You are probably curious about why a retired Alabama circuit judge established a website!
Here is your answer:My Ideas
The felt need to publish the ideas and writings described on the Home page and this page inspired the creation of this website. But to explain how these ideas developed, I needed also to tell my story, and describe the things that caused the ideas to develop. Publishing the website enabled me the ideas several ways, including opinion editorials, laity talks and other writings and ideas that developed during my career.
My Story
In an earlier era, I would likely have written a book of memoirs. But we are into a new age. I can preserve memories electronically. My ideas are inseparable from my story, and this website allows me to describe the environment in which the ideas contained in my books developed, and the writings found on this website help to present a complete picture.
Dale's Ideas and Story
The ideas presented on this website arose in the experience of rich and full life: a birth into a two room shack in rural Macon County, Alabama at the outset of US participation in World War II, a childhood in depression-like conditions in rural Alabama; education in a very small white public school in a mostly Black county, Huntingdon College, the University of Alabama Law School; election as a Circuit Judge in a rural Alabama Circuit; strong participation in judicial education, both as student and presenter; lifelong participation in United Methodist Church activity, many opportunities as a UM Lay Speaker, service as Lay Leader of the Alabama West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church; Alumni work and service as a Trustee, including chairing the board of trustees for Huntingdon College; and intense reading in philosophy, theology, psychology, sociology and history all the while.
A Work in Progress
Please understand that this website is a work in progress. It will never be finished! None of the work is necessarily complete. In this accordion I will briefly describe and the various categories.
Human Faith Within a Conscious Biosphere
This collection of essays containing my most current ideas has been published by Bookbaby. https://store.bookbaby.com/…/human-faith-within-a…
Conscience and Command,
The original was published in 1994. https://store.bookbaby.com/…/human-faith-within-a...
The second edition, or Conscious and Command, Revisited, is a work in progress that I hope to publish. It will be both a good prologue and a good epilogue to Human Faith Within a Conscious Biosphere. It will show how my thinking has developed, and also provide an example of one of the social systems that I describe in FWCB. It will, suggest the plateau that I had reached in 1994.
My Story
I have only begun this project. I have tried to suggest the beginning of the story, and have outlined the narrative, but I hope to add much more. In summary, I was born in abject poverty, among impoverished people. They bore the poverty without complaint and enjoyed life life was good. In 1944, a school bus came to the front of our two room house, where there was no water, plumbing, electricity or telephone and picked up my older brother Wade and carried him to the public school in Shorter, Macon County Alabama. I caught the same bus to the first grade in the same school in 1948. I try to catch something of the spirit of the community in the episodes that I relate. That is the school to which Mary Christine DeBardeleben returned in about 1945. The missionary work that I describe in telling her story had not ended. The work of the Shorter Public School was excellent, and the story is worth telling, and I include that story. We got an excellent education, but in the 1960’s the little school white school in a predominantly Black county was caught up in the controversies of Civil Rights, while I was at Huntingdon College, and the University of Alabama Law School. It did not survive. But I returned to the County that gave me that education, and that is the environment that gave rise to my ideas. Its all a matter of trying to understand. And being understood. I also tell the story of my work in the United Methodist Church.
Mary Christine DeBardeleben
A work in progress. I am seeking additional information, and hope to publish a formal biography later.
Opinion Essays
Over 30 opinion essays are included. They deal with Law and Race, as well as opinions about the legal system itself and other miscellaneous topics. Most of these were originally published in the Alabama Gazette, but I am likely to add too the collection.
Laity Talks
I served as a lay speaker in the United Methodist Church for over forty years. During that time, I served as Conference Lay Leader of the Alabama West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. I had many opportunities for lay speaking. Not nearly all were written out or recorded, but a fair sampling is included here. It is possible that more will be added as I review my records. If anyone remembers a talk that I made and will remind me of if, I will look, or even reconstruct!
The following posts are samples from the various types of writing found in the menu.
Probation Sponsorship
Probation Sponsorship: The Role for a Court Referral Officer (While serving as a Circuit Court Judge in the fifth Judicial Circuit of Alabama, I tried an innovative program to assist individuals successfully complete a period of probation. This paper was written in a...
1.34 Love and Order
(The following essay was first published as an opinion editorial in the Montgomery Advertiser on December 29, 1996, while I was still an active Circuit Judge. On the same editorial page was an Edwin Yoder editorial that decried conspiracy theories, and an editorial...
Origins of the Shorter School
The building where I attended all 12 grades of public school was constructed in 1938. It was only 10 years old when I started school there in 1948. In the 1946-1947 school year, Shorter High School published a year book, its first in five years. It was dedicated to...
(1) Introduction to Mary Christine DeBardeleben
'my my a dy that we knew as Miss Dee was born in 1881—in a rural community in Macon County, Alabama, that was named La Place. That was the same year that Booker T. Washington came from Hampton Virginia to nearby Tuskegee, also in Macon County, Alabama, to...
1) Introduction to Little House Stories
The Little House essays are just one of series of essays that collectively tell my personal story. I introduced the whole life story in an introduction to the entire series that include the series on the Shorter School, Huntingdon College, Marriage and Family, Law...
2) Birth At the Little House
Four short months after the “day that will live in infamy” I was born in the Little house. The Little House was a two-room shack near the north edge of Calebee Swamp, close to a branch that led directly to the swamp. This picture of Daddy, Mama, Wade and me was made...
(2) A Challenging Childhood
Miss Dee was born in troubled times in Alabama. She arrived on January 23, 1881 in rural Macon County in a community that was known back then as La Place. It is now considered a part of the Shorter community, but is not in the town limits of the recently...
(3) Family and Community Connections
In the Southern United States, questions like, “Who are her folks?” have always been popular. Such questions are often used jokingly now, as satire of the Old South. But the truth is that family—extended family—was an important part of the structure of culture....
(3) Mama
Mama was not born in Macon County. She was born at Morris in Blount County. She was the Daughter of William Dee Mote and Myrtie Stubbs Mote. She was part of a large family with five brothers and five sisters. Grandmother Mote’s family—the Stubbs family—was a large...
4) Daddy
Daddy’s family was a major influence in my early years. His parents, Grandma and Grandpa Segrest were both still living when I was born. Grandpa died two years later, in 1944, and a vaguely remember him. He apparently liked to lay on a bench in the...