This morning was about grading. I paced things out perfectly. There was a big digital stack of things to read and comment on. Each item unique, each requiring some feedback. And that’s the thing, really. How much feedback? I, you’ll be surprised to learn, often have a lot to say. Hopefully some of it is useful. Hopefully some of it gets read.

So I read through and grade and give feedback on one assignment, then take something else off the list, and then back to that. It’s time intensive, but could be beneficial, so I approach it with great care, spreading them out a bit to bring the same enthusiasm to the last as I did to the first. I’ve been going at this since Monday evening. Today, I’ll finish them.

At lunchtime, I went downstairs for lunch, oddly enough. A study break. I had my sandwich and looked up into dark clouds. Storm cloud dark. And then this happened.

It was 40 degrees, I checked as that stuff was falling out of the sky. That changed my carefully planned out list.

I had two lists, actually. One on paper, and another in Word. The Word list got changed. So, more grading, and some writing, because there was no way I was going to go outside in the snow. Shame, too, I had figured out the whole day and had time for a nice medium-length ride. So organized was I! But it snowed for 45 minutes. It was just starting to gather in the grass when the cloud moved out. I did more school work while I waited a while to see if it was really over. To the northwest a sliver of blue broke through.

So I went for a bike ride. The plan was to combine the two usual routes. This would give me a pleasant 35-mile route, and I was going to enjoy all of that, me and my many layers of cycling clothes that keep out the wind. Here’s the last of those clouds moving off, during the first route, about 15 miles in.

I shot a little video soon after that. The last two times I’d been through there this time of day I saw deer running through the field into the tree line. Two rides ago, four deer ran alongside me, a race to the woods. Last time, I counted seven in a full-on sprint.

White-tailed deer can run faster than I can sprint, but I kept up with them. They might have been running at half speed. But, this time, I was prepared. I was going to round that curve and capture a bit of video of a whole herd of deer jogging to my left.

No deer showed up today.

Five miles later, on the second route, all of the old snow clouds were gone, and we were set to experience a beautiful sunset. This was actually going to be a problem though.

I started too late. The sunset came too early. I was still going the wrong direction. So I cut it short, turning south so I could eventually head back the other way. And then I started making deals with my legs. I would really like to make it back to the left-hand turn before it gets dark. Or, at least back to the red light at the crossroads.

I did both, but just barely. I saved about three miles by turning around early, and even so, my last mile tonight was in the dark. Good thing I cut the ride short.

This is the 19th installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. Including today’s installment we’ll have seen 37 of the 115 markers in the Historical Marker Database.

I did not find this marker today, but about a month ago. It was sunny and cool, but I didn’t linger long. The sun was headed to it’s home in the western sky and I had to get back on the road. But you have to stick around long enough to admire a bit of history.

We’re at the oldest AME church in the state, where members can trace their history back 223 years and was apparently the only church from these parts at the founding conference of the AME Church in Philadelphia in 1816.

Philadelphia had a lot of Georgian architecture, which influences the building here. Perhaps that has something to do with the early church leadership, as well. Rev. Reuben Cuff, the son of a former slave, began preaching in a log cabin out in the countryside a few miles away. Oral tradition has it that after the elder Cuff’s owner died, he might have married that man’s widow. The couple had three sons, who had some formal education, which wasn’t locally guaranteed. That last link makes some small leaps about Reuben and his brothers, based on the stories that have been passed down over the years. Like any personal 200+ year old story, it can seem plausible, if the base of it is accurate.

The rest of the story goes that Reuben had nine children with his first wife, and three with his second wife. He died at 81 in 1845. He’s buried in a small family cemetery, near his father. You can see his house here. That research finds he had the only stone house in the township, more than three dozen acres of land and a barn.

In 1839 an arsonist burned the old church building, but the congregation eventually rebuilt. This one, in the Classical Revival style, opened and took the Mt. Pisgah name in the 1870s.

A quick search shows me one photo of the interior of the church building. That organ has two sliders and 20 stops. It dates back to the 1960s.

There’s a small cemetery, which was established in 1860, attached to the church. A 20th century Cuff is buried there.

In next week’s installment of We Learn Wednesday, we’ll see a building that predates this church. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

And now to work on some lecture notes.