Excuse me as I ponder eternity — briefly.

Like it or not, this is the essence of . . . uh, aging. As I wrote a year ago: “. . . once you actually hit it — that three letter word, ‘old’ — watch out: ‘An aged man (as Wiiliam Butler Yeats pointed out, as he sailed poetically to Byzantium) is but a paltry thing,/A tattered coat upon a stick . . .’”

Nonetheless, hooray for my good fortune! I’ve been dancing around at age 77 for a while now, and before I start complaining about the aches and pains that come with it, I have to acknowledge — indeed, revere — the mere fact of making it this far. So many people don’t, due to the random will of fate, but also due to the hell of war, which remains humanity’s cancerous addiction. How can I complain when the bombs I help pay for are killing children?

When it comes to the last boomtown in the Midwest, certain Columbus neighborhoods make for unusual destinations for future residents to call home. And at first glance, the Far South Side near the Great Southern Shopping Plaza doesn’t seem like a prime location for Intel and Honda employees.

But according to a South Side activist, the future of the Far South Side could be radically altered if City officials and developers get their way, which as many already know, is a sure thing for all parts of Columbus.

“Tony Celebrezze [Deputy Director for the Department of Building and Zoning Services in Columbus], in a conversation, told me that they want to – and this is a verbatim quote – they want to make the Far South corridor the next Short North or the next off-campus, as far as the way they look,” says Bruce Miller, president of the Scioto Southland Civic Association. Miller also sits on the Far South Columbus Area Commission, a City-affiliated and strictly advisory body for the community when it comes to City-approved development.

Shane McCrae is the son of a white woman and a black man. In order to save Shane from the indignity and evils of being reared by his father, his mother’s parents kidnapped him when the boy was three years old. Surprisingly–but perhaps not given she was abused by her father as a child–his mother did nothing to intervene as her white supremacist parents took him to Texas and reared them as their own son. Yet his grandparents must have been afraid his mother would at some point try to stop them or find the boy, for they threatened to leave the country and prevent her from ever seeing Shane again if she did. It is a miracle that as racist as his grandparents were, McCrae never feels ashamed of his blackness. Indeed, he holds onto it, possibly because it is the one thing he knows is his.