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.
37) Farm Financing in the Forties
During the eight years that I lived in the Little House, the United States had entered World War II, and was struggling still to overcome the Great Depression. Depression conditions were still very apparent in rural Alabama. One of the programs that geared up during...
38) Bradford’s Chapel
Church was part of my life from the beginning. We attended Bradford’s Chapel Methodist Church in what was then the Milstead Community. It was the only Church in the Milstead Community. There is a cemetery there, and many of my ancestor’s are buried there. My Daddy...
39) Mr. Frank’s Tractor
I have told of Mr. Frank Pierce’s mules in other essays. We enjoyed Mr. Frank and his mules. But eventually Mr. Frank got a tractor, and that may have made even better stories. We were use to hearing him give directions to the mules. “Gee”—go right, or “haw”—go...
40) The Coming of Utilities
My first four years in the Little House were without utilities. Electricity and Telephone came in about 1946, when I was four years old. Those years were also the years of World War II. Interesting times. I think that electricity had to come first. The City of...
Law and Morality in the Market Place
Tuesday, November 15, 1994 Meeting of Bankers Institute As I speak to various groups, one of the questions most frequently raised concerns huge verdicts rendered in civil cases. Efforts at tort reform, and how those efforts have failed in court, was an important...
Church Politics
This is a talk that I made to the Board of Laity of the Alabama West Florida Conference in Andalusia, Alabama, on December 11, 1993. Any organization that has elections must deal with politics, and the Board of Laity was apparently considering rules in an attempt to...
41) Weather and Storm Pits
During the years that I lived in the Little House, there were no weather satellites. There was no weather radar. We may have heard “weather forecasts” on the radio. There may have also been forecasts in the newspapers. But given the state of technology the...
42) Uncle Bud and Aunt Runnie
At the time I was born, Uncle Bud (Marvin L. Segrest), Daddy’s oldest brother owned a 200 acre farm that adjoined the place where the Little House was built, and lay west of the Little House. Uncle Bud’s place went all the way from the swamp, and the old B&SE...
Values and Law
Tuesday, November 15, 1994 Meeting of Bankers Institute As I speak to various groups, one of the questions most frequently raised concerns huge verdicts rendered in civil cases. Efforts at tort reform, and how those efforts have failed in court, was an important...
43) Uncle Jody and Aunt Ella
Uncle Jody—James Woodrow Segrest, Sr—was Daddy’s youngest brother. In 1942, he bought the place up on the big road, across the road from the mailbox where Segrest Lane comes into the big road. It was a hundred acres in all, with 60 acres north of the road—except for...