If you’ve ever been curious about buying art, you’re sure to run into a few primed collectors willing to teach you how at Arts Festival Oklahoma, Aug. 31-Sept. 2, at the Oklahoma City Community College campus, 7777 S. May Ave., Oklahoma City. The annual festival has been running strong since 1978 and made quite the name for itself among artists and patrons alike. The juried show showcases original artwork by regional artists attracting thousands of browsers looking for a bargain on a budding de Koonig – and if one exists, you’ll find him or her there. This year marks the festival’s 35th anniversary, and activities include a free concert by the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, performing arts, a children’s creative center and work by some 120 artists selected to participate. Admission is free, but parking is $5. For more, go online to www.occc.edu/afo.

It’s been seven months since the Oklahoma Sooners lost to Texas A&M in the 2013 Cotton Bowl, and since that game-ending whistle sounded, Bob Stoops and the Sooners have been training mentally and physically for their season opener. The Sooners look forward to the opportunity of grabbing the title of BCS National Champions, but to achieve that eighth national title, the team must take the season one game at a time. On Saturday, Aug. 31, the Sooners host the University of Louisiana at Monroe Warhawks at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, 180 E. Brooks St., in Norman. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. Tickets for the home opener are $59 each at www.soonersports.com. Season tickets are also available. Look for The University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane’s first home game on Sept. 7 against Colorado State University (www.tulsahurricane.com). Oklahoma State University’s Cowboys get its first home-field advantage when the team plays Lamar on Sept. 14 (www.okstate.com).

It’s been the habit of late to take a tale that has delighted and entertained generations of readers and inject a darker “twist” on its traditional telling. Fairy tales and L. Frank Baum’s Land of Oz seem to be most susceptible to these retellings in novels and film, with varying results. The Broadway musical Wicked, however, has quickly become a classic in its own right. Based on Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Wicked the musical courts the lighter side of Maguire’s telling without losing its essential remarks on friendship, good intentions and harsh consequences. Celebrity Attractions invites fans to the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall, 201 N. Walker Ave., where Wicked runs Sept. 4-22. Tickets are $35-$150, available at www.myticketoffice.com. For more about the musical, visit www.okcciviccenter.com online.

When people say the state fair has something for everyone, they mean it. Along with every imaginable kind of food deep-fried to perfection, the fair has carnival rides, petting zoos, livestock shows, concerts, beer gardens and special contests and events. The Oklahoma State Fair, Sept. 12-22, steps up at Oklahoma State Fair Park, 3001 General Pershing Blvd., Oklahoma City. Look for the PRCA Pro Rodeo (Xtreme Bulls!), the Eli Young Band and Disney on Ice: Rockin’ Ever After (Sept. 12-17) featuring Brave’s Merida. The Tulsa State Fair, Sept. 26-Oct. 6, offers rodeo action, too, along with the state sugar art show, a national wedding cake competition, a fiddling contest and more. Disney on Ice also makes an appearance in Tulsa, with performances at Expo Square (Sept. 26-29), 4145 E. 21st St. For complete information on all these events, visit the Oklahoma State Fair at www.okstatefair.com and the Tulsa State Fair at www.tulsastatefair.com.

The largest metropolitan area in western Canada, Vancouver is a center of commerce and a transportation hub that also just happens to be nestled between the sea and coastal mountains. The result is all the activity of one of the nation’s biggest cities and some of the most spectacular urban scenery in Canada. Vancouverites broadly split their city into three: the Westside, the Eastside (or East Van) and City Centre. With most of the city’s major attractions located in and close to City Centre, for a short trip, it’s recommended to stay in this vicinity. Public transportation is ample, so more distant attractions that might appeal to visitors are within easy reach, regardless.

