babybloomr

For a number of years we had an incredible friend and photographer named Dawn Mosely come out to our house and take pictures of the girls. We usually did it around November and we used her gorgeous pictures as our Christmas cards. We’d also always frame some of them for the grandparents as gifts, which would always produce the desired reaction: lots of oohs and ahhs and damp eyes coupled with ecstatic clutching of the photos to their collective breasts. Exactly what we were going for!

Dawn is a gentle soul, funny and kind, and she had endless patience with my girls– they were always excited to see her, so getting them to settle down wasn’t always easy. They also weren’t crazy about changing outfits, posing in such close proximity to each other (OK, that was mainly Madi) and were ready to stop way before we were, so Dawn had to summon all of her kid-wrangler skills to keep them having fun and smiling. Some of the absolute best photographs I have of the girls were taken by Dawn, and I treasure them so much. Over the last few years, we kind of got out of the habit of taking Christmas card photos, I’m not even sure why. I guess the girls were getting older, and I talked myself out of spending money right around holiday time when I was taking photos of them myself ALL THE TIME anyway. But those images that Dawn took, with her incredible eye for creating a ‘moment’ and capturing each girl’s personality and the magic of that particular time in their lives– well, I will never ever be able to reproduce that.

Dawn sent me this video the other day. It is set to a song, “Remembrance”, by a violinist named Ruth McGinnis, a beautiful woman who lost her well-fought battle with ovarian cancer last week at the age of 52. She was a beloved member of the Nashville music community, and her exquisite playing has graced the recordings and live performances of so many of your favorite artists. Dawn put this montage together several years ago, but  I had ever seen it. Ruth’s passing added an extra poignancy to a video that would have reduced me to tears anyway, so you can probably imagine my reaction to seeing it for the first time– let’s just say there were a couple moments there where it definitely crossed the line over to the ugly cry. Dawn has graciously agreed to let me share it with you, and I urge you to go to her website “First Glance Photography” and check out some more of her wonderful work. We are totally going to have her come back and take pictures this year!

So, here it is. Feel free to bust out crying and start wailing, “They grow up so fast!” at the top of your lungs.

Or maybe that’s just me.

madi and charlotte from Dawn Mosley on Vimeo.

Did anyone see this photo in the news recently?

NBC News in Philadelphia reports:

“A family photo that shows a little girl beside her father and his fellow soldiers in uniform as they prepare to go to war has resonated well beyond the tight knit Bennethum clan.

Four-year-old Paige Bennethum really, really didn’t want her daddy to go to Iraq.

So much so, that when Army Reservist Staff Sgt. Brett Bennethum lined up in formation at his deployment this July, she couldn’t let go.

No one had the heart to pull her away.

The commanding officer allowed Paige to say goodbye as her dad prepared to ship off from Fort Dix.

Paige’s mom Abby captured the moment with her camera and her aunt passed the image along to a Berks County, Pa. newspaper.

“I’ve had strangers looking me up online, sending me messages that they are touched by it … offering a lot of support,” Abby Bennethum told NBCPhiladelphia.

The picture took on a life of its own online this week. Abby says that suddenly, people were knocking on her door. “Literally overnight, there’s all these people that just want to do anything they can,” she says. Though she says her husband hasn’t seen any stories about his family yet, he expects to.

For her part, Paige still remembers how she felt that day in July. Looking at the picture of herself – her dad now overseas – Paige remembers, “I didn’t want to let go of him.”

Ok, that photo kind of undid me.

See, I come from a long line of pacifists. My dad was a conscientious objector in the second World War II, which was… not a popular position. It took a lot of courage to take that stand during that time in our nation’s history. Daddy’s love for this country and his patriotism were unquestioned, but he sought the CO classification because his religious beliefs would simply not allow him to kill another human being. He was assigned ‘alternative service’  (defined as “civilian work in the national interest”) on a relative’s farm during the war, which was a huge relief to my mom because he could have been sent to a CO camp which would have separated him from his family. During the Vietnam War my oldest brother Matthew was classified as a conscientious objector as well, and he did his alternative service in the VISTA program, which is kind of like the Peace Corps but in the United States. When my other brother Joel went in for his required physical exam, his spinal x-rays indicated that apparently he had undiagnosed polio as a child which exempted him from the draft. Russ’ father was stationed overseas during WWII, and he had two brothers who served in Vietnam. His brothers were forever changed by their combat experience, mentally and physically. They both had bouts of PTSD and suffered lifelong health problems from being exposed to Agent Orange.

All of that to say, I’m not a big fan of war.

But regardless of your politics, regardless of how you feel about what is currently going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and regardless of what you think this administration should (or shouldn’t) do about it, I think all of us can agree on the fact that the young men and women in the military deserve our respect and our support. So when I found THIS online the other day, I thought it was such a cool idea that I wanted to pass it on to you.

Watch it, and then tell me what you think.