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.  

(8) Aunt Pinini

Well, although I had lots of aunts and uncles, Aunt Pinini was not actually one of them.  Her house was there when Daddy bought the place, and I don’t know how long she had lived there.  She was there before Daddy and his family built the Little House, and she...

(11) Miss Dee was a Methodist

In her 1960 Montgomery Advertiser article, reporter Katherine Tyson stated, “’Miss Mary’ is first last and always a Methodist.” That is likely a quote from a personal interview. The life work of Miss Dee bears out its truth. She was trained as a Methodist missionary,...

(9) The Chicken House

Daddy built the chicken house from the remnants of Aunt Pinini’s house.  It was down the hill a short distance from the house, to the southwest. It’s main door that faced down the hill, so you had to go around the chicken house to get to the door.  Once you...

(10) Play

In today’s world of technological games, and sophisticated toys, one might well wonder how kids could possibly entertain themselves in the environment that I have described.  We enjoyed ourselves greatly, and the games may have stimulated imagination just as...

(11) The Branch

A well-worn footpath led directly from the Little House to Uncle Earl’s house.  Unlike the road that went around the draw where the branch started, it went through the pasture and the branch.  The path left the Little House, headed east towards Uncle Earl’s,...

(12) Methodist Training School

As I have described in other essays, Mary Christine De Bardeleben felt a call to missionary work.  The call apparently came while she was teaching with Julia Tutwiler at Alabama Normal School in 1901-1902, after she had completed her work at the University of...

About these Laity Talks

I volunteered for lay speaking in United Methodist Church in about 1971  During the forty-plus years that I was active as a lay speaker, I probably spoke in over 100 Churches; maybe 150.  I spoke in many different settings and contexts, often using the same talks more...

(12) Monday was Wash Day

Back in those days, Monday was wash-day—the day for washing clothes.  Early memories of wash day are very special.  I mentioned that there was no running water at the Little House.  There was no water at all at the Little House, in my earliest...

This Holy Place

La Place UMC, February 4, 1979 EXODUS - Chapter Three: "2.  And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush:  and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. 3.  And Moses said, I will now...

(13) Sara Estelle Haskin

Julia Tutwiler appears to have deeply influenced Miss Dee during some of her most formative years.  But Sara Estelle Haskin was probably her most ardent advocate and mentor in her chosen mission work.  She was the pioneer in the settlement house mission...