I’m trying, now, to slip back into the ol’ routine. We got back into town around midnight on Sunday, and at about 3 a.m. I was able to get to bed. I have no idea why everything took so long that night, but that meant Monday was a day spent moving through syrup. Plus the snow. And then Tuesday was a bit more of that. The last part of my sinus allergies, something I brought home from Cozumel, started to … de-allergize themselves yesterday. Breathing is fundamental.

Also, there’s the usual series of small things that need to be done. House things. Work things. Prep things. And so on. It’s amazing how quickly the little things will fill a substantial chunk of a day.

Also, I got in my first bike ride in 10 days. I did 50 miles, which gives you a lot of cool sites. Some of them are views I am sure that are new to me. I feel like I’d remember Mr. Crank’s Crab Shack.

But nearby, a lighthouse that I’m sure is familiar.

New on Zwift, or new to me, at least, are these climbing portals. I tried one, and entered into a quantum realm. I’m not sure the point, except for “up.” I think I climbed about 3,000 feet. Trainer feet. That’s not a real climb. You just keep turning over the pedals, no matter how slowly, and grind your way up. It’s never as much of a grind as a real climb. And I can’t fall over.

Not in the quantum realm.

Here’s today’s quick return to the underwater realm. And here’s Aquawoman. Still no bubbles; still not breathing.

I’m pretty sure I’d intended to just take a photo of this brown sponge bowl. I noticed the purple sponge cluster in the foreground, but I didn’t notice the one in the background until just now. And I’ll never know what was inside of that one.

The scrawled filefish, (Aluterus scriptus). It can be found all over the world, the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, and in that Caribbean-Gulf of Mexico region too, of course. Typically, this is a shy fish, so we’re lucky here.

It also has a toxic chemical inside, the scrawled filefish, that is significantly more potent than the puffer fish. The likelihood of it causing you problems is more from intravenous introduction, rather than digestive, so don’t let that fish give you an IV.

Here’s another beautiful reef dweller, the queen triggerfish, (Balistes vetula). Carl Linneaus described it in 1758. It can be found all over the Atlantic and, in the western hemisphere, from Canada to Brazil and beyond.

That fish might also be in the quantum realm. It may have come to that reef directly from that other plane. It did seem to suddenly appear, and never let me get close. I have three shots, of the queen triggerfish, and that’s the best of the bunch.

But I was more interested in what was hiding among the coral and sponges anyway. Behold, the giant sea anemone, (Condylactis gigantea). This is an animal, not a plant.

Anemone are often not mobile, but these can move around. And they look delightful, but they can sting predators and prey. The anemone is, itself, a predator. But it’s also a cleaning site for other fish. Smaller creatures will hang around here to clean bigger ones. The smaller fish eat the irritants of the bigger fish. And, also, they provide a bit of protection for the anemone itself. It is a great big set of circles in the underwater ecosystem.

This is the 21st installment of We Learn Wednesdays. I’ve been riding my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. Including today’s installment, we’ll have seen 40 of the markers in the Historical Marker Database. This one marks a home that dates, in part, back to the 17th century.

This is the Alexander Grant House, which dates to 1721, and the Rumsey Wing goes back a few years before. Some of the walls were put up for an earlier structure, so you could say it dates to 1690. This is the home of the county’s historical society. There’s a colonial artifact museum inside, along with the home’s original woodwork. (The historical society is also in three other adjoining buildings.) The Rumsey Wing has some restored features, comprised of some of the original work from other nearby old homes, in the 1950s. All told the historical society maintains thousands of artifacts, displaying a wildly broad array of history, some of it believed to be thousands of years old.

It was originally a one-room home. The first room became a kitchen when Alexander Grant bought it. Finding out about this man is a bit tricky. I did discover his will, dated 1726, where he’s listed as a yeoman. Seems he had 118 acres in a few different locations. I believe he died in 1734 or so.

