Jon Kalish
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The miniature models of Gulliver's Gate represent places in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. They're populated by tiny people, pint–size penguins and bitty cars that move.
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The children's TV show ran for just five years in the U.S. in the 1990s. But it's still hugely popular in Latin America, and a stage version of the show attracts audiences in the thousands.
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Jon Kalish loved his daughter from afar, with calls and visits from New York to California. And he lost her from afar too — first when they became estranged, and then in a more final way.
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Indie animation king Bill Plympton's latest feature, Cheatin', tells the loopy love story of Jake and Ella, and how their perfect romance fractured. Reporter Jon Kalish visited Plympton in his studio.
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The Modzitzer sect of Chasidic Judaism, which originated in the Polish town of Modzitz, is known for its beautiful melodies. Among the most emblematic and prolific composers in this tradition is Brooklynite Ben Zion Shenker — who, at 88, continues to create new works.
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Ed Sanders co-founded the legendary avant-rock band The Fugs, and went on to be an important member of the Youth International Party — the Yippies. He's also a classical scholar who's written a new memoir of life on New York's Lower East Side in the 1960s.
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Started in 2009, Night Markets use rented box trucks to create a cluster of outlandish art installations and performance venues that last just 24 hours. With attractions ranging from smash trucks to singalongs, they bring a feast of the unlikely and unseen to even the wildest of imaginations.
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Led by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, the garage-rock band The Fugs became a pivotal player in the American underground of the mid- to late '60s. The group retired in 1969 but re-formed in the mid-'80s and has performed and recorded regularly ever since. The band is set to release what could be its last album.
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From the late 1940s to the mid-'60s, Latin music was hugely popular in America's Jewish community. Entire albums were recorded as testaments to the phenomenon. One of them, which put Jewish classics to a Latin beat, has just been reissued. This weekend, it will be re-created in concert at Lincoln Center in New York.
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Crafty people often make useful things out of stuff normally headed for the trash heap, but rarely do their creations spell fame and financial success. Unless, of course, you're Tim Anderson, a rock star of the DIY crowd.