At a Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce dinner on Feb. 1, architect Barry Brensinger was honored with the organization?s Citizen of the Year award. Brensinger?s firm has contributed to the design of the Verizon Wireless Arena, Elliot Hospital, Manchester City Hall, the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium and Nashua?s Stellos Stadium. He also serves as the chairman of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation board of directors and is a member of the NeighborWorks Greater Manchester board of trustees.

One of the great things about the Nashua Chamber Orchestra is that it?s made up of community people who do it simply for the love of bringing orchestral music to life?not by tuning a radio dial or inserting a compact disc into the changer, but by playing through scores and actually making music.

Once an exotic dish found only in authentic Thai restaurants, pad Thai is now showing up on Chinese takeout menus across southern New Hampshire.

As poor college students in Boston, my friends and I would eat at a Thai place in Kenmore Square. It was below street level, down steep stairs, and the menu was handwritten in Thai. But the pad Thai in this little family-owned place rocked and for $2.50 (this was the mid-?80s) you would be served a heaping bowl of hot pad that would fill you for the entire day.

In the late great TV show M*A*S*H there?s an episode where Colonel Potter is shooting foul shots at a makeshift basket to relax after a rigorous stint in the O.R. As he runs off a streak of 15 straight Maxwell Q. Klinger happens by and starts telling one and all the Colonel?s going for the camp record of 31. As the growing crowd counts him down toward the record the excitement builds. None of it, however, pleases the increasingly testy Colonel, who goes from a guy trying to relax to one with the weight of the world now on his shoulders.

Used to be you had to wait ages to look at the photos you took.

Take the film to the corner drug store, wait a couple weeks while the magic chemicals were mixed and eventually you?d have a book of mostly blurry prints with the tip of one finger over half the frame. One-hour photo developing was the next innovation, followed by inkjet printers that could produce high-quality photos right in your own home.

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