But let me tell you about John Rock, who was mentioned in that first sign. This is an impressive man. Born a free man in 1825 to parents of few means, they put him through school, which was rare for any child in those days. A teacher at 19, he worked with students eight hours a day and then spent his evenings studying medicine under two doctors and apprenticed for them. He studied dentistry and apprenticed in that field and then opened his own practice. After that, he got into medical school, and became, in 1852, one of the first black men to get a medical degree in this country. By the time he was 27 he’d earned himself a reputation as a teacher, dentist, physician and abolitionist. By 1860, his health failing, he gave up medicine and the mouth and started reading the law.

On January 31, 1865, Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment. The next day, Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts senator, introduced a motion that made Rock the first black attorney to be admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. Writing for The Supreme Court Historical Society, Howard University professor Clarence G. Contee had a fine historical summary.

“By Jupiter, the sight was grand. ‘Twas dramatic, too. At three minutes before eleven o’clock in the morning, Charles Sumner entered the Courtroom, followed by the negro [sic] applicant for admission, and sat down within the bar. At eleven, the procession of gowned judges entered the room, with Chief Justice Chase at their head. The spectators and their lawyers in attendance rose respectfully on their coming. The Associate Justices seated themselves nearly at once, as is their courteous custom of waiting upon each other’s movements. The Chief Justice, standing to the last, bowed with affable dignity to the Bar, and took his central seat with a great presence. Immediately the Senator from Massachusetts arose, and in composed manner and quiet tone said: `May it please the Court, I move that John S. Rock, a member of the Supreme Court of the State of Massachusetts, be admitted to practice as a member of this Court.’ The grave to bury the Dred Scott decision was in that one sentence dug; and it yawned there, wide open, under the very eyes of some of the Judges who had participated in the judicial crime against Democracy and humanity. The assenting nod of the great head of the Chief Justice tumbled in course and filled up the pit, and the black counsellor of the Supreme Court got on to it and stamped it down and smoothed the earth to his walk to the rolls of the Court.”

Benjamine Quarles in Lincoln and the Negro concluded the ceremony; “A clerk came forward and administered the oath to Rock, thus making him the first Negro ever empowered to plead a case before the Supreme Court.”

The Boston Journal, the home town newspaper of Rock, was also able to feature the admission of Rock. The correspondent of the paper wrote that: “The slave power which received its constitutional death-blow yesterday in Congress writhes this morning on account of the admission of a colored lawyer, John S. Rock of Boston, as a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.” The paper noted that the faces of some of the older persons present at the ceremony were knotted in rage. Even papers in England mentioned the admission of Rock into the bar of the Supreme Court. Most of the observers who reported on the act saw it as a giant step in the repudiation of the Dred Scott decision of former Chief Justice Taney. It was evident that John S. Rock had set a great legal precedent. Before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, Rock had obtained one highly prestigious symbol of the citizenship status of the Negro in 1865.

While in Washington, Rock had attended a session of Congress; he was the first Negro lawyer to be received on the floor of the House. Congressman John D. Baldwin of Massachusetts, former editor of The Commonwealth and of The Worcester Spy, had escorted Rock to a seat. Baldwin was a close friend of Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson, also a Massachusetts politician of some influence. Rock was warmly received by some of the leaders about to shape Reconstruction policies. Unfortunately, as Rock was returning to Boston, he was brought back to reality when he was arrested at the Washington railroad station for not having his pass. James A. Garfield, a Congressman from Ohio and later a President, thereafter introduced a bill that abolished required passes for blacks.

It appears as if the direct illness that brought Rock’s remarkable career to an end began the day before Rock was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court. He had attended the Presbyterian church of the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet, a famous black leader and abolitionist, the day before, on January 31, 1865. He caught cold. He was already in a weakened state of health, and to catch cold in the winter in those days was serious. When he returned to Boston, he had to appear at gatherings honoring him and in the interest of his race. His health continued to deteriorate rapidly.

He never argued before the court, however. In ill health anyway, he died in December 1866 of tuberculosis.

He’d done all of that by the age of 41.

Contee wrote much more about Rock in the Journal of the National Medical Association. Still can’t find more on the mysterious, colonial, Alexander Grant, though.

In the next installment of We Learn Wednesday, we’ll take a glance at a 19th century hotel. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.