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.
27) Uncle Willie and Aunt Ida
During the entire time that I lived in the Little House, Aunt Ida and Uncle Willie lived in an even smaller two room shack that was bout one hundred yards behind Uncle Earl’s house. They were brother and sister or Grandma Segrest. There father was the Reverend J. E....
28) Baling Peanut Hay
One of the more memorable events of my early childhood at the Little House has to do with baling peanut hay. Uncle Jody owned and was still living in the house that Daddy and Mamma eventually bought up on the “big road.” Across the big road and southwest of his...
29) Purchasing the Land
In 1936, Daddy bought the one hundred sixty acres that included the spot where the Little house would be built. Later in 1936, he and his siblings built the Little House. That is also the year that Daddy and Mama were married. While building the Little House, they...
30) Picking Cotton
Daddy and Uncle Earl farmed cotton and corn. They also raised gardens for food. The corn was mainly for food for the mules and cows. Cotton was the main cash crop. There were lots of tenant farmers in Macon County, but not in our part of the county. A finger of...
31) Mr. Frank and Ms. Jo
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Pierce, “Mr. Frank and Miss Jo,” were the next nearest neighbors to the Little House, other than “Aunt” Pinini, Uncle Earl and Grandma, and Uncle Willie and Aunt Ida. Mr. Frank and Ms. Jo lived on what is now Segrest Lane, a couple of hundred yards...
32) Getting the Mail
Unlike the school bus, the mail did not come to our door at the Little House. Back in those days it was known as RFD (Rural Free Delivery). A letter addressed to F. C. Segrest (my dad) RFD Milstead, Alabama would have made it to us. Mr. Charlie Shaw, the “mailman”...
33) Aunt Willie, Uncle Raymond and The Store
Aunt Willie was Daddy’s sister, and Uncle Raymond Butler was her husband. They had no children. In my earliest recollection, Uncle Raymond had been drafted into the army in World War II. He was a medic, and on his return, it was not unusual for family, and maybe...
34) Country Stores
During my eight childhood years in the Little Houses, the country side in rural Macon County was peppered with country stores. I have mentioned the fact the Aunt Willie and Uncle Raymond actually opened a store during that time. Uncle Raymond’s parents had owned and...
35) Chan’s Birth
Perhaps the biggest event that occurred during my eight years at the Little House was the birth of a younger brother. Like my older brother, Wade, and me, Forrest Chandler Segrest, Jr. was actually delivered in the Little House. He arrived on August 3, 1946, when I...
36) Uncle R.V. and Aunt Ruby
Some time after Wade’s visit to Uncle R. V. in 1940, Uncle R. V., who was somewhat older than Daddy, bought a place on the big road just beyond Aunt Willie and Uncle Raymond’s store. They built a house and barn, and operated a farm. They had five children: Ralph,...