Whack a Banker machine from Tim Hunkin

I grew up enjoying Tim Hunkin's wonderful invention drawings each week in the Sunday Observer Magazine. If you should ever make it to Covent Garden, in London. There is a small museum of his work you must visit. I believe the lady is Joanna Lumley, from the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.

True Stories From the Five Boroughs-Occupy Comix, FAST and FURIOUS Comics, 99% Comics,

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Letter to the Bank Manager #90 (Art—Gadfly)

"A fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer"—John Donne

Dear BM,

Now whole towns and villages are beginning to yank their deposits from your holdings. Your thick skin may barely feel the pinch but this must register as a buzz in your ear. Testing—Testing—are we, are they, is anyone getting through? My constant refrain, the one I’ve shared with you over an imaginary pint, in a Starbucks over your non-existent latte, through numerous letters, is that you are out of touch and lack sensitivity. This has only worked to your best interests up until now. If you are without feeling and train your eye only on the growth of your portfolio you might miss the boat, the one that is emptying out your vaults—I know, I know, a grand, unrealistic vision—people with teaspoons, even townships with buckets, can hardly effect the oceans of lucre, the google of green, upon which your many dubious institutions float. I say your, but you know me. You represent many things to many people. You may be my personal financial advisor but you are also a chimera, defined by the Miriam-Webster as:

CHIMERA—
1: a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail b : an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts
2: an illusion or fabrication of the mind; especially : an unrealizable dream
3: an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution


Somehow they all apply. You are friend and foe. You are therapist and, unbeknownst to yourself (there’s that thick skin again), you are therapee. You certainly need it. I’ll analyze you from every angle; I’ll lift the hood; I’ll shine a flashlight on the organism that is you, and perhaps we can work on some kind of growth other than the one you are overly focused on. Now that you as an institution have the rights of an individual, I, as an individual must expect from you the kind of behavior that oils our best institutions. You have great potential. You are a lion! Don’t forget that! Unfortunately you are also a wily old goat, almost impossible to trust (not good! Not good at all!), and lastly, your serpent like manner, your slipperiness no longer works in the backroom the way it once did with impunity. We’ve seen through the glass. We’ve observed you slipping into your fat suits with their gold watch chains and pin stripe vests. We know that the image you still hold up to the light is an archaic one and does not reflect reality. We know you are a machine. There is a ghost in that machine that we shall work on. We shall find its soul. We will work on your antisocial behavior. You are part of the pack now, at least in name, and the community invites you in.

We wish only to integrate you...and your money.

Yours sincerely,



Art O’Connor, gadfly.

Letter to the Bank Manager #89 (Art Rambles Poetic)

My dear Bullrider,

In efforts to penetrate your thick, tanned hide I’ll try anything. Art can change the world and will keep trying. Here I ramble poetic for your gain:

I stand here my severed head held high, grounded by circumstance, ready to occupy my space, resist ejection from a downtown park, surrounded by uncertainty, prepared to take the next step, side by side with my imagined friends. We have linked ourselves together, the chain fences behind us which stand with the respectable fronts of commerce. Their clothes are laundered only by the best, whitewashed by well paid cleaners who hang their heads slightly afraid to look you in the eyes, too delighted to have jobs once more, on the other side of the barricade. I-Pads and watch chains scoff given voice and thin personhood by the swagger of the model who wends down the aisle ready to marry a selfish dream to another reality. Protest signs sing off key, unified by discord, some loud and others meek, stumbling toward an articulation brewed, stewing toward fruition. Stumbling blocks are scattered by law to protect the public safety, a strange looking building that in general goes unnoticed. Tents and tarps are foreclosed on because bleaching time has come. Sanitized marble public see cardboard streets pulled down, communities dispersed for the common good of the comfortable. Safety concerns are overblown and don’t apply consistent. A park with drugs is given wide birth, and uptown thrives, ignored because few are strong or able, few have the fight, the courage, few can look in the dealers eye and say leave, say leave because the strong are nowhere to take up their cause. Out of sight, out of their minds because Europe isn’t helping the portfolio they staked their hollow souls upon. They’ve troubles of their own and need the distractions gone, that focus on equity when inequity is their role. The strugglers and the fighters are ready to drown out the shout of the mayor as he looks down from a mega-platform somehow smaller now. Proportion would seem, like rational thought, the place where opposites meet. We all see perspective only easy for some to draw and for others to distort.

