We believe that the happiest people are the ones who live their lives locally.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t consider ourselves citizens of the world, because we should. It’s also not to say that we should become obsessed with the soap operas of our lives.

We’re talking about the people who invest themselves in their cities. The people who take pride in their homes. Who devote themselves to their families. The people who remain in love with their husbands, wives, and partners, even when fighting to stay in love is so much harder than letting yourself turn slowly cold.

That’s why AltDaily is vigilantly locally-focused, and will remain so as long as I’m its editor. Our job is to help you love it here more.

The Hague Bridge. (Pic | Norfolk Garden Tour)

Riding my bike over the Hague Bridge this morning, I noticed the color coming back to the trees. They’d been barren for so long. To see them them bloom is a re-awakening for both the trees and the souls of everyone who witnesses their metamorphoses. Spring is the season most easily compared to falling in love. Now is when we must turn inward, find the love we want to live, and then turn back outward and do it.

As much as I have come to love it here, I can understand why someone wouldn’t. This isn’t a big city where life comes to you. In the Norfolk/Virginia Beach metro area, you’ve got to go out and find your happy, exciting, good life. For those of you reading this who think it sucks here, you’re wrong. What sucks–real talk–is your attitude. If you seek a rad life here, you will find it. (Seriously, you will.) All you have to do is get out there.

I see Norfolk as a grand family tree, a tree that reaches clear up to the sky. Every family gets its own branch, and each neighborhood gets a limb to call its own. If you stay on your branch, you’re more or less doomed. There’s not a lot of variety going on. The view rarely changes, and when it does it probably makes you cranky. Your life is static. But if you venture off your branch, you realize there are whole other universes waiting to be found. You can fly to the upper boughs and watch the clouds and see the sun set. Or you can head near the base of the trunk where there’s a whole new world to discover, one just as diverse and dynamic and beautiful as what you found up high.

There are so many stories on these branches that stretch from the Chesapeake Bay to the Elizabeth River, from the James to the Atlantic Ocean. There are so many lives to be led. Here are a few:

How Slavery Really Ended in America

This feature is from my favorite periodical, The New York Times Magazine. It’s a good Sunday in my world when The Magazine writes something this detailed and interesting (not to mention positive) about Hampton Roads.

(Gravy for the people at the Hampton Roads Partnership: the article even uses the words ‘Hampton Roads.’)

The piece tells the story of Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, a wily antihero described as having “the face of a man whom many people, in the years ahead, would call a brute, a beast, a cold-blooded murderer. It was a face that could easily make you believe such things: a low, balding forehead, slack jowls and a tight, mean little mouth beneath a drooping mustache. It would have seemed a face of almost animal-like stupidity had it not been for the eyes…”

Cartoon of Fort Monroe Virginia depicting slaves rushing to the Union held fort for escape during the American Civil War.

Now that is some writing. Hell yeah. The rest of the story is better than the plot of any movie I’ve seen in years, so I’m hesitant to talk about any more of the narrative. Just read it. Please. You’ll love it here more, and you’ll certainly be planning an afternoon by Fort Monroe in the near future.

Flunked a course in Norfolk? Make it up online

Somewhere in Norfolk is a student whose primary teacher is a computer screen.

Feds seek $7M in privately made ‘Liberty Dollars’

Someone in our neighboring state of North Carolina came up with a currency to compete with the dollar.

Some kids’ belly pain could be a migraine

Somewhere at CHKD, science is advancing.

According to this story in Reuters, a great deal has been learned from “the medical charts of more than 450 such kids and teens who went to the gastroenterology clinic at the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters with recurrent abdominal pain.”

USS Nitze deploying from Va. to South America

Two hundred eighty crew members on the USS Nitze are preparing to ship off to South America.

I, for one, cannot fathom the range of emotions occurring around that ship right now.

Ricky Ian Gordon sets the Civil War to music

All over Hampton Roads the cast and crew of Rappahannock County (and the Virginia Arts Festival) are stoked about this story in the Washington Post.

The sea level is rising and the land in Virginia is sinking

Meanwhile, according to the Miami Herald, Norfolk is sinking right underneath our feet.

In Virginia Beach, little Alex and Zach have never been happier.

Virginia Beach’s Ocean Breeze Waterpark to get new slides, activity area

And some day this summer I hope they get to try out these new slides with their dad.

Virginia Beach teacher accused of coming to school drunk

Somewhere at the Beach a teacher is having a rough go of it.

Dead Whales Found On OBX & Near Virginia Beach

And if all this wasn’t enough, a whale like this was found near our shores.

We live someplace awesome. (Pic | Ocean Accoustics Lab)