Rosa Parks

            There were a few things I had to ride my bike to do on Monday but before leaving I checked and found that one of them was unnecessary. I always like to have a spare of every one of my guitar strings in case there’s a break and I’d thought that I needed an extra B and high E, but I discovered that I have extras after all. So all I had to do was ride downtown to Staples and then stop at the supermarket on my way back.

            The main thing I wanted to do at Staples was to pick up a 2019 weekly planner, some pens and a couple of notebooks. But I brought with me as well the little Sony Cybershot camera that my upstairs neighbour David had given me last spring. It had a battery but it was out of juice so it needed a charger and it was also missing a memory card and something for uploading a memory card’s contents to my computer.

            I was surprised that they’d done major renovations at the University and Armoury store. They’d moved the sections around and turned it into a much more open space. I liked it but I couldn’t figure out where anything was.

            Staples didn’t have a charger specifically for that size of battery but they had a Bower universal battery charger with a sliding part that is supposed to fit most batteries. That seemed like a good thing to have but I wasn’t sure if it would actually fit my battery. The staff told me that I could purchase it and have them test it right afterwards so if it didn’t work I could just get a refund. That seemed like a good idea. They sold me a memory card that they said would fit my camera and a Verbatim universal memory card reader. I bought my planner, a pack of five fine point pens and two purple 80-page notebooks. Altogether I paid $126 and change. After I’d bought the universal charger my salesperson, Zac, struggled with opening up the hard plastic charger casing. He adjusted the charger to fit my battery and plugged it in. There were four little green progress lights but only one of them was lit up. We figured that when the rest of the lights were lit the battery would be charged. After fifteen minutes or maybe more nothing had happened. Zac made an adjustment and then all the green lights started coming on one after the other along the row and repeating it. We realized that Zac hadn’t connected it properly before and so now it was charging and when the lights stopped flashing the battery would be charged. I didn’t want to wait that long. I just wanted it charged enough to make the camera work so I could be more confident that the battery wasn’t permanently dead. After a couple of minutes we put the battery into the camera and it came on long enough to tell me that the battery was low. That was good enough for me. I had 14 days to return it anyway.

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought grapes, a handful of chestnuts, two packs of cranberries, coffee, spoon size shredded wheat, yogourt and brown sugar.

            Inside the supermarket was the tallest man I remember ever seeing. I’m quite a bit above average height but I’m not stretching the truth very much when I say that I would have had to extend my arm fully to pat this guy on the head. The top of his head was about level with the top of the aisle shelves where the boxes of extra stock are stored. He was with a woman who was about average height for a woman and he seemed like he might be of Eastern European origin. I had already checked my stuff out and I was at the bank machine getting some more money when he left. My eyes followed him because I was curious about something and sure enough, he had to duck as he exited the building. Imagine being too tall for every doorway!

            By coincidence, as I walked to my bike I saw a woman that was a bit taller than me. I don’t see that very often either.

            After lunch I took a late siesta and got up a little after 17:00.

            I put the battery into the universal charger and plugged it in. It seemed to be working because after half an hour only half the lights were moving, so I guessed that meant it was half charged. After another hour or so it stopped flashing and the battery fully powered the camera. Of course though I couldn’t take any pictures without a memory card.

            The memory card that I bought though turned out to be too big for the camera, so I’ll have to return it. The card reader doesn’t seem to have a slot for a memory card smaller than the one I bought so I might have to return that as well.

            So my only successful purchase that day for getting this camera functional is the universal charger, which seems like it might be useful in the future for other batteries as well.

            I wouldn’t normally have a beer with dinner on a Monday but since it was Christmas Eve I decided to indulge. The Doctor Who episode I watched was quite good. In trying to get her friends back to Earth the Tardis found the right planet but the wrong time. They ended up in Montgomery Alabama in 1955.

            The story begins in 1943 with Rosa Parks, the first time that she resists the unreasonable demands of a bus driver. Black people at this time and place are supposed to step onto the bus to pay their fare but then step off and walk around to enter the bus through the back door. In this story she tries to walk directly to the back after paying her fare but the driver commands her to get off and go around. She argues a bit and he gets up (we can see that he’s wearing a holster with a gun on his hip, as I guess he can because of the 2^nd amendment) and grabs her arm, causing her purse to fall. He stops pulling her when they are at the front and she sits down in the white section so she can reach her purse. The driver shouts for her to go out the door. She hesitates and finally gets up to leave. When she walks around to the back entrance though, the driver closes the door on her and drives away. This is very close to how it actually happened, except that in the real situation she was left to stand in the rain while she waited for the next bus.

