I was so delighted to meet Peter Bellamy at Fox Valley, the year Phil Cooper mentioned above. I could trace my folk influence lineage back to him for so many things, that meeting him felt like an accomplishment in and of itself. In a small, intimate festival like that, you got close at workshops and main stage, you had a chance to talk.

I had a "task" to perform, of getting a copy of "The Transports" from him for a singer here in Ohio. I was dismayed to find out that he was reduced to running off cassettes himself - the recording wasn't available otherwise. I gave him a check, and in due time the cassettes arrived from England. I thought it was dreadful that this was the only way to get his earlier recordings... everything he had with him was a homemade cassette. He was glad that a few folks were interested.

I don't think it was even 6 months after his death that a CD copy of "The Transports" showed up in the racks at the local folk music store. I wondered who made money on that, and thought it SHOULD have been the man himself, dammit.

Not too long after Bellamy's death, Len Graham was here in concert and talked about his sorrow at having had Peter ask him to do a festival with him just days before he died. It haunted Len, his declining that invitation.

We can't control how others live their lives or chose to die, but by all that's holy, This death was one more nudge to make me continue to tell people I value just HOW much I value them, and why, and OFTEN.