There isn’t much in life that’s free.

And even some things that claim they’re free aren’t really free after looking at the details.

But I have something to offer you that is completely free.

Many of our lifestyle announcements are free to place in the paper. This includes births, youth birthdays, weddings, engagements and milestone anniversaries.

Many newspapers don’t do this anymore. They charge for all of these and a lot more. I’ve heard many of you complain about how much it costs to put wedding and engagement announcements in the paper.

However, it’s free to the residents of our area.

All you have to do is come in our office, fill out a form and leave a picture for us to use. It’s that simple.

If you cannot come by our office during business hours, you can email them at any time. Send them to news@hartselleenquirer.com. Please make sure you attach your picture and writeup along with your name and phone number so we can contact you if there’s a question.

If you don’t want to write the announcement yourself, you can still fill out the form on www.hartselleenquirer.com and submit it that way. Please make sure you submit it by the Wednesday the week before you want it to appear.

We also do not charge for obituaries. Just ask the funeral home to send the announcement to us so we can include it in our obituary section.

One other thing we do have is a free forum to express our ideas here on our editorial page.

Do you have someone that you’d like to recognize for a specific accomplishment?

Do you feel strongly about an issue facing our community?

Do you can an issue that our community needs to address?

Then feel free to send us a letter and let everyone know about it. Out letters to the editor appear on this page every week. Letters should be kept to no more than 300 words. Please include your name, address, phone number and email address. We only publish you name and city of residence.

We will not publish any letter that has not been signed. That is our policy.

Again there is no cost to have a letter published in our paper. If you have any questions, please feel free to give me a call at 256-773-6566.