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

688387

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

once beautiful: iftaar in the destroyed Al Quds hospital complex

By Eva Bartlett at Sep 10, 2009


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A call from Ahmed, head of volunteers for the Red Crescent in Gaza, brought me to the rooftop restaurant of one of the Al Quds hospital complex buildings. This is the same building badly burned, destroyed by Israeli shelling during the 23 day massacre of Gaza.

They were such lovely buildings! Much woodwork, pieces of artwork from local Palestinians, even a mini-natural museum (hence the peacock mentioned in a much earlier entry, when a friend and I did tae kwan do on the top floor of this building), a theatre, a recreation area (ping pong table),…

At iftaar, I saw many of the medics I hadn’t seen for months, some I hadn’t seen since the war on Gaza. They were as gracious (and slightly wacky) as I recalled, some still volunteering with the Red Crescent while studying at university, others full-time volunteers.

In the room where the women ate together, a number of stunning lanterns hung, lit for Ramadan. The room itself shared the qualities of warm wood and complementary art-work. This room wasn’t reached by the fires which ate the other half of the top floor (walking to tae kwan do class entailed tiptoeing through charred rafters and under a fire-opened roof).

Walking back, no taxis on the street as all were still with families for iftaar, I see more subtle touches indicating Ramadan: a few more lanterns here and there, some shop windows decorated… But in the end, under siege and ravaged by the massacre, Gaza’s Ramadan pales to previous years, everyone tells me.

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