            In real life, after that incident, Rosa swore that she would never take that driver James Blake’s bus again, and would always wait for the next one if he pulled up at the stop. But years later on the day she was arrested she had absent-mindedly gotten on the bus without noticing that Blake was the driver.

            The Doctor and her friends arrive twelve years later, the day before the famous incident. They are trying to get back to Sheffield in 2018 but when the Doctor tells them they are in the United States in 1955 Graham asks if they can see Elvis. The Doctor says she thinks he’s in New York this week but she could give him a call. “You haven’t got Elvis’s phone number!” “Don’t ever tell anyone I leant him a mobile phone!” They are about to leave but the Doctor notices that the Tardis’s sensors are picking up traces of altron energy in the area, which shouldn’t be there, so she investigates and they come along.

            On the street a white couple are walking ahead and the woman drops her glove without noticing. Ryan picks it up and runs after her but when he taps her on the shoulder her husband swings around and slaps him in the face for touching a white woman. The man is threatening Ryan with hanging when suddenly Rosa Parks steps in to calmly diffuse the situation. In her capacity as a seamstress she knows the white man and tells him that his suit is almost ready. He walks away and then Rosa turns to angrily ask Ryan if he’s crazy. She reminds him of what happened to Emmett Till just three months ago. He was lynched for allegedly flirting with a white woman.

            When Rosa introduces herself to the Doctor and her friends they all almost screw up the timeline by suddenly being in awe of meeting Rosa Parks. The Doctor says, “Big fan!” Rosa asks, “Excuse me?” The Doctor catches herself and says, “Big fan of Montgomery!” Rosa advises them to get the hell out of Alabama before they get themselves in more trouble. As Rosa is walking away the Doctor scans her and finds there is altron energy all around her.

            They go to a restaurant but the waitress tells them they don’t serve Negroes and then she looks at Yasmin and says, “or Mexicans”. They leave and the Doctor follows the readings on her sonic to the point where the altron energies converge, which is behind the locked doors of what looks like an empty warehouse near the bus works. The Doctor pints her sonic and a suitcase appears that has been concealed by a deception filter. Inside the suitcase is an information brick, a multi-intercepting surveillance device and the secondary charger for a … Suddenly they are being fired upon with a temporal displacement weapon by a guy dressed like a rockabilly but who obviously is from somewhere else. They run, leave the warehouse and hide behind a large gas tank. He has pursued them and stands on top of the tank. The Doctor climbs up and confronts him. She tells him she knows his weapon is pretty much out of juice and she’s got his spare battery. He asks her if she’s travelling in a Tardis because he could sell it for a lot of money. She says, “Not that one! Second hand, huge mileage! One careless owner! But it’s better than a vortex manipulator like the one on your wrist. Cheap and nasty time travel!” He says, “If I see you again I will kill you!” They leave but first the Doctor scans him with her sonic.

            The Doctor and her friends check into a motel but they have to sneak Yasmin and Ryan in through the window. The Doctor explains that their enemy’s temporal displacement weapon could send anyone it hits to another time.

            They need to form a plan and so the Doctor jumps on the bed and begins writing on the wall. Graham protests her vandalism and says, “You’re not Banksy!” She turns and says, “Or am I?” Suddenly there are several loud knocks on the door. Yasmin and Ryan hide in the bathroom. The Doctor makes the writing invisible with her sonic and they open the door and it’s a police officer. He asks about “a couple of mongrels, a Negro boy and a Mexican girl”. The Doctor answers that she doesn’t recognize anyone by that description. He says, “You recognize it’s an offence to harbour colourds in your hotel room?” She says, “We’re not harbouring anyone who doesn’t have a right to be here.” The cop asks their business in Montgomery and Graham says they are promoting a telephone that is also a camera, plays music and sends text messages. The cop asks him his name and he says, “Steve. Steve Jobs.” The cop goes into the washroom but Yasmin and Ryan are gone. They hide an alley until the cop leaves.

            The team begins researching Rosa. They find her address, where she works and her bus route. They all take a bus ride and Ryan has to enter through the back door. Yasmin is confused because she isn’t told to go to the back even though she has brown skin so she sits in the white section. They find Rosa’s stop and that evening get on with her when she finishes work. The Doctor sits with Rosa and begins chatting but Rosa says that if she keeps sitting there her and the other coloured people will have to move.

            When Rosa gets off Ryan follows her but after a while she turns and confronts him. He says he wants to help with the cause and she asks if he can serve coffee.

The Doctor goes back to the warehouse and she is scanning its owner’s equipment when she hears footsteps. She closes the suitcase and tosses behind her just as he fires his weapon and his suitcase disappears. The Doctor says, “Whoops! Shame! You just sent all your equipment to goodness knows where! 79^th Century judging by the weapon setting, which by the way overheat very easily!” His weapon is red hot in his hand and he is forced to drop it.

She recognizes from his tattoo that he’s been a Storm Cage prisoner. Storm Cage is the most secure prison this side of the universe. The Doctor’s wife River Song was in prison there for killing him. The Doctor asks what he was in for. He says, “I was young and nobody got hurt. Well a few people got killed. A few hundred, a thousand tops!” Then he smiles and says, “2000!” The Doctor says, “And it was nasty enough that Storm Cage decided to place a neural inhibitor in your brain before releasing you back into the universe.” She said she’s been wondering why he just doesn’t kill Rosa and she figured out that the answer is that he can’t. The neural restrictor prevents him from killing or injuring any living thing. She suddenly grabs the vortex manipulator from his wrist and says, “So even if I do this …” She throws it to the ground and crushes it with her foot. He grabs her by the throat but she says, “There it is kicking in!” He’s in pain and has to let her go.

She asks him why he came here. He says, “This is where things started to go wrong.” He seems to be a white supremacist from the future. He says, “Tiny actions change the world”. She asks his name and he says Krasko. He doesn’t seem worried about the loss of his equipment and suggests that he can change the timeline anyway. The Doctor says she’s here to stop him. He says, “We’ll see” and walks away.

Rosa takes Ryan to a meeting where her husband and some others, including Martin Luther King are in attendance.

Graham meets with Blake in a bar and they play pool. They talk bus driving because Graham is a retired Sheffield bus driver. He finds out though that Krasko has already altered the time line because Blake tells him he has the day off the next day, which is when he’s supposed to have Rosa arrested and that another bus driver named Griffin is scheduled to take his route.

Back at the motel the Doctor has Krasko’s weapon. Ryan asks how it works and she explains it to him briefly before tossing it aside and getting to their plan. They have to correct any changes that Krasko makes. They have to make sure that Rosa Parks rides that bus, that the driver is Blake and that the bus is full of white people.

The next morning we see the Doctor knock on Griffin’s door to tell him that he and his wife have just won a trip to meet Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas but he has to leave right away. He says his wife loves Sinatra and they’ll go. The Doctor tells Yasmin that it’s a good job Elvis leant Frank the mobile phone and did everything she told him. The Doctor then rips her own coat and says we have to stick tight to Rosa.

Meanwhile Graham and Ryan show up where Blake is fishing. Blake is upset that a Black man is hanging around. Graham tells Blake that he’s heard that a group of Black people are planning a sit-in on his route. He says, “Not on my bus!” and leaves.

The Doctor takes her coat to Rosa to fix the tear. They offer her extra money to make it a priority and Yasmin stays with Rosa while she works.

Blake finds that his bus has been sabotaged. Krasko, posing as a mechanic tells him he’ll have to cancel his route. The Doctor steals Blake another bus and Ryan is told to go ahead on the route and make sure everyone knows the bus is coming. On his way he finds Krasko standing in front of a car that he’s using to block the road. Krasko tells Ryan that he’s going to stop his kind from getting above themselves. Ryan tells Krasko he’s living in the past and if he likes it so much he can go there. Ryan shoots Krasko with the temporal disruptor and sends him as far back as possible. It’s probably not a good idea in the long run to send someone back in time that wants to alter history.

The Doctor and her friends are on the bus with Rosa but if Doctor, Graham and Yasmin get off there will be enough empty seats for white passengers and Rosa won’t be asked to move. Graham says, “I don’t want to be part of this!” The Doctor tells him, “We have to not help her!” More white people get on and Blake calls out that some coloureds have to give up their seats. Three Black people get up and move. Rosa stands up to let the person beside her out but then sits back down by the window. Blake goes back and orders her to stand but she refuses. He says, “If you don’t stand I’m gonna have you arrested!” Rosa says exactly what she really said, “You may do that”. The Doctor and her friends have to watch while the police come and escort Rosa away.

Rosa was very well cast and Vinette Robinson looked a lot like the photographs. She had the accent down too even though she’s British.

The bus was apparently an authentic replica of the Montgomery Alabama busses from 1955.