I take a virtual stand on a shaky stage solid in my conviction that my messy arguments are as tidy as authority permits. My body weighed by black and whites dunked to the radio news sits safe with sound of smart conversation, panic, and looming clouds. Point by point an explanation is broken down to examine its component parts. Compliance is intolerable now. Some people have no choice but must resist the shelters and sleep in the slightly less dangerous parks. So many parks could do with a good clean to make them more sane for those who have no choice but to see them as their homes. I ask the mayor to continue good work begun and put resources into cleaning up all those neighborhoods falling into sad disrepair, suffering from poverty and daily loss. He is asked to hear the complaints of those on other streets where the anti-social behavior of the too well heeled reigns.

Hubris, Arrogance and Gall meander down the street drunk on champagne, arm in arm,and scoff at the filth, the dirt. The Dirty hold up a mirror so Hubris may straighten his tie and see his own pock marked visage.

I take my cake and, hat in hand, eat. Coffee thrills. The simple pleasures smile. The taste of cotton, of boiled leather, of dry wall, and grubs finally get their due.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #88 (Art Meditates on Bankers and Wild Beasts)

Maurice Vlaminck-The Circus

Dear Bouncy BM,

This is my SHUT UP letter. I tried it out first on an unsuspecting crowd and they were so loud I had to repeatedly yell: “Shut up! Shut up!” I must admit it was quite exhilarating in its own way but that said it verged on the rude. Anyway here, without further ado, the letter:

I think you’ll agree I’ve always been upfront regarding my own inexpertise when it comes to issues of finance. I specialize in exercising my right to talk about stuff about which I know nothing. It must drive you bananas. At least you are free to totally disregard everything I have to say as my outpourings are surely the ravings of a lunatic...nobody! I hope those two words strung together lean towards the poetic rather than the insulting but one never knows. Besides it is me I am being rude to so I’ll sue myself and demand an apology. I'll sue me before someone else does. When playing with words one steps into a minefield. They are explosive in their potential to do damage or offend. I’m anxious to cause damage without offending. I wish only to chip away at those edifices founded on utterly unsound principles, i.e. unprincipled. Financial institutions are overly revered. Out of them come a lie of expertise with which we are bombarded daily. One day the markets are great and strong, the next day they are shaky and nervous. Such market forecasts and readings have nothing, nothing to do with regular people. The experts talk about trillions here and a billion, or two there, knowing full well I cannot relate. It is like the opposite of small print—big print! Print so big we look on it and feel like little ants observing the bottom of a dirty boot! People who live with day to day realities of having to pay a mortgage, feed their kids, feed their souls in pursuit of their dreams, their art, a small organic farm, getting their kids...this one is a bit pushy...an education cannot relate. They must constantly deal with enervating forces imposed on them from without: Jobs they don’t like which fail to appreciate them for their best talents, health insurance supplied by a dubious industry that charges astronomical amounts of money to give one the lie that one will be taken care of in the event of one’s death. They’ll come through for you when you’re dead. Oh! You’re dead! Never mind then. Of course I exaggerate for effect. The cost of everything is getting everyone down, seriously down. People drown in debt as meaningless numbers get tossed around like confetti, numbers that are supposed to explain everything. If you don’t understand...well...you wouldn’t would you? You are not an expert. If you were you’d know how to make money and feed your family and keep a roof over their heads. You’d know better than to take on mortgages you can’t afford. You’d know better than to take on student loans. You’d know enough to not go get educated! You are a failure, a loser, a lazy good-for-nothing. It is easy to throw around putdowns and insults. My favorite insult for you is: Banker! It truly has become a dirty word. Not one to hurl insults I should stop using it but for convenience sake I shall keep employing it in the more traditional sense.
    So what else am I apart from being a loser? Oh yes! I’m: A liberal! A WPA wannabe (spit) artist! A s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-t! Maybe! Probably I am—all those things and more! The list is massive. The labels go on and on and on. I am a self doubter—jeez! I suffer from scruples—nasty! Your put downs become my badge of honor*. Can I share with you one thing that really bugs me about bleeding hearts? They will not simply admit they care! I would like this government to take care of its poor and hungry, wounded and broken. I’m not sure where you stand on such issues. You are slippery. Corporate value systems are without principle, mutable, they change with the weather.

