Person:Elizabeth Barnes (7)

From a news clipping The Dulcimer Still Lives On

The dulcimer, musical instrument frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, is well-known in the Okemos and Mason area.

The dulcimer players, Mrs. Elizabeth Palen, formerly of Alaiedon, now a Mason resident, and Arch Barnes, also of Mason, are the recognized artists on the instrument which takes its name from "dulce" (sweet) and the Greek "meles" (song).

The two are favorite entertainers at neighborhood gatherings especially at the meetings of the Okemos Pioneer Society where conversation relates to days gone by, when papers of old-time customs are read and former residents of the community return for the day. Mr. Barnes also plays the violin - he calls it a "fiddle" - a name used when the father of the two played for barn-raising parties and country sociables. Arch Barnes is of the Barnes family who came to Meridian township in 1842 settling a wilderness to the south. Many a time, he remembers, newly-laid barn floors resounded to "Turkey in the Straw" and "The Irish Washerwoman."

The Barnes family, he says, was a dulcimer-playing clan and the present wielder of the little hammers now has his own, an authentic antique. The most recent appearance of Mrs. Palen and Mr. Barnes was at the Walter Heathman home in Okemos, when the Pioneer group invited the two as guest entertainers as well for their "memory" contribututions.

Young people playing in school orchestras compare the dulcimer or the modern zyolophone; yet they learn in their music studies that it is a great-great ancestor of the piano with its strings attached to pegs for tension and two flat pieces of wood formed into a resonance box. Clever craftsmen once made the dulcimer, then played their own "sweet song" music. The Barnes-palen players have made recordings.

Alexander Graham Bell on March 10, 1876 invented the telephone. Bell taught people who were deaf, so he was acutely sensitive to sound vibrations and how they travelled. Bell realized that the vibrations in human speech could be turned into variations in electrical current that could be transmitted through wires from one place to another. His invention not only made it possible for us to chat with friends miles away, but opened the door for intercoms, walkie-talkies, radio, fax transmission and even the Internet. Wonder what he would have thought of VoiceMail and answering machines....