The Cantigas de Santa Maria are 420 poems with musical notation, written in the medieval Galician-Portuguese language during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile El Sabio and attributed to him. It is one of the largest collections of monophonic songs from the Middle Ages and is characterized by the mention of the Virgin Mary in every song, while every tenth song is a hymn; the Cantigas have survived in four manuscript codices: two at El Escorial, one at Madrid's National Library, one in Florence, Italy. The E codex from El Escorial is illuminated with colored miniatures showing pairs of musicians playing a wide variety of instruments; the Códice Rico from El Escorial and the one in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence are richly illuminated with narrative vignettes. The Cantigas are written in the early Medieval Galician variety of Galician-Portuguese, using Galician spelling; the Cantigas are a collection of 420 poems, 356 of which are in a narrative format relating to Marian miracles.

The Cantigas depict the Virgin Mary in a humanized way having her play a role in earthly episodes. The authors are unknown, although several studies have suggested that Galician poet Airas Nunes might have been the author of a large number of the Cantiga poems. King Alfonso X — named as Affonso in the Cantigas — is believed to be an author of some of them as he refers himself in first person. Support for this theory can be found in the prologue of the Cantigas. Many sources credit Alfonso owing to his influence on other works within the poetic tradition, including his introduction on religious song. Although King Alfonso X's authorship is debatable, his influence is not. While the other major works that came out of Alfonso's workshops, including histories and other prose texts, were in Castilian, the Cantigas are in Galician-Portuguese, reflect the popularity in the Castilian court of other poetic corpuses such as the cantigas d'amigo and cantigas d'amor; the metrics are extraordinarily diverse: 280 different formats for the 420 Cantigas.

The most common are the rondeau. The length of the lines varies between 24 syllables; the narrative voice in many of the songs describes an erotic relationship, in the troubadour fashion, with the Divine. The music is written in notation, similar to that used for chant, but contains some information about the length of the notes. Several transcriptions exist; the Cantigas are recorded and performed by Early Music groups, quite a few CDs featuring music from the Cantigas are available. The Cantigas are preserved in four manuscripts: To, T, F and E. E contains the largest number of songs. To contains 129 songs. Although not illustrated, it is richly decorated with pen flourished initials, great care has been taken over its construction; the T and F manuscripts are sister volumes. T contains 195 surviving cantigas which correspond in order to the first two hundred in E, each song being illustrated with either 6 or 12 miniatures that depict scenes from the cantiga. F has only 111 cantigas, of which 7 have no text, only miniatures.

These are a subset of those found in the second half of E, but are presented here in a radically different order. F was never finished, so no music was added. Only the empty staves display the intention to add musical notation to the codex at a date, it is thought that the codices were constructed during Alfonso's lifetime, To in the 1270s, T/F and E in the early 1280s up until the time of his death in 1284. The musical forms within the Cantigas, there are many, are still being studied. There have been many false leads, there is little beyond pitch value, reliable. Mensuration is a particular problem in the Cantigas, most attempts at determining meaningful rhythmic schemes have tended, with some exceptions, to be unsatisfactory; this remains a lively topic of study. Progress, while on-going, has been significant over the course of the last 20 years. Cantiga de amigo Llibre Vermell de Montserrat Pergaminho Sharrer Martim Codax The Legend of Ero of Armenteira The Songs of Holy Mary by Alfonso X, the Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria.

Translated by Kathleen Kulp-Hill. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe 2000. ISBN 0-86698-213-2 Studies on the "Cantigas de Santa Maria": Art and Poetry: Proceedings of the International Symposium on the "Cantigas de Santa Maria" of Alfonso X, el Sabio in Commemoration of Its 700th Anniversary Year–1981. Co-Editors Israel J. Katz & John E. Keller. Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, Madison, 1987. ISBN 0-942260-75-9 Cobras e Son: Papers on the Text Music and Manuscripts of the "Cantigas de Santa Maria". Edited by Stephen Parkinson. European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford

The Pinaire Ultra-Aire is an American ultralight aircraft, designed and produced by Pinaire Engineering. The aircraft was supplied as a kit for amateur construction; the aircraft was designed to comply with the US FAR 103 Ultralight Vehicles rules, including the category's maximum empty weight of 254 lb. The aircraft has a standard empty weight of 252 lb, it features a cable-braced high-wing, canard elevator, a single-seat, open cockpit, tricycle landing gear and a single engine in pusher configuration. The aircraft is made from bolted-together aluminum tubing, with its flying surfaces covered in Dacron sailcloth, its compact single-surface 26 ft span wing is supported by cables attached to a simple tube kingpost. The pilot is accommodated on a suspended sling seat; the control system is two-axis with pitch controlled by a canard elevator attached to the side-stick. Roll and yaw are controlled by wing tip rudders controlled by the side-stick; the landing gear features a steerable nose wheel controlled by the side-stick.

The standard engine supplied with the kit was the Cuyuna UL II-02 twin cylinder, two-stroke powerplant of 35 hp. The aircraft was tested using sandbag loading to +6 and -4 g without failure. Reviewer Andre Cliche describes the design as "well engineered"; the Ultra-Aire can be dismantled for ground transportation or storage. Data from Cliche and the Virtual Ultralight MuseumGeneral characteristics Crew: one Length: 14 ft 2 in Wingspan: 26 ft Height: 6 ft 11 in Wing area: 130 sq ft Empty weight: 252 lb Gross weight: 552 lb Fuel capacity: 5 U. S. gallons Powerplant: 1 × Cuyuna UL II-02 twin cylinder two-stroke, 35 hp Performance Maximum speed: 63 mph Cruise speed: 40 mph Stall speed: 22 mph g limits: +6/-7 Maximum glide ratio: 8:1 Rate of climb: 600 ft/min Aircraft of comparable role and era Pterodactyl Ascender Photo of sales brochure

Gordon Harry Scherer was an American politician of the Republican party who served as a U. S. representative from Ohio from 1953 to 1963. Scherer earned a law degree in 1929 from the Salmon P. Chase College of Law and practiced law in Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1933 to 1941, he worked for the Hamilton County, prosecutor. From 1943 to 1944, he served as Cincinnati's safety director. From 1945 to 1946, Scherer served on the city's planning commission. Scherer was elected to the Cincinnati city council, on which he served from 1945 to 1949. In 1952, Scherer stood for election to the U. S. House of Representatives and began serving in 1953, he was re-elected in 1954, 1956, 1958, 1960. He declined returning to his private law practice. Following his time in Congress, Scherer served four term in the Ohio House of Representatives, from 1965 to 1972. Scherer was a member of the U. S. House of Representative's Committee on Un-American Activities. Scherer served as a delegate from Ohio to the 1968 Republican National Convention.

He was chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Party from 1962 to 1968. From 1970 to 1973, Scherer was a member of the United States National Commission for UNESCO, he was on the executive board of that commission from 1974 to 1975. In 1972, Scherer was appointed the U. S. representative to the United Nations, in which capacity he served from 1972 to 1973. He died in 1988. List of members of the House Un-American Activities Committee Gordon H. Scherer at Find a GraveSee also: Election Results, U. S. Representative from Ohio, 1st District List of United States Representatives from Ohio