Susan P. (CHRISTMAS)

So very beautiful, Andy. A gift received. Thank you.

Heather G. (CHRISTMAS)

Andy, this is gorgeous!

Susan P. (TREE)

Fierce beauty.

Susan P. (T-SHIRT RIDE)

Reading this, with tears running down my face, I'm in your skin, experiencing it, feeling it, this life-writing of yours is powerful and true and heart-breaking and life-affirming, enough material here for an amazing memoir and I don't know how many novels! Whatever else, keep writing Andy. And thank you.

Lisa S. (T-SHIRT RIDE)

♥️ Well done, bud.

Heather G. (T-SHIRT RIDE)

“Andy, that was beautiful! The story itself but also your voice.”

Elaine J.  (IT AIN’T DONE)

“Wow, what a shocker of an ending. I liked the story. It had a lot of descriptions so I could pretty much visualize the different places. I stayed intrigued enough to wonder constantly what was going to happen. The ending summed up the story while adding a major twist.”

Arthur F. (AMERICA’S SHADOWS)

“Andy, this is some fine writing. You tenderly expose our dark side. This should be published.”

Susan P. (NO PRAYER LIKE YOU WOULD KNOW)

“Beautiful, all of it, the prose and the poetry, please go on writing like this.”

Amy C.  (NO PRAYER LIKE YOU WOULD KNOW)

“So beautiful, Andrew.”

Arthur F. (HALLELUJAH)

“Powerful imagery of the overwhelming need to protect the innocent and the beautiful from the dark and ugly aspects of the world we live in. I think of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I think of "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" by Dylan. What will our children face. Can we help them be strong enough to face this world and still maintain that beauty that is so evident when they are young and innocent.”

Val M. DO YOU REMEMBER ME?)

“Beautiful and raw and sad. My heart fluttered when I read the following two paragraphs (I can relate):

I remember, when I was young and angry and disloyal, a bastard on most accounts, facing off with my mother at the top of the stairway of our house. I hate you she said. I know she meant it. I was not my mother’s son. I told her that I was much stronger than her and then pushed her to the floor and walked away.

       Now, I am older and angry, and facing off with my mother at the side of her bed, our eyes locked, I am worried and attempting to remove all layers of past disloyalty, but I am no bastard. I am my mother’s son. I love you she said. I know she meant it. I wanted desperately to pick her up from this bed, and carry her away, instead, it was not my place to do so. Instead, it was almost time for me to walk away.

Stay strong! Val”

Karen L. (HAZARDS)

“Powerful piece, Andy. Moved me to tears.”

Betsey (Funeral)

“Beautiful!”

Paw (Easter Storm)

“Andy, this is some fine writing. Honest and heartfelt. You are at your best here.”

New comment from Susan on America's Illnesses (Amended) :

What a powerful voice for good and for reason you have, Andy.
I feel devastated at the end of reading this, and at the same time deeply hopeful because you exist and I know you are not the only sane, right-thinking person in America. The dilemmas you posit are at the heart of the matter: solutions seem so obvious to us, and your call for national healing - with all that you include in it - is eminently rational and embraceable, but the agonising question is: how? How to achieve it? The deepest divisions in society have been exploited and exacerbated (not only recently but over generations), and these rifts must be addressed if all the other urgent actions that are needed - healing ourselves, our world and our planet - can be realised. I’m thinking of the truth and reconciliation movements that took place in South Africa and Northern Ireland, with the support of government and people of goodwill and good sense on all sides. Like your Civil Words Not Civil War initiative and the others you mention. To use social media for good, not just for evil, and come together, to create a unified movement for reconciliation - with acceptance of all the pain and hope that implies.

We have become cynical and despairing, but we must not give up hope. I often bring to mind the words of Anne Frank who in the most extreme circumstances could write: “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” And the fact that we have been forced to look over the brink into the chaos that threatens our world (not just the USA) affords a slender ray of hope that the reasonable, reconciliatory voices emerging from the current crisis will hold sway.

For Love of Place Podcast - with Jesse McWilliams

Move over, Terry Gross. Andy Carpenter is here to offer his style of meaningful, thought-provoking, heartfelt, soulful and relational interviewing. Able to offer a safe space for the free flow conversation to elucidate what lies beneath the artist, he partners with his guest in a demonstration of parallel processes at work, the creative process describing the creative process. Like a dancer both leading and following, the interviewer becomes the dance along with his guest. Invigorating, inspiring, hopeful, a creative workout.

This Jesse interview evoked the state of being betwixt “the jealous side of pain” and the utter joyfulness (both states in accordance with the musings of an old woman) of witnessing two young men transparently offering their thoughts and experiences on connection, reconciliation, common decency.

Taking a chance and having the listener all the better for it.

Let’s hope to see more!

Kathy

Tricia (44 East)

Beauty in ruins!
I’m so taken with the photos…
I would if I could blow them up and frame them.

THROWAWAYS (Screenplay)

Bronze Award Independent Shorts Awards December 2020

https://filmfreeway.com/laurels/42011/IndependentShortsAwards

THROWAWAYS (Screenplay)

Selected/Winner Environmental Film and Screenplay Festival January 2021

"It's a heartbreaking and very effective short film. The writer does a great job at telling a handful of different stories in a short amount of time. We get to see many different ways of life in this piece. It would be great to see this piece made...

It's very powerful.

This piece is very effective.

It's interesting and intelligent.

The characters are heartbreakingly real."

BLOOD CREEK The Script Lab/Coverfly 2021

These characters are forces to be reckoned with -- the amount of particularity and depth the writer clearly wound into them is what brings this feature such a dimension. In fact, the characters are just the main element that really draw someone such as me, the reader, in. This is a project intended for drama and, for that, I would say this story seems to be the epitome of real gripping, tension-fueling theatrics -- it never feels quite forced or unnatural either. We can tell almost from the very beginning, without even coming to recognize who our protagonist is, that something is going to happen and it isn't going to be pretty either.