Only the weather and your own interests limit your activities in Vancouver. Most people will definitely want to spend a day exploring local and regional culture, history, arts and architecture. A solid itinerary would include the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and its intensive exploration of the people of the Northwest Coast and their history. The Vancouver Art Gallery downtown is another must-see, and, while smaller and lesser-known, the Contemporary Art Gallery downtown on Nelson Street is well respected in the art world. The shiny geodesic dome of the Telus World of Science (commonly known as Science World) is interesting for the whole family with a focus on making science fun and accessible to youngsters. Architectural highlights include the distinctive sails of Canada Place, the adjacent Vancouver Convention Centre and the Art Deco styling of the Marine Building. While exploring the city, note that Robson Street in City Centre is the primary shopping area, but Gastown, the city’s oldest neighborhood, offers more local and eclectic shopping. World-class dining abounds, with some top choices being Bishop’s and The Oakwood Canadian Bistro for Canadian and regionally-inspired food; L’Abbatoir for contemporary French and Miku for Japanese fare and sushi. For those in need of more American flavors, Cactus Club Café is a reliable option.

An outdoor-oriented itinerary should start with exploration of two sites – Stanley Park, the arguable center of activity in the city, and the city’s seawall (which wraps around several neighborhoods, including Stanley Park). Here one can enjoy any number of passive and light-action activities. The more active adventurer will find no limit of options here, depending on weather – from relaxing on the beach to snow-skiing in the nearby mountains (Vancouver is gateway to Whistler, one of the most acclaimed ski destinations on the continent) to beach volleyball, golf, tennis and exciting rental boat racing across the beautiful coastal waters.

Few destinations in North America offer the myriad possibilities that Vancouver does – from haute cuisine dining and high culture to laid-back beachcombing and world-class snow skiing. Regardless of which dominates one’s itinerary, Vancouver will remain firmly rooted in any visitor’s memory as distinct and utterly beautiful.

At A Glance

Access: Vancouver International Airport is served by most major carriers.
Population: Approx. 2.3 million (Metro area)
Climate: Temperate with dry summers and wet winters
Main Attractions: Terrific scenery, ranging from the oceanfront to the mountains, and all related sporting and outdoor opportunities; arts and culture; historical and architectural treasures. 

Hot Picks

The Triumvirate: Are you up to the challenge? Vancouver is one of those rare places where you could theoretically ski in the mountains, windsurf in the ocean and play a round of golf all in the same day.
Planning: There are a variety of attractions passes available that help visitors save on retail admissions, such as the See Vancouver Smartvisit Card and the Vancouver Five in One Card. Plan in advance!

Stay In Style

Rosewood Hotel Georgia is a beautiful downtown boutique hotel across from the Vancouver Art Gallery. A wonderful vibe permeates the recently renovated 1920s hotel, from the décor, artwork on the walls, and the friendliness of the staff. www.rosewoodhotels.com
Wedgewood Hotel & Spa draws visitors with classis style and appeal, from the doorman at the entrance to comfortable rooms and world-class service. Spa amenities add a touch of extra luxury to an already award-winning hotel near the heart of activity in Vancouver. www.wedgewoodhotel.com

Visit Online

www.tourismvancouver.com/

Just because the days are getting cooler does not mean we need to start piling on the makeup. In fact, the look for fall is matte and minimal, and with all the advances in beauty, lighter foundations, BB Creams and tinted moisturizers have never been more effective at weightlessly covering flaws. One of the easiest ways to get great coverage (and that matte finish) without caking is to add primer to your routine. Estée Lauder Matte Perfecting Primer lends to staying power, oil control and a shine-free finish. Boscia BB Cream and Diorskin Forever Flawless Perfection Wear Makeup both weightlessly melt into skin, finish matte and still manage to be hydrating. Where powders used to be heavy, dusky and obvious, today’s are translucent, perfecting and feather-light; they make for long-lasting makeup and oil control. NARS Light Reflecting Pressed Setting Powder has Photochromic Technology that can optically hide imperfections. The hydrating and silky powder can even be worn alone. For those who prefer a loose powder, Koh Gen Do Face Powder In Jar also has a silky formula and hydrates while still leaving a perfected matte finish. Ironically, incorporating a couple extra steps and products will actually leave skin looking more natural and not weighed down while still adding to longevity.

