It’s hard to believe that October is one week away, which means, if the tradition of a Halloween snowfall holds out to be true this year, the first brush of winter is just around the corner.It’s hard to complain, however, about a little or even a lot of snow, as we continue to watch the horrific plight of Americans in New Orleans and Mississippi: so many lost friends, family, homes, jobs, pets and businesses. Some may never return to their familiar way of life. Whatever the truth – and the consequences – for the government and its people because of the before and after events spurred on by Hurricane Katrina, we have once again been reminded that our lives can change direction in a matter of seconds … depending on whichever way the wind blows.On a much lighter note, there is change blowing in with the New Falcon Herald. We have grown considerably since our beginning. As we’ve mentioned a few times, we started out as a four-page newsletter direct mailed to certain postal codes in the Falcon area. Today, we are mailing out a 48-page newspaper, while our postal codes keep changing and growing, as so do our mailing costs.We also have increased our circulation beyond direct mail. We have 16 stands located throughout Falcon, including one in Peyton and Calhan, and we are planning at least 10 more distribution sites in the next couple of months. We feel, with our current subscription list and distribution sites, that we are ready to streamline our operation and send our paper by subscription only. As conscientious business owners, we can no longer justify our postal costs for the free mailings.We also are planning to go to a twice-monthly newspaper to better serve the community during the first half of 2006. It would be cost prohibitive to mail at no cost twice a month.So, we are hoping that you will support us by buying a subscription through a substantially discounted first-time offer of $10 a year. This offer will run through January 2006. With a significantly increased subscriber count, our postal costs will go down. For our current $18-a-year subscribers, we will offer you the $10 rate on a first-time only basis as you renew your subscriptions.We will continue our direct mail program through December. In the meantime, we will mail a subscription card to you at the end of October that you can return to us (postage free). We will then put you on our list and send you an invoice for the amount, or you can mail in your $10. We also will send out another reminder subscription-card mailing in mid-December. You can subscribe as well by logging on to our Web site at www.newfalconherald.com or e-mailing Marylou@newfalconherald.com or michelle@newfalconherald.com. Credit cards are accepted.Change is inevitable, and planned change, with options and advanced notice, is preferable. We thank you for your support the past 18 months, and we look forward to continuing to bring you a bit of news, a few challenging thoughts and feature articles each month. We hope you value our newspaper enough to become a New Falcon Herald subscriber. Thanks again, and Happy October.-Michelle & Marylou