In my letters I’m trying to express, from every possible angle—like a car mechanic scratching his head in disbelief that he cannot nail down the problem—my continued amazement at an apparent disregard, indifference, to the human toll of the financial crisis shown by those who continue to accept those obscene bonuses with impunity, and by those whose job I thought it was to police them. I meditate on an image of a banker hoping he...the image on my wall is a he as it happens...might one day mutate into the banker of my dreams.

That is it in a nutshell. Of course it cannot stay in a nutshell. It must grow into a mantra. That is why I love the Occupiers. They won’t let this drumbeat stop. Some will try to paint the movement with a broad brush suggesting it is built on envy, is fringe, is the product of snarling fury. The spotlight must be aimed at those who try. The name callers must be outed! They are the modern day equivalent of strike breakers and agitators and  they should be pulled into the conversation whether I, you or they like it or not. With gentle persuasion we might just encourage them to go work in a soup kitchen instead of wielding pepper spray.

Boy do I go on! I bet you put me on speaker phone when I call. I would!

Yours most sincerely your good friend and conscience,


Art O’Connor

PS—Kristian might be back next week to regale you with stories of his travels among the dispossessed. I’m sure you can’t wait.

PSS—* The Fauvists, the wild beasts, adopted the name thrown at them as an insult and now their art is sold for millions! Art is always worth more than money in the end. When will you finally get to grips with this fundamental truth?

letter to the Bank Manager #87 (Art's Hostile Takeover Bid, or How to be Politely Rude)

Art's Hostile Takeover Bid

Dear Mr. Bullrider,

My notion of biting the hand that feeds has just taken a new twist! Apparently the famous chef, Mario Batali, unintentionally fulfilling Godwin’s Law, just described the bankers as being pretty much as bad as Stalin and Hitler for all the damage they’ve inflicted on the economy. The bankers are taking it rather personally (they protesteth too much methinks!) and are thinking quite seriously about boycotting his restaurants where the banking fraternity are major patrons. Who is biting whose hand I wonder? For better or worse Mr. Batali has apologized. To whom exactly it is hard to say. Having exercised my own chagrin at the generally unscrupulous nature of the banking industry in my numerous letters to you, my dear friend and nemesis, I empathize with Mr. Batali but am reminded that the name calling is a trap that will always backfire. Once again I must emphasize the importance I personally place on maintaining a politely rude stance at all times in order that our civil discourse may continue despite our profound differences.

Sincerely,


Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #86 (Guy Fawkes?)

Dear BM,

A couple of days ago in the UK they celebrated Guy Fawkes night. As a child I enjoyed the bonfires, the fireworks and the marshmallows. Burning in effigy a figure of Guy Fawkes once a year strikes me as a bit strange these days. He was part of a plot to  blow up the houses of parliament, get rid of King James 1st, and return a catholic monarch to the throne. Since then he has become a blank slate onto which people have projected many different agendas. Some prefer to burn an effigy of the houses of parliament, in general I’d say more creative (ever tried building a cardboard effigy of the Houses of Parliament?), and more about challenging institutions rather than attacking individuals—a big up yours if you like to the power of corporations and government, or powerlessness of government given that corporations hold the purse strings. Currently his visage is popular within the Occupy Wall Street movement. Why is harder to answer, a question I’ll leave others to try and answer for now.

Meanwhile today is /Leave Your Bank Day! I’m feeling a little shy on this front, torn even. As not only my dear bank manager and mentor, you are also my nemesis. That I bank with you, one of the big five banks, is a source of deep embarrassment. You know all to well how complicated it gets for people to simply up and change their accounts over to a credit union. Online banking is both a convenience and something of a trap. Life is complicated enough without diving in to the sisyphean task of trying to swap out all that information, let alone find ATMs when you need them, if one should choose to move over to a credit union, none of which are easily to be found in my neck of these troubled woods.