Tinted Shades

New, colored mascaras recently appearing on shelves can be daunting, but don’t write them off quite yet. Slightly tinted shades can enhance the natural color of your eyes or add a pop for a new look. Stay in your comfort zone with dark purple, navy or burgundy mascara that appear almost black. The burgundy and navy can really zest up green eyes while purple stuns on brown peepers. Just be sure to keep eye shadow and eyeliner more neutral. Dior Diorshow Iconic Mascara in navy blue is ideal for playing with new shades but also still subtle. Yves Saint Laurent Mascara Volume Effet Faux Cils in deep purple or deep burgundy has great texture for ultra-lengthy lashes and just a touch of luxurious violet and earth tones. For a more playful approach, try a teal like BareMinerals Remix Collection Flawless Definition Mascara in Aqua on the ends of lashes.

Spare Your Hair

All that summer sand, salt and sun can leave hair with perfect, beachy waves – not to mention a little dry and dull. But healthy, sleek and shiny hair isn’t a pipe dream for fall days. With a bevy of masks and treatments available, strands can be whipped back into shape. For those last couple of pool days, treatments like Alterna Bamboo Beach Summer Sun Recovery Spray nourish and condition locks. Apply and knot hair into a bun and let the extra outdoor heat amp up the leave-in treatment. Back at home, masks like the L’Oreal Paris Advanced Haircare Total Repair 5 Damage-Erasing Balm can revitalize dull and dry hair in the shower. And it is also great for chemically treated hair. Hair is again shiny and strong just in time for those fall football parties.

Lindsay Rogers is the founder of Belle Belle Social Media. You may read more of her beauty tips on the Belle Belle Beauty Blog.

Nobody’s looking for a home in the northeast Oklahoman towns of Picher or Cardin. Both sit smack in the middle of Tar Creek, one of the most toxic waste sites in the United States. The list of health problems present in these towns is ridiculously long. All of them are byproducts of long-gone lead and zinc mines in the area.

Lead is in the water. It’s in the air. At one time, more than 17 percent of children in the area had high enough levels of lead in the blood to be considered dangerous by federal standards. Almost one-quarter of pregnancies in these towns ended in miscarriage. Kids developed learning disabilities. Kidney disease and general neurological damage ran rampant through the entire population. Various cancers popped up in disproportionate numbers. These are facts gathered 10 years ago. Things have improved a bit, but not enough to get anybody excited enough to move back to Picher or Cardin.

Illnesses aren’t the only threat in the Tar Creek area. Old and unfortified mines have created sinkholes large enough to swallow baseball fields. That’s not the kind of land anybody’s liable to use to reinvigorate these lost communities.

In 1984 – three decades ago – the U.S. government declared Tar Creek a Superfund site, making it eligible for federal sponsorship of the clean-up effort. The Oklahoma legislature passed the Oklahoma Plan for Tar Creek, an effort to relocate citizens of Picher and Cardin. Other efforts are being made to clean the area’s water, such as the University of Oklahoma operation of a large water treatment system. The state is repaving roads littered with lead dust. But nobody’s completely sure if these efforts will yield big results.

Both towns have been almost completely evacuated, with families scattering here and there around Oklahoma. So there’s no longer an immediate threat to people. But the cleanup and planned restoration of the site to its original wetlands state will take roughly 30 years. That’s a long wait, a wait that guarantees there won’t be any resurrection of Picher or Cardin anytime soon.

Fans of “Stefon,” “Vinny Vedecci” and a host of characters brought to life by Tulsa native Bill Hader were saddened by the star’s exit from Saturday Night Live at the end of last season. Of course, many have wondered what is next for Hader.

Typically, when a big star leaves SNL, it’s for some major opportunity. That may not be the case with Hader, though. He says the decision to quit the show and move to California owes more to SNL’s demanding schedule and the increasing need for he and writer-director wife Maggie Carey to be on the West Coast. That and his family really wanted a yard.

