Robert J. Finlay, a New Hampshire businessman and philanthropist, will donate $75,000 to three libraries and museums that gain the most new members in the next 12 months. Finlay graduated from Southern New Hampshire University (when it was New Hampshire College) with a degree in economics and finance. He spent years with various Wall Street investment firms, including Credit Suisse First Boston, Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank. He works with needy children with the Make-a-Wish-Foundation and helped the Friends of the Forgotten Children, a nonprofit in Concord, build a new facility. He resides with his wife and four children in Peterborough. He’s now the managing partner of Hillcrest Captial Partners LLC, based in Milford.

The state legislature recently provided about $25,000 more per year for two years for operating grants for arts organizations. It’s probably the first increase to that line item since John Sununu was governor in the 1980s, said Marilyn Hoffman, president of the NH Citizens for the Arts board.

The next two weeks will be heaven for ethnic-food-lovers in the Merrimack Valley.

The coming weekend will offer authentic foods from Latin America (the Latino Festival in Manchester), Southeast Asia (the Southeast Asian Water Festival in Lowell), Lebanon (the Middle Eastern Festival in Manchester) and Greece (Greekfest at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Manchester.

And then there’s the chili (Henniker).

With football and pennant race colliding, it’s time for another foray into the mail bag

Film photography enthusiasts might soon lose another plank in their platform against digital cameras.

For years, digital photos have come in pretty much one format: the JPEG, named for the standards body that certified it, the Joint Photographic Experts Group. Most digital cameras save pictures in the JPEG format, making it ridiculously simple to copy, edit and share the photos you take with anyone. Very convenient, but image quality has never been up to film’s standards, with color reproduction suffering and pixelation creeping into pictures.

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