Zcom_simple

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

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Eva Bartlett's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/evabartlett
Bio: Canadian human rights advocate volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza.  Eva was in Gaza before and during the 23 days of Israeli air, land, and sea attacks which kille... (More)

All Bartlett Blogs

daily life and celebration merge: last day of Eid

By Eva Bartlett at Sep 23, 2009


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The third day of Eid, kids are still in their new clothes, playing in the streets on makeshift swings or simplified, hand-powered fair-ground rides.

But there are also the extremely poor who aren’t taking the day off, instead profiting from holiday waste to scour the trash bins for recyclables. One such donkey and cart is slugging uphill as I walk behind. It stops and the two youths driving it hop off to poke through the bin, moving on to the next bin a couple hundred metres on.

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As I pass, we smile. Despite what might seem a job and lifestyle to blush from, the youths say the day is going well when I ask about their work.

There are those youths for whom financial life is less dire. Some pile in a taxi I’ve gotten in bound for Sheyjayee. They get out in lower Rimal, destined to amble around the Joondi park or get snack food from the post-Ramadan newly resurfaced street vendors.

At Sheyjayee, I swap taxis and head north, getting out at the Ezbet Abed Rabbo intersection and heading up to my friends’ home.

Most of the family, it turns out, are visiting friends and relatives. H. is at the sea with friends and F. is visiting a sister near Gaza city.

I chat instead with their father, who showers me with dates and grapes. As I leave, they he insists I take fresh dates from their trees, and sends a young relative up to harvest them.

Back in Gaza, I wander through some back lanes to a friend’s apartment, coming across a few narrow alleys packed with children on makeshift swings. I don’t need to ask them if I can take their photos; they pounce on me and strike poses. Their clothes are new, but one can easily see the quality is cheap and won’t stay nice for long. But for kids it is the immediate joys that impress; their parents will have to deal with the clothing woes later, along with the woes of daily struggle in Gaza under siege.

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