Exchanged

Inspirational song: Girls on Film (Duran Duran)

Normally I make a point of taking pictures throughout my day, hoping that a handful of them will be useful in this space. Some are illustrations, some are just pretty things I look at on my way to the things I am doing. Today I did the opposite of that. I spent an hour and a half deleting hundreds of pictures from my cloud storage. Ever since they dramatically limited my free storage limit, I spend most of my time viewing warnings that my cloud storage is 97% full (or worse). I go through and delete twenty or thirty here and there, and it never seems to make a dent. It took me well over an hour to gain myself a full 1GB of free space. And it never showed me anything older than last June. I will have to dig through and see what settings are preventing me from shedding really old stuff that has already been uploaded onto the blog, that doesn't require me keeping it anywhere else.

I took only one new photo today, and I don't feel like it is wise for me to share it. I think my subject wouldn't mind having his picture shared, but I didn't obtain specific permission to do so. I'll keep it out of public spaces. The picture was of the young man I had lunch with, our Rotary foreign exchange student, in his sport jacket covered with "flair" (pins he exchanged with other exchange students he encountered on his year here). It was the last time he could come to Rotary, and I got to be the one to be his ride to and from the meeting. He gave his farewell and thank you speech, and he read it out to me in the car on the way, to make sure his grammar was good. It was actually terrific and sweet, and his English has gotten significantly better than the first time I picked him up from school, also on a day when he had to give a presentation to the group, that time about his home country. I was his speech editor that day too. This young man has great potential to be a force for good, in his own country, or anywhere he chooses to apply himself. He was as open and affectionate with our entire Rotary as a puppy, and every one of us was impressed with his sunny nature. When I dropped him off for the last time, I told him I thought he was an amazing human being, and that I know he will be a fantastic adult. He seemed surprised I would say that, and asked if I really meant it. Absolutely I do, young friend. I hope to see your name mentioned in the news one day, as an important world leader, of one sort or another.