Broadband is to communities today what electricity and basic telephone service were 100 years ago. It is the new essential infrastructure for the commercial success of all communities, urban and rural. It is also rapidly becoming the platform by which many Americans receive all of their communications services—voice, video, and data. Broadband is the bridge for remote rural communities to the American economic mainstream. (more…)

“I love liquid from red cups.” These were words spoken by the lead singer of Deer Tick, the first act I soaked in at this year’s Floydfest. Between songs, McCauley lit cigarettes for his bandmates and revealed himself the quintessence of New Jerseyan superhero Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD.

On my way to the Dreaming Creek Main Stage where Deer Tick performed Friday afternoon, a pair of teens mistook me for a mushroom peddler. I was flattered. Since before I’d arrived, I’d felt like a tourist. Cruising up Route 8 in my Ford Focus, wearing a tattered cowboy hat and singing along to an Everclear mix CD, I didn’t feel like much of a Floydfest-er. (more…)

Or perhaps, the title of this column should be Can You Get Here From There? In any case, any economic development organization such as the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance has to be vitally concerned with transportation. Most of the businesses and industry that we court have to move either people or product from here to there and/or there to here. (more…)

There was a closet under the stairs in my childhood home. It had a slatted door and was big enough to sit in comfortably. What the closet held was something I didn’t realize was special until much, much later. It all seemed so mundane: popsicle sticks, crayons, markers and construction paper. Coloring books and paints. Glitter. Glue. Stickers. Plaster of Paris.

While many children are raised in homes without so much as a generic watercolor print hanging over the couch, my childhood was abundant in art supplies and rich in creative experience. I knew Monet before I knew Led Zeppelin. I ran up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, not to emulate Rocky, but to get to the gallery of Aztec ruins more quickly. I spent hours wondering what it was that was written in the print of Matisse’s “The Thousand and One Nights” that hung in our dining room. (more…)

Sunday, July 11: I parked and walked to the entrance gate for Roanoke’s Down By the River music festival knowing little about the event or the performers. My beneficent editor had tasked me with covering the festival the night before. I was on assignment. My aim was to cover the festival not with the cold eye of the satirist, but with the rigid eye of the reporter. (more…)

My highest priority in representing the Ninth Congressional District in Congress is the creation of new jobs for our region. For that reason, I work actively with Southwest Virginia’s local government and business leaders to implement a multifaceted strategy to enhance economic development in the many sectors of Southwest Virginia’s economy. (more…)