The Sentinel has never charged for listings in the community calendar, which has been displayed on Page 2 for years. Easy enough for print subscribers to open the paper and see what’s happening in town, whether public meetings, fundraisers, youth activities, multiple Parks and Recreation activities, movies and more.
But it did not dawn on me until last week that anyone wanting to read the calendar online needed a subscription. My apologies for never thinking about that. It’s another reminder that my 72-year-old head still thinks of newspapers in the era of printing presses and smudgy ink that comes off on your hands as you turn the pages.
I can’t do anything about the ink, but I can give everyone a cleaner option. It’s way past the time that I accept the world has moved increasingly online, even if I resist anything more modern than a microwave, Velcro and CDs.
Therefore, as of last week, the community calendar is available free to anyone who goes to wrangellsentinel.com. No subscription required. Click on About Town at the top, then click on the community calendar — and welcome to a weekly list of things to do in town.
The staff works hard to make the calendar as complete as possible. We check the bulletin boards around town and read the handbills posted there. We pay attention to events announced on the Wrangell Community Group Facebook page and check our email constantly for requests for a spot in the calendar.
But despite all that, we need your help. We can’t be everywhere and can’t read everything, and it’s easy to miss a Facebook posting among the many messages put up on the site every day.
When you click to post your community event on Facebook, copy it and email it to us.
When you want to publicize your fundraiser, let us know.
If you want to invite people to your public gathering, open house, children’s activity or sports event, send us an email at wrgsent@gmail.com.
The calendar is free to nonprofit organizations, community groups, churches, individuals — most anything and everything except commercial enterprises.
Send us the time, date and location of your event; whether there is a fee; maybe a sentence describing the activity; any age limit for participants; and a phone number or email people can contact if they want more information.
Just remember the Sentinel comes out once a week, on Wednesdays, and we need your information by the end of the day Friday before the next week’s paper. It’s OK to send in your listing early so that we can give readers as much advance notice of your event as possible.
We’ll edit the listing to fit — space can be tight some weeks, particularly around holidays, when the town is busy with a lot of activities. But we promise not to mess it up with our editing.
Who knows, this could prompt me to make more changes to join the 21st century. Though I have no plans to give up my fountain pens.
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