However, that doesn’t mean Hader is lacking for work or even slowing down. He appears in the raunchy summer comedy The To Do List, written and directed by his wife, and he reprises the voice role of “Flint Lockwood” in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. He’ll take more dramatic turns opposite Kristin Wiig in the upcoming The Skeleton Twins and in the two-part film The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby with James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain. Hader is also the latest pitchman for T-Mobile and the new voice of Planters’ iconic Mr. Peanut. He’ll also join the South Park team as a full-time writer for the upcoming season.

We also shouldn’t be surprised to find Hader behind the camera very soon. He recently told CNN that he’d love to direct a movie and that that’s really what he wanted to do all along. “Acting was never something on my radar,” he tells the network.

Dan Wootton holds more accomplishments than his musical fingers can count. He has conducted orchestras from Chicago to St. Petersburg and has composed works for the likes of Broadway star Sam Harris and opera diva Sarah Coburn.

His new musical, A Few Doors Down, will premiere Sept. 25 at Tulsa’s Studio K. The work takes the audience into the lives of four characters for an in-depth study of the struggles and triumphs that alter their lives.

What is the overarching theme of A Few Doors Down?

The main theme is that change takes time. Several of the characters we get to see over the process of 30 or 40 years. It’s my belief that life doesn’t wrap up perfectly like we see in 90-minute films. There are some things in life that take a couple decades to work out, and this is that story. One of the characters is Cedar, and we meet Cedar as a 14-year-old on the night she is rescued from a home that is cursed by domestic violence. So to see her the next week is interesting, but to see her in 30 years would be fascinating.

What inspired you to write A Few Doors Down?

There is a saying: “Write what you know.” With this project, I wanted to write about what I knew. We moved to Oklahoma eight years ago, and for me to write a musical set in France or about zombies and aliens would feel disconnected. The characters names are Sundland, Madison, Cedar and Fort. Those are the names of the homes I grew up in. It’s the idea that you can walk down a street and see these stories.

Where does your love of music come from?

I just think it’s so cool that something that exists today did not before. It’s like my own version of therapy: To make something up that didn’t exist five minutes ago. There’s something magical about it.

When a little voice spoke to Janet Phillips, she listened, and it may have saved her life.

In 2006, the then-44-year-old Phillips went to her doctor for a routine well woman check. The doctor found some thickening in her right breast. Her mammogram came back clear, so Phillips was sent for an ultrasound.

“The radiologist said it was just fibrocystic thickening, it was something I’d always had,” says Phillips. “[The radiologist] started to put the wand away when I heard a little voice say, ‘You need to check the left side.’

“I looked at the doctor and said, ‘I really feel like we need to check the left side.’ Within seconds they found something that worried them.”

The Best Advice

The worrisome spot in Phillips’ ultrasound turned out to be early stage invasive lobular carcinoma, a less common form of breast cancer. The majority of breast cancer cases – 80 percent – involve invasive ductal carcinoma.

“Invasive ductal carcinoma is by far the most common type of invasive breast cancer,” says Dr. Chad Johnson, a physician with Warren Clinic Breast Specialists. “It gets its name from the fact that it begins in the cells that line the ‘tubing,’ or the ducts that deliver milk to the nipple. This is in contrast to invasive lobular carcinoma, which begins in the milk-producing glands and causes about 10 percent of breast cancers. The final 10 percent of breast cancers encompass a wide array of various types.”

It’s important that women pay attention to all signs of potential breast cancer when performing self-exams and not just feel for lumps. Invasive ductal carcinoma often presents as a lump; invasive lobular carcinoma, Phillips’ cancer type, often presents as a thickening of tissue and, in early stages, may go undetected on mammograms. For Phillips, the fact that she could not detect her cancer during self-exams was unsettling. “It was weird because I felt a real uneasiness that it wasn’t anything that was detectable by hand,” she says.

