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.  

(4) A Natural Teacher

In a 1960 article in the Alabama Journal, a Montgomery Newspaper, writer Katherine Tyson described Miss Dee as “a natural teacher.” Her assessment is borne out by a letter that Merton Robertson had written to Miss Dee two years earlier, in 1958 "Dear Miss Mary,  64...

(5) The Fish Killing

When we were small, Daddy told us lots of stories about his young days, and catching fish from Calebee Creek, which was about a mile south of the Little House.  Based on one incident that I remember, that happened when I was very small, I know that Daddy’s fish tales...

(5) A Gifted Student

The following is a chronological listing of Miss Dee’s academic career that I have been able to piece together.  There may be more.  But this timeline shows Miss Dee’s lifelong commitment to learning: 1895 Completed high school in Montgomery. 1898 Completed two years...

(6) The Little House Surroundings and More

There were no lawns at the Little House.  Grass was not allowed in the yards.  The yards were keep clean with a “brush-broom”.  A brush-broom was made of bushes that grew down in the branch head.  They were cut off at the ground, the bottoms were bound together in a...

(7) One of Miss Jule’s Girls

For Miss Dee, getting admitted to the University of Alabama in 1898 was not just a matter of completing her work at Alabama Normal School, getting the necessary forms and applying for admission to the University.  She was a member of first class the first female...

(8) YWCA and a Call to Missionary Work

I believe that Miss Dee affiliated with the Young Women’s Christian Association as fully as possible, throughout her career.  In those days, many college campuses with female students had YWCA Chapters.  There may have been a chapter in Tuscaloosa at the time she was...

(7) Christmas At the Little House

  Christmas at the Little House was a greatly anticipated event!  The living room was decorated fully.  There was holly.  Sometimes mistletoe. The Christmas tree would be a cedar.  All the greenery came from nearby woods.  Decorations were well planned, and carried...

(9) Columbia University Teachers College

With the backing and encouragement of Julia Tutwiler, Miss Dee was one of the ten women from Alabama Normal School to live on campus at the University of Alabama.  She graduated summa cum laude, in 1901.  She returned to Alabama Normal School at Livingston and taught...

(10) Teaching in Macon County

 For Mary Christine De Bardeleben, Macon County was always home.  She returned there again and again.  That pattern began early in her career.  After completing her teacher’s degree at Columbia Teachers College, Miss Dee returned to Macon County to teach in the one...