Pew Sheet – 2nd May 2021

The Rector writes ’Thank you to the anonymous people who organised these lovely flowers on Tuesday. The thank you note was signed ’with love from all at Carrigaline Union of Parishes’

Here is a photo so you too can enjoy them! The accompanying card also said ’Now that we see the light at the end of the tunnel… ’ and it really does feel that we are finally coming out of a terrible year.

We are not back where we were but with vaccinations rolling out we are seeing that ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ We just have to look around to India or Brazil to see how much worse it could have been here.

Obviously our prayers are with all those throughout the world who see no light yet. There is also a petition started by European Citizens Initiative which you can sign to insist that we all have a right to health. In any pandemic, research and technologies should be shared broadly, speedily, across the globe. A private company shouldn’t have the power to decide who has access to treatments or vaccines and at what price. Patents provide one single company with the monopoly control over essential pharmaceutical products. This limits their availability and increases their cost to those who need them. You can find the petition at https://noprofitonpandemic.eu/ ‘

Music Notes May 2^nd

Hymns for today:

531 Where love and loving kindness dwell

Ubi caritas (Taizé)

41 Glory to God (Thanks and Praise)

Our prelude today is played by Callum Nuzum who is a young organ student at the MTU Cork School of Music. Callum practices on the organ at St Mary’s occasionally. It is great to feel that we are helping to nurture a new generation of organists by giving them the experience of playing on a ‘real’ pipe organ.

Callum plays a Cornet Voluntary by John Travers (1703-1758). Travers was one of many notable English composers of the eighteenth century which included the Wesley family, familiar to us through the many hymns written by Charles Wesley.

Samuel Wesley, the youngest of Charles Wesley’s three children, became one of the finest organists of his day as well as a talented composer for the instrument. When Mendelssohn visited London in 1837 he met Samuel Wesley. Both composers were ardent promoters of the music of Bach, and Wesley was invited to improvise for Mendelssohn who was aware of Wesley’s incredible improvisational skills. It was Samuel Wesley’s final public performance.

The closing voluntary is a setting of ‘Kingsfold’. This tune is used for the hymn ‘I heard the voice of Jesus say’ and is originally an English folksong selected by Vaughan Williams for this text.

Bébhinn 087 228 5965

bebhinnmuire@gmail.com

Random Notes CCCLXXVIII

The UN has 17 Sustainable Development Goals which were adopted by all member states in 2015. These goals are:

GOAL 1: No Poverty

GOAL 2: Zero Hunger

GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being

GOAL 4: Quality Education

GOAL 5: Gender Equality

GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

GOAL 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality

GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

GOAL 13: Climate Action

GOAL 14: Life Below Water

GOAL 15: Life on Land

GOAL 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

GOAL 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal

These goals are important at a global level but they are also of local concern. For example, University College Cork (the world’s first green campus) has started a pilot programme to tie our teaching directly to as many of these SDGs as possible.

In addition, Cork University Business School has introduced Sustainable Business as a teaching and research theme.

These SDGs reach into individual modules taught by lectures like me. I teach a module called Ethical Hacking and Threat Analysis. This module is focused on helping students to learn how to build secure IT systems and to defend against threats by what we like to call “malicious actors.” These can be those trying to deploy ransomware, steal private data, or to cripple systems vital to business or public interest. Such malicious actors can include individual criminals all the way up to state agencies.

How is this relevant to the UN SDGs? SDG16 in particular refers to peace, justice and strong institutions. SDG9 refers to infrastructure and SDG10 refers to reduced inequality. A fair, just and equal society that supports innovation and fair trade is not possible without IT systems and practices that are accountable and ethical. We are all familiar with data breaches at Facebook but the Post Office fiasco in the UK is also of concern.

Making the SDGs relevant to my own teaching is just the first step on setting some of this to rights. I hope to write future random Notes on this topic as the journey continues.

For more information on the goals see https://sdgs.un.org/