Phillips says she was glad she followed her instinct because, had she waited until the following year, the cancer could have been more advanced. “My mammogram came back clear,” she says. “Without the ultrasound, it would have been at a much greater stage. When we caught it, it was in a very early stage and hadn’t moved to lymph nodes. I was blessed to hear that little voice in my heart.”

“The two most common ways breast cancer is discovered is either by the patient feeling a lump or by a yearly mammogram,” says Johnson. “However, there are other symptoms that can be concerning for cancer. Bloody nipple discharge, nipple retraction, skin dimpling or skin color changes are all potential signs of a cancer and need to be thoroughly examined.

“I cannot stress enough the importance of regular self-exams and yearly mammograms along with an annual exam by a physician,” he continues. “Most breast cancers – more than 90 percent – can be located with these three steps. But it is also important to know what to look for on a self-exam. Of course, there is the exam of the breast tissue for lumps, but it is also important to examine the skin for any changes. Looking for skin color changes or dimpling of the skin and nipple are concerning signs that need to be examined by a physician. Many women are concerned that they don’t do their breast exam ‘the right way.’ I stress that there is no right way; what is important is to perform the exam regularly so that each woman knows what her normal tissue looks and feels like. That way, she can call the doctor any time there is something that strays from the normal exam.”

What Is And What Will Be

One in eight women will develop breast cancer. Unfortunately, the biggest risk factor is one that we cannot control: age. “If you live to be 110, you have an 80 percent chance of developing breast cancer,” says Dr. Shubham Pant, assistant professor of medicine and director of clinical trials in the hematology/oncology section of the Peggy and Charles Stephenson Oklahoma Cancer Center. The good news is that research is constantly yielding new information that aids in the treatment of breast cancer and brings researchers closer to finding the cause and subsequent cure.

Pant says developments in the last decade point to more personalized care that is tailored to each breast cancer patient.

“Just as all of us have a different fingerprint, every breast cancer has a different fingerprint,” Pant says. “There are now tests that evaluate the genes in cancer, and based on that, we can tell if the patient will need chemotherapy or hormonal therapy to treat the cancer. The cool thing about that is that we can select a group of patients that doesn’t need chemo, which has lots of side effects both physically and psychologically. (The test) improves the morbidity. A woman who comes in at early stage, I can look at her tumor and test her tumor and say, ‘This treatment is for you.’ That’s what we’re going towards in breast cancer.”

Pant sees tremendous growth in breast cancer treatment in the next decade, as well. Researchers have determined that identifying the “driver” mutation, the one responsible for producing cancer cells, can lead to a customized treatment plan to target that small group of cells and, ideally, stop the mutation.

“There may be 10 different mutations in the tumor, but there are only a few that are causing the cancer cell to grow,” Pant says. “The basic thing (about cancer) is that something goes rogue. The body has mechanisms to kill these rogue cells or put them back in line. Most of the time the body can identify those cells and throw them out; but mechanisms get worse with age, and these cells keep dividing and develop mutations. If we can identify the driver mutation, we can turn the switch off, find the Achilles heel in the tumor and target drugs toward this mutation.”

Sassy Survivor

Phillips is cancer-free for seven years now. She credits her faith, along with support from friends and family, with helping her through her cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. She has extended her circle of friends since her diagnosis by starting a support group for breast cancer survivors called Sassy Sisters In Christ.

“I knew how hard it was for me to get through,” Phillips says. “With the support group we do, we try not to focus on the thing, but instead, we focus on how we’ve healed. I’m not nearly the person I was seven years ago.”

It’s the small survivor groups like Sassy Sisters as well as large, national breast cancer organizations that continue to drive awareness and research efforts of the disease.

“The survivors have done a lot of work in improving the science in the disease,” Pant says. “That’s very unique to breast cancer and has led to a lot of discoveries. We are further ahead in breast cancer than in a lot of other cancers.”