Yours remaining reluctantly loyal,

Art O’Connor

Wolf Geyr-IN GOD WE TRU$T

At Occupy Wall Street there is a wonderful process in play that, for all its problems, can be best described as Democracy in action. The stance of most of the activists is apolitical in that they find the current rusting infrastructure of politics to be one they no longer wish to work within. Neither do they wish to come at it from the left or right. This is bubbling up from underneath. Understandably they do not see the roads and bridges we now have in place standing up for long. The current crop of politicians give the appearance of desperately trying to maintain the current system but show a complete unwillingness to inject real change (monetary or visionary) into the process. The Masses are now the 99%. Socialism is now, at its simplest, people wanting to see people treated with respect. To continue using these words as a form of insult will only show up the thrower of those insults as a dinosaur stuck in old patterns, unable to escape a dualistic approach to politics that is failing to function effectively. There is a kind of political exegesis going on. Break down the current system, look at all the parts, and cyber-nurd it back together, whilst making sure to throw new parts thrown in and stir, vigorously.

I see so many people energized by a sense that change might be possible if applied with great caution. Burned once people hold their hope close to their chest. Artists, economists, university lecturers, whoever is involved must show a willingness to make mistakes, and be open to criticism, the horizontal process, and consensual thinking. It is way too soon to say any of us have figured this thing out to the point where clear demands, open and shut, can be made.

One artist at the No Comment Art show, Wolf Geyr, has clearly been struggling with the issues of art and money for a while now. My take on biting the hand that feeds i.e. making art that one hopes is pretty insulting to the very people who might one day buy that same art, has been fairly consistent. Think Steve Bell, brilliant satirical cartoonist who has been a presence in the British paper, the Guardian, for a good thirty years. I believe, though I may have my facts wrong, that Margaret Thatcher, whom he satirized viciously in his strip Maggie’s Farm, bought some of his originals. I guess that is one way to stifle criticism, rather than getting all upset in public. This does not really succeed unless the cartoonist/artist gives up, and Steve Bell is, mercifully, as biting as ever.

I’d like to point out that many of those in the financial industry who are also patrons of the arts have been biting your hand all along. You put your money in their bank where they make it grow to their own benefit whilst charging you for the privilege of doing so. Curious don’t you think?

Art Gives a Speech at the old JP Morgan Bank as part of the No Comment Art show, 10.8.11

Thanks to Wolf Geyr for filming. Find more of his work at:  http://www.wolfgeyr.com

Art Enables The Banks (version 2)

Letter to the Bank Manager #85 (Art is learning to lighten up)

My dear, ever so bouncy bank manager,

How is it that life doesn’t simply drag you down? You always keep your spirits up. You are an inspiration. Free of scruples you can cakewalk through life without the anxieties faced by us mere mortals. The doubts we suffer concerning, say: the correctness of an action we partook in, or the quality of our part in a dialogue...these are things that do not even begin to bother you. If you step on a finger or two you might apologize and then move on. whereas I’d be up all night. You do not suffer from the pain you leave in your wake. It is of no concern to you. Such is life. Life is such. I meanwhile bang my head against the wall. Why, I ask myself, did I waste a dollar on that silly, silly bobble head doll from that crappy yard sale. You I imagine, spend thousands on cars you don’t need and question the expenditure not at all.

You remain perpetually sunny and bright. You lead a quality life: good food, good company, good everything. Your tolerance for not good is, I imagine, zero. Downers? Out! Mopers? Be gone with you! Complainers and whiners? Walk away! Politically correct? Don’t waste my time! Scruples?...Give me a break!

I don’t know how you do it. I’m so thin skinned, watery eyed, and sensitive. I ask too many questions. I’m paralyzed by the weight of every decision.

Really, in the end, it is no wonder I fail to make the kind of money you call: Making Money. I don’t have the skill sets needed. For goodness sake I got a degree in Fine Art!

If I were a banker I’d see a client who’d just been foreclosed on and be unable to function for the rest of the day. If an old lady walked into the bank and said her heat was off because she’d failed to pay her electricity bill I’d empathize! I wouldn’t be able to put on an act. I’d reach for the phone and call that heartless electricity company and start in with how cruel and inconsiderate this world could be. I’d get them to imagine their own grandmother shivering beside a cold heater, glassy eyed hoping, hoping it might come on. I’d force them to face the picture of blue skin showing through the holes in her stockings and ask them can they truly live with such guilt?

And of course I’d lose my job.

