tree in the city

I GREW UP in a small town near Gadsden, Alabama (where I was born) called Hokes Bluff. I spent my formative years there — childhood, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, and high school. It was a small close-knit community and I still have many lifetime friends that have known me since I knew me. To get an idea how small, there were only 104 people in my high school graduating class. 

I WOULDN'T  TRADE my small town upbringing for anything. I learned a sense of belonging and comfort that fewer and fewer people experience. Since my zodiac sign is Taurus, this sense of stability was even more important to me because we Taureans like such predictability. The "tin soldier" in this photo, standing guard under the tree reminds me of a song we played in high school band called One Tin Soldier. The chorus goes like this:

Go ahead and hate your neighbor, 
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing,
Come the judgment day,
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away.

One Tin Soldier is a 1960s counterculture era anti-war song that tells the story of a hidden treasure and two neighboring tribes; the peaceful Mountain Kingdom and the warlike Valley Kingdom. Coveting the treasure of the mountains, the Valley People ultimately invade and slaughter the Mountain People. The treasure turns out to be simply three words —"Peace On Earth" — inscribed on the underside of a rock.

I've probably never really digested those lyrics until now. And after all this time, life has such a weird way of leading you to things that help you figure out why you've taken certain paths, when others are satisfied with the status quo. It helps when you're looking from the outside in.

CITY LIFE: The Atlanta skyline beckoned me from safe environs in Birmingham, Alabama way back in 1994 (just before the Centennial Olympic Games were held here).

I HAVEN'T MOVED FAR in my life from where I began, physically, at least. First, after high school, I got a visual design degree at Auburn University in Alabama. My love of magazines led me to my first job out of college in Birmingham, Alabama at Southern Living magazine and then Cooking Light magazine (which was born from a column in Southern Living). I worked at that company for 10 years before I made the "jump" to Atlanta in late 1994  — just before the Centennial Olympic Games here in 1996 — I've never really looked back. A large part of it was being queer and trying to find an accepting family far away from the family of relatives and friends who didn't quite get who I became, not by choice, but by innate preference.

MY PARENTS WERE both blue collar workers. My mother worked at the high school lunchroom and my father had a job operating a crane at the local steel plant, which is now shuttered. It's no wonder the people who stayed behind in small towns feel marginalized now. There are fewer jobs and what was once a bustling town has fallen into decay. They rely on what is left of what was and the future looks bleaker by the day.

IT REMAINS A mystery to me how we got here. How could our new Twitter Troll In Chief be forming, against his claims of helping the forgotten middle class in small towns, a billionaire's club of contemptuous and out of touch cronies?

PRECIOUS METAL: WWII ornaments were made with bits of silver tinsel pushed inside unsilvered glass globes to save metal for the war efforts.

THE COUNTRY my father fought for in WWII is in trouble in facing the same dangers he fought against in Nazi Germany. It is truly frightening.

My father was a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne that occupied Hitler's Headquarters (The Eagle's Nest) and was renowned for its role in the Battle of the Bulge around the city of Bastogne, Belgium that was finally rescued by General Patton. This battle effectively ended the war.

When I see members of the new Alt Right (Neo Nazis) emboldened to raise their hands in a Hitler salute for Trump, it lets me know that tyranny like this can happen here. It scares me also because as a gay man that just recently was afforded the right to marry, we have an extremely anti-gay Vice President calling the shots with an inept clown at the helm. 

I find it very hard to accept that the scourge my father fought to eliminate in WWII is in a very real way, upon us again. It is my only hope that we all realize the treasure that we all are looking for is simply "Peace on Earth" and we finally, once-and-for-all get the message that love trumps hate.

©2016 DARRYL MOLAND | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

collecting, photography and styling by Darryl Moland,

German-style goose feather tree designed by me and made by 

Dennis Bauer is available for sale at Home Traditions

retromodern redux

NOT ALL TREES need to speak directly to nature. They can take their cues from cherished ornaments you've inherited and be combined with newer interpretations of retro ornaments to strike a carefully-conceived balance of the memory of past holidays with new ones made every year. A colorfully decorated "retromodern" tree can be achieved by decorating it with inherited treasures or collecting the from online auctions where people often sell treasures from someone's attic. The secret to making it modern lies in combining retro heirlooms with modern ornaments. Reproductions of old ornaments are also increasingly being found in the marketplace. Fresh color combinations can be found anywhere, but two immediate sources are antique ornaments or in the whimsical textile designs of Tammis Keefe. There are plenty of ornaments on the market today that push the concept of color further than tradition. And rather than an evergreen tree, try a German-style feather tree (made from dyed or bleached goose feathers wrapped around wire branches). The sparseness of the branches make plenty of room for ornaments to be composed carefully. Some newer tinsel trees also get their cues from feather trees. One great thing about these types of artificial trees is that there are no dropped needles to clean up!

