Chris Berry On The Net

The City of Roanoke has an unfortunate history of engaging consultants to produce costly reports, and then failing to take action on those recommendations once the work is completed. Rather than electing visionary leaders, we count on outsiders to provide a vision for what our city might become. When a truly exciting idea is put [...]

I’m one of those people whose weight has fluctuated dramatically throughout my adult life. While I’ve never been truly obese, at any given time I’ve been more likely to be overweight than underweight. Since my early twenties, my weight has ranged from as much as 235 pounds to as little as 135. Neither of those [...]

Rod Blagojevich must be laughing his ass off.

In this excellent article in The Atlantic, Richard Florida provides a chilling prediction of the long-term effects of the current recession. According to his analysis, those regions of the country with the highest concentrations of creative class workers will eventually emerge stronger, while those that rely heavily on manufacturing and other blue collar industries may [...]

To a certain extent, the Roanoke Valley has been insulated from the effects of the current recession. That is not to say that things are rosy here, but we are doing better than folks in other parts of the country. There are large numbers of unsold homes on the market, but we haven’t seen real [...]

I’ve never considered myself to be an environmentalist in the traditional sense of the word, but I do believe that we have a collective obligation to be responsible stewards of the Earth and its resources. For the sake of future generations, it is imperative that we consider the long-term consequences of our impact on the [...]

There are only a couple of things that I really miss about operating a cooking school. The 3000 square foot commercial kitchen was definitely nice, but I’m getting used to working in the cramped quarters at home. What I haven’t gotten used to is no longer having access to a wide range of ingredients that [...]

As many of my local readers probably already know, the City of Roanoke has recently launched the Creative Communities Leadership Program, and is seeking 30 volunteers to serve as Creative Connectors during the 12 month campaign. I believe this represents an opportunity for the Roanoke Valley to take an important step forward in our ongoing [...]

For a blog that is still a month and a day shy of being a year old, this one has seen more than it’s fair share of design changes. In fact, what you see today marks the seventh major redesign of this site since March 3, 2008. That doesn’t count all of the minor tweaks [...]

The so-called “economic stimulus” bill that is currently winding its way through Congress is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with our legislative process. Instead of focusing on timely, temporary and targeted programs that might actually have a chance of prodding our stalled economy, the package in its current form is nothing but [...]