Guilt is a dirty word. You know this, but I cannot shake the feeling that guilt must be confronted and not simply shrugged off.

It is a terrible thing. I imagine my family going hungry and eating the drywall in their crumbling home and think: that must never be. I imagine it because it is a closer reality for me than it ever will be for you. Whereas for you a bankruptcy is a glitch, quickly fixed with an infusion of air from a pump, for me it would register as a permanent and insurmountable scar. You will always inevitably bounce back.

That said there has been a change in the air of late—a sea change. Where once upon a time a job lost or a business shut down would leave the victim feeling lost, ashamed, floundering in self doubt, these days people are learning to carry such travails with a certain levity, even with a certain rakish charm. We are learning from you. You have taught us to not take it all so seriously. Stigma? Nah! Debts? Forgettaboudit! Do the banks worry about their debts? No! Do they let moral turpitude hinder their every action? No they do not! Let us all follow by example. Those credit card offers? Utilize them! The banks offer them to you in hopes you do. They are our teachers, exemplars of how to behave in a world too oppressed by issues of right and wrong.

Thank you for being so supportive during my hand wringing. You may never respond to my letters but by acting as a sounding board you help more than you can ever know.

Sincerely,


Art O’Connor

Freedom From Want

Norman Rockwell

So is this one of those rare, populist moments that will benefit the democrats and not the republicans? The notion that income inequality as it stands is reprehensible is hard to dispute. For once it does appear as if the right is at a loss for words. Their outmoded charges of liberalism and socialism will now fail to penetrate the usually thin skins of the opposition as the true meanings of those words are taken to heart once more. I’ve never understood how it was that the right could hurl these words as insults and get away with it. The democrats have always showed a remarkable lack of backbone. Maybe now they are beginning to stand behind their supposed values. The issue of income inequality is one that the right has so vociferously painted as one of class warfare that their about face is remarkable. Cantor would now like to talk to the mob he slandered. Romney is now concerned about the plight of the 99%. Politicians of either stripe apparently now feel the frustration. Until they exhibit an interest in real change that empathy will appear hollow. The exciting part of all this is that the bland assumption that the have nots simply want what the haves have is clearly hollow. Their demands are reasonable. Freedom from want is not a new idea but amazingly there are those who have continued to mock it with impunity until now. Freedom from want is a human right albeit one that must be ever fought for, and people are now taking that fight to the streets once more.

Meanwhile on the health front more and more companies lay off workers to whom they owe too much (good benefits) replacing them with hungry workers to whom they can extend less satisfactory benefits and lower pay. So it is naturally time to address the healthcare gap once and for all. Do I need to point out that private health insurance is hard for most of the 99% to afford? The healthcare system as it stands tilts heavily in favor of the wealthy. Time for those without health insurance to wage a health war! A good and affordable healthcare system is something many, many folks could get behind once someone explains clearly and simply, once and for all, how they are being shafted by the system currently in place. Tying an individual’s health benefits to a job was never a great idea as it impeded the ability of people to grow their careers and move from one work situation to another concerned as they were by the possibility they might lose the benefits they have or be temporarily caught without. That amounts to a form of fear culture, something the right continues to extol as virtuous in every sphere. Fear, as far as they are concerned, drives the economy.

So, given that people have little choice re their health care insurance it seems now might be the time for everyone to drop their coverage, occupy the hospitals if they’re unwell, the headquarters of insurance companies if they currently are well and demand coverage for all or none.

I’m no expert. All I see is a wrong headed system with lobbyists so powerful any alternative to things as they stand have little chance of moving forward. Until someone stands up to the insurance companies nothing will change. This is just one of the many fronts where anger around income inequality is palpable. This insistence on change must be encouraged and cannot stop. The mantra must be healthcare for all.

It is positively boring to have to repeat the obvious again and again but in this culture as it stands we have no choice.

Letter to the Bank Manager #84 (Only Connect!)

