Rockwell, and to his habit of finding the meaningful thing inside the ordinary one. There is an obvious joke available...