Homecoming

My kid's back from NY, so there's games to be played, legos to be built, ice cream to be eaten, and a new school to be checked out. But here are a few linkies:

Qantara has a piece about Marcel Khalife that's sort of cool. A snippet: 'With the rise of conservative and radical Islam in the 90s after the crises of the pan-Arab national ideology and the Marxist ideology, Khalifeh tried to re-define Arab music using Darwish's poems ...'

Jeannette Winterson has an Op-Ed in the London Times about Playboy, which starts: 'I have a soft spot for Playboy: I wish women had such sexual freedom.' (I don't know what she's talking about. Playboy usually gives me a hard spot, and women do have such sexual freedom.)

The newest issue of the LRB has a mildly entertaining piece on (lit) toursim, as well as a purty essay on London memorials.

In the independent, Boyd Tonkin advocates that "... any politician who wishes to shore up, not undermine, an indigenous "culture of tolerance" should be reading John Milton".