Showing 1 - 10 of 10
Klong Toey's future finest
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 01/10/2017
» He's 10 months old now, Master Tack. Happy, good-natured, smiles a lot, not afraid of stray cats and scavenger dogs. They like him; he likes them. It all works out. At night he doesn't cry. You'd love him. A great baby. Well, not totally "great" just yet, but give him time. He will grow up to be one of Klong Toey's finest. Just watch.
Branching out in Klong Toey
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 09/08/2015
» There’s a really big tree with roots all over the place and beautiful deep green leaves shaped like a Valentine’s Day heart. It's a nice tree, but it’s slightly unkempt. However, Auntie Gung and our children say it’s fine for a sacred tree to be unkempt. And this is a sacred tree with a sacred spirit, or angel. It's called a dhon pho tree in Thai and it’s in the back of the Klong Toey slum flats.
Slum pioneer swept away to victory
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 01/06/2014
» Auntie Boon Mee looks and carries on in life pretty much how you’d expect a high-class Klong Toey slum pioneer woman to look and carry on.
Miss Mott's Slaughter House survival
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 17/11/2013
» This is the harsh story of our own Miss Mott and the home-grown, inbred violence and drug savagery that seeped into Klong Toey's Slaughter House a few years back. Miss Mott was Slaughter House-born in the Year of the Rabbit _ the most gentle of creatures _ destined never to hurt anyone or anything but with predators all around.
Ms Teacher Lady
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 06/10/2013
» Let me tell you about an old-time Klong Toey revolutionary: a slum kindergarten teacher. Still going strong in her seventh cycle of years _ that makes her more than 72. But don't dare ask her if her beautiful hair is turning slightly grey, even around the edges. No guns, no knives, only pencils and paper and nursery rhymes. You'd say: ''What? A kindergarten teacher revolutionary? You're daft.'' But that's the gig. As long as she can remember, that horrible proverb rattled around in her head _ not enough children to tend our water buffalo. Even as a little girl, she told her mum _ that's not right. And schoolmarm mum said: ''You're right my daughter, so you change that.''
Little girl with a big heart up from under the expressway
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 04/08/2013
» Demure Miss Tangmo (Watermelon) tries to be as good and loving as any mum on the planet, but she's only eight, and she worries a lot about her five-year-old brother and the twins. Not that there's really much to worry about there: he's happy and the twins are jolly three-year-old eating machines. Her mum, back in rehab? That's a worry, but it's nothing new.
Easter spirit shines through children's smiles in slum
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 31/03/2013
» She crones that ancient children's lament, ''Auntie of the Moon'', over and over. Eight-year-old Miss Phae can't talk clearly _ only babbles _ and her tongue goes in all different directions. Yet her best friend, nine-year-old Miss Phon understands perfectly when Miss Phae sings, ''Please find me a kind granny for my little sister and a kind granny who loves me too.''
A 'voice from the sky' breaks _ and charms _ old hearts in Klong Toey
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 24/02/2013
» Somehow Nung Ning's music soothes the decades and the old pains of these elderly ladies and brings back the beautiful memories of yesteryear.
A Christmas story, Klong Toey style
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 23/12/2012
» They tried to lead a normal family life, but they were always looking back over their shoulders ... never quite sure if Herod's soldiers knew, when they killed all those children in Bethlehem more than eight years before, that Jesus had escaped that horrible nightThe children at our Mercy Centre don't really worry about time and space, so yesterday, today and even tomorrow all become ''right now''. If a story rings true to them, they ''buy in''. Like all kids, ours have an unerring sense of what's real and what's fake. And without exception, they like the story of Christmas. So here at Mercy, we celebrate Christmas every day, but especially on Dec 25, when we follow our Sacred Traditions.
Two fortunes linked together _ Klong Toey style
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 17/06/2012
» It all went down in Aunty Tien's Noodle Shop, also known as the Klong Toey Slaughterhouse local ladies' noodle shop, where the matriarchs of the neighbourhood trade stories and gossip. Aunty Tien is the proprietor. She had taken the girl in, a teenager on the run from the brokers, sleeping nights in a stall at the Klong Toey fresh market.