It just gets harder and harder to come up with an excuse to leave this town. Outside Magazine’s August 2008 issue lists Charlottesville as one of the 20 best cities in the country to “enjoy outdoor living”, along with Crested Butte, CO, Oxford MI, and Washington D.C.

Now, some of what he wants to do is legal. Joel and Teresa Salatin, owners of Polyface Farm, the Virginia farm whose grass-fed beef was made famous in the book Omnivore’s Dilemma, have purchased Harrisonburg Wholesale Meat Co., they announced in a news release last night. The Salatins, along with business partner Joe Cloud, will keep the 70-year-old meat business alive as a USDA-approved processing plant for local, grass-fed pork and beef.

At midnight last night, Salvia Divinorum, the mind altering Mexican plant whose use by teenagers has been sweeping the nation (if you believe the alarmed media), officially became illegal, giving some of you out there a cool, new, felony-level, drug-using past. Last March, Gov. Tim Kaine signed into law HB21, the Virginia bill criminalizing the drug.