IF CHOOSING a real tree, pay careful attention to trimming it properly before decorating. Modern Christmas tree farms fill the market with too-perfect conical trees that are packed full of branches because that's what the market usually demands. It's rare to find a tree with a natural shape anymore, but if every other row of branches is trimmed out of the tree, it will give your ornaments room to hang freely. Leave any branches that give natural character and protrude from the conical shape. Some tree farms are getting the clue and not shearing their trees so fastidiously. The good thing about tree farms is that you're not cutting down a tree that wasn't grown specifically for the season, so they are still more ecologically sound than plastic trees made from petroleum products. There's nothing like the smell of a fresh evergreen at Christmas. And you can use the trimmings to make garland or a wreath!

MY COLLECTING obsession has its roots in college when I came up with concepts for a hypothetical store that sold holiday decorations as one of my graphic identity projects. I found these classic red ornaments made by the Krebs family at Kmart then (in the early 1980's—years before the once stellar selections from Martha Stewart Everyday were sold there). It was the finish and ornament caps on these German-origin ornaments that sold me. Rather than the silver lined shiny ornaments, these had a beautiful rich painted finish that has held up to the test of time (I haven't seen any quite like them since). I rarely use a purely red and green color combination for my tree (or trees). Even back then, I combined the red ornaments with several shades of pink, cream and clear ornaments. It seems that I try for a new color theme nearly every year and my friends have come to expect it from me, so I see it as a creative challenge, much like that college project.

ONE CAN FIND unusual colors in the market more readily these days. I credit Martha Stewart with filling the market with modern, more subtle colors—based on antiques (especially in her earlier collections for Kmart). Thankfully, other companies have also followed suit. Manufacturers have been a lot more conservative with the economic downturn, so they are marketing the "safe" colors that sell at Christmas. Those red ornaments I found back in college were fixtures on my parent's tree for years after I had moved onto other themes and my ornament collecting turned into an obsession. Now they are treasured "heirlooms."

IT'S FUN to make something old new again. All it takes is a bit of imagination and a willingness to find your inspiration in fresh color combinations. Don't be afraid to stray away from the traditional. You might be surprised that a unique interpretation of the holiday color scheme becomes your new favorite . . . this year, at least! 

RETROMODERN TREE | Combining antique striped bells and mica-coated ornaments with modern Christopher Radko reproductions of Shiny Brite ornaments; new, brightly striped and patterned interpretations by Isaac Mizrahi for Target along with brightly-striped balls from the Garnet Hill catalog and polka dotted and nubbed ornaments from Martha Stewart Everyday at Kmart, this traditional German feather tree comes alive with interest. It is topped with a Moravian star ornament made into a tree topper from Martha Stewart Everyday at Kmart that I glittered with teal German glass glitter (above, right). The chartreuse painted pedestal it sits atop is filled with reproduction "Shiny Brite" indent ornaments from the Smithsonian catalog. The rustic-modern table that holds it all is a match with chartreuse and cream striped boards on top. 

OBSESSIVE ORIGINS | These rich red German-origin ornaments with fancy gold caps (traditionally, ornament caps are distinctive to a particular family company) are from Christmas by Krebs. These are the first ornaments I bought when my collecting adventure began in college—over 25 years ago. The whimsical 1940's(?) linen Christmas handkerchief is signed by Tammis Keefe, and serves as a modern inspiration for a fresh holiday palette. Even if you have traditionally-colored ornaments, you can freshen the look with rickrack or other ribbon ornament ties in a bright hue to set off a vibration of color, (above, left). 

©2009 DARRYL MOLAND | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

collecting and styling by Darryl Moland, 
photography by Claudia Lopez (above, right) 
and Darryl Moland (above, left)