Around 1912, Ellen Shipman (1869-1950) began her career as a garden designer in Cornish, New Hampshire, and gained a mentor in the architect Charles Platt. Platt’s assistant taught her draftsmanship, and from Platt himself she developed a taste for strong axial garden layouts and tight visual connectivity between house and garden. She held her own, however, in preferring the simple clean geometries of Colonial gardens. By 1920, she had opened an office in New York City, where she hired graduates of the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture. Her most noted gardens are Longue Vue Gardens in New Orleans, the Cummer Estate (now the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida), and Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio, the latter where she was recommended by Warren H. Manning. Among her rare commercial projects are Lake Shore Boulevard, Grosse Point, Michigan and Aetna Life, Hartford, Connecticut. http://tclf.org/pioneer/ellen-shipman

The Carson Family Fund through the Toledo Community Foundation committed a significant gift to Metroparks to further the restoration of the historical Ellen Biddle Shipman garden at the Wildwood Manor House. In the latest project, the garden was extended in front of the garden, approximately in the footprint of a former swimming pool. The timing of the project seems fitting because this year marks the 75th anniversary of the garden, which was designed and built by Shipman, a pioneer in the field of landscape design. The Manor House is one of the few places you can still see an original Shipman garden. See picture at: http://www.metroparkstoledo.com/metro/item.asp?item_id=3934

See a guide to the Ellen Shipman papers, 1914-1946 held at Cornell: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/pdf_guides/RMM01259s_A.pdf

See pictures of Shipman's New England gardens at: http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/457.pdf

Search America's historic newspapers pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

When you look closely at the people crowding Hong Kong's busy shopping streets, in many cases their eyeglasses have no glass. The plastic frames, usually in black, tortoiseshell or bright colors, are empty. Some reasons: "for fashion," "It makes my eyes look bigger," and "Those black circles are so seriously bad, I try to find some way to cover it." Not everyone is crazy about the trend, which optical industry executives say originated in Japan in the 1990s, mostly died away and then resurfaced recently with a vengeance among urbanites, male and female, in China, South Korea and Taiwan. Alex Frangos http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203699404577044020959385832.html

Stuck in a "deep freeze" for millennia, a mysterious mountain range deep under the Antarctic ice is finally coming to light. The Gamburtsev Mountains appear to be part of a rift—a series of ridges that form where Earth's tectonic plates separate—that once stretched about 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) long, a new study says. The rift may have been created about 250 million years ago, during the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. That landmass included today's East Antarctica, India, Africa, and Australia, said study co-author Fausto Ferraccioli of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England. Buried under about three miles (five kilometers) of ice, the Gamburtsev Mountains weren't even found until the mid-1900s, when Russian explorers recorded unusual gravity fluctuations emanating from beneath the ice. Subsequent studies have revealed a giant range, on par with the European Alps, with the highest peaks rising nearly 15,000 feet (4,500 meters). Richard A. Lovett http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/111116-antarctica-mountains-mystery-ice-science-earth/

Nuts and Crackers In this annual holiday-themed performance, students from Fort Wayne Dance Collectives’s School for Movement Studies and Creative Process showcase what they’ve learned in the Fall semester.
Sunday, December 18 at 2 p.m. Email info@fwdc.org or call 424-6574 for more information.

"Get Up and Get Moving" Fort Wayne Dance Collective is a nonprofit organization, whose mission is to provide people of all ages and abilities a respectful environment to learn, collaborate and perform using movement, rhythm and language. See video at: http://fwdc.org/

Nov. 30 in history
1782 American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris – In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).
1803 In New Orleans, Louisiana, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.
1804 The Democratic-Republican-controlled United States Senate begins an impeachment trial against Federalist-partisan Supreme Court of the United States Justice Samuel Chase.
1824 First ground is broken at Allenburg for the building of the original Welland Canal.
1829 First Welland Canal opens for a trial run, 5 years to the day from the ground breaking.
1872 The first-ever international football match takes place at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, between Scotland and England.
1886 The Folies Bergère stages its first revue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_30

Nov. 30 birthdays
1965 Ben Stiller
1952 Mandy Patinkin
1874 Winston Churchill
1874 Lucy Maud Montgomery
1835 Mark Twain