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.
20) Starting to School
In September 1948, there was a huge change in my life. The preschool days of playing long days year-round at the Little House came to and end. The big yellow school bus drove up in front of the house, and I got on. I would be getting on a bus, except for summer...
Law and Faith
This talk was delivered to a Bench and Bar celebration of Law Day in an Episcopal Church in Baldwin County, Alabama on Sunday, May 15, 1994. I was invited to make this presentation by my colleague, Judge Pamela Baschab, then a Circuit Judge, and who later served as...
(20) University of Chicago School of Theology
After completing her Master’s Degree at Peabody, and beginning her teaching career at Oklahoma University, Miss Dee attended the School of Theology at the University of Chicago in the summer or 1923.I have included this post, although incomplete, in order to describe...
Faith and Action
Alexander City Civitan, March, 1994 How appropriate it is that we honor the spiritual leaders of this community. I have opportunities frequently to think of the importance of the work that our spiritual leaders do. After all, people do what they do because of...
21) Ice
We didn’t have a refrigerator in my early days at the Little house: we didn’t have electricity. But we had an “icebox” that sat in the kitchen. The “ice truck” came as far as Uncle Earls place about once a week. It was loaded with ice. The ice was protected by...
(21) Miss Dee’s European Tour
In 1925, Miss Dee toured Europe as a faculty member on a trip called the “Women’s Student Pilgrimage to Europe,” sponsored by the World Student Christian Federation, and the YWCA. Marion Vera Cuthbert was also a faculty member. Miss Dee’s “box” contained a great...
Stewardship
First United Methodist Church, Tallassee October 24, 1993 Thank you, Larry. It's a privilege to share with you—for about eight minutes is what I think they told me I could have—about stewardship. I want to talk about the concept of stewardship. A few months ago, we...
(22) Talks
Miss Dee was very active in the YWCA. She was very active in the work of women in the Methodist Church, and active in the Church everywhere she went. She was called on from time to time to give talks in these various capacities. We discussed earlier her presentation...
22) Water and Wells
When I was born, we did not even have a well, let alone indoor plumbing. Before the well was dug, we had to get water the best we could. Sometimes we got it from the branch, in buckets. But usually we would get it from Uncle Earl’s. He had a well as far back as I...
(23) Miss Dee at Boston University
Miss Dee enrolled in the Boston University School of Religious Education in the fall of 1928. She was enrolled as a graduate student as a candidate for the MRE degree. The box contains records only for 1928-1929. It included a photo depicting a “group of girls at...