Dear Bullrider,

You should understand by now that you are the recipient of letters. I would hope you appreciate the full implication of this—I have made the effort to connect with you via a  literary form that—though considered quaint in the days of TWITTER—is one that carries some weight, burdened as it is by the brilliant example of those great men and women of letters who have gone before. You are my Boswell, and I am your Johnson (not literally you understand). You are the recipient of the musings of a high minded, if oppressed artist. Do I resort to insults or name calling? No sir! I do not! I merely undermine your assumptions with powerful wit and humor. I insult with dignity. I may spill ink on your shirt collar but never blood! What a privilege! I invite you to step up to the plate! Don’t be one of those who sit upon a balcony, champagne flute in hand, staring down at the masses in their clumsy protestations in Zuccotti Park, with a sneer on your visage. Do not be one of the angry bankers spouting vitriol on YouTube! Instead I urge you to engage. Pick up your pen and respond. Dig deep and surprise us by not being predictable. Think outside the box. Imagine yourself in the shoes of others. Teach us to also pull ourselves up by our boot straps and quit our whining. Show us how it is done—if you can.

E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End tells a story of class struggle in turn-of-the-century England. I’m from England but have lived here in the States for half my life. I’m a duel citizen. When I first arrived on these troubled shores for reasons still not clear to me I was told by the official from whom I picked up my social security card that as far as America was concerned I was American, and as far as England was concerned I was both. “Make of that what you will,” he said, and so I have. I have brought that class struggle to these shores, shores that remain oblivious to the reality of such social divisions. As a country founded on the notion that anybody may come here and achieve anything and that each individual is only limited by the breadth of their imagination it remains a country that offers hope. Many immigrants recognize that and find it to be true given where they came from. They also see the fragility of it, the lie of it and may well grow to become the most ardent defenders of Democracy in a rapidly failing system. I digress. I studied E. M. Forster’s masterpiece in school and never forgot what I saw as it’s central theme: Only connect!

I will persist in trying to connect with you. I understand that you are not personally to be blamed for the financial mess this country finds itself in, a mess that spreads like a virus across this planet. Fires broke out everywhere laying waste to whole classes. Townships and communities the world over have been devastated by the ruinous tricks of a few bad apples. I only implore you, keen as you surely are to not have your name tarnished by association, to root them out. Regulate them into penury! That would be delightful and you’d please a massive segment of your constituency.

Yours most sincerely,


Art O’Connor
 
PS—I promise to hold your feet to the fire. Take this as the highest compliment.

How Art Propels Occupy Wall StreetMichele

Article by Michele Elam, Special to CNN

Letter to the Bank Manager #83 (Occupy Your Home!)

Crappy photo collage thrown together in haste! But you get the idea.

My dear Bank Manager,

I write to you on a fine sunny morning after days enduring nature’s rage. We have tree limbs in our back yard that narrowly missed scarring our home. Halloween was a blast this year as we negotiated downed power lines and piles of tree waste to get to those baskets of candy sitting on the stoops of homes that were without electricity. You must be relieved to hear we still have our power! This home on which I still owe a massive mortgage to, well, you, still stands. If the massive tree but yards away had chosen to give up the ghost the house could’ve been crushed. You almost lost your leverage over us.

This all set me to thinking about how it is that despite years of living in this fine shell, filling it with the warm sounds of children playing, laughing and singing—in essence breathing life into it—you, with a swipe of your pen could, if we were to skip a payment, lose one more paycheck, suffer one more medical bill, could end it all. I resent that. Truly it does come down to many missteps that, over the years, built up to a loss of equity, a tragic yet common situation. Indeed the situation is so common that people are discovering, of necessity, an inner creativity that shows the way to an alternative perspective, another way of looking at this mess. Instead of quivering with a constant gnawing anxiety over the fragility of our situation we shall instead take the bull by the horns (yes! That bull!). We have decided to go out into that yard, MY yard, no longer YOUR yard—mine I say! Mine!—I shall put my sweat and effort into sawing up those tree limbs to make fire wood (don’t see you out here with your chainsaw!) to heat my, MY family’s home. We, my family and I, not you, shall occupy our home! Inspired by the visionaries at Occupy Wall Street we shall Occupy Our Home!

Well? What do you think? Surely you are happy to see your client excited, and inspired, with fire in the belly? We are circling the wagons and hunkering down to a long, tough winter—in the comfort of OUR not YOUR home.

As these fresh creative juices flow I wanted you to be the first to know, you my bank manager, the one to whom I naturally turn in difficult times, for advice, for therapy and for friendship, a deep abiding friendship that can endure such difficult bumps in our relationship.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor