Those of you interested in space and NASA’s activities may have watched the Perseverance Rover successfully land on the surface of Mars yesterday. Onboard Perseverance Rover was an electronic chip containing the names of some ‘earthlings’. One of those names was Rod Eglin, a Past Master of Lewis Lodge in Whitehaven.
NASA gave members of the public the opportunity to have their name placed on the microchip before the launch of the vehicle last year. Rod even received a ‘Boarding Pass’ from NASA and amusingly, it also stated how many ‘Airmiles’ he had earned on the journey (over 13.5 million). Rod watched the live broadcast of the landing last night and said he was quite excited and relived when it landed safely.
So, we have at least one Cumberland & Westmorland Freemason’s name on the planet Mars.
Rod has recently been keeping himself busy being trained to enable him to perform COVID 19 vaccinations locally (and anywhere else if needed) through Saint John Ambulance volunteering scheme.
Rod a registered Paramedic (retired), decided that it was necessary for us to ‘do our bit’ in difficult times and he couldn’t think of a better way of doing this.
There is a lot of online training and face to face training to get through to register as a vaccinator and it is the first time that he has done this sort of thing since he took early retirement from the service and is really looking forward to getting started and being able to contribute. Because of the urgency of the situation, he has had to cram a lot of learning specific to COVID 19 that is over and above his usual role as a paramedic and hopes to be helping the vaccination programme soon.
