Notes from Michelle, Fall 2024
Life seems to be flying by and I have not checked in for far too long! AND here we are again, with an election coming up and me working hard on the Kamala Harris Campaign, joined by a group of enormously talented and determined women like PINK, Connie Britton, Megan Rapinoe & Glennon Doyle. We gathered a group of women on a zoom call tonight to kick off the campaign by raising over $1.8 million dollars. As women and people who care deeply about our democracy, we are ON IT!!! Do what you can please. We only have 102 days to ensure that we elect a President who will be a great leader. It was my very proud honor to work on three of Joe Biden’s committee’s to get him elected so it is great to be back at it. He is a real hero and a great President. I am SO grateful to have had the honor of meeting him. I forgot to mention that I had the incredible opportunity to visit the American Embassy in Paris, on my last trip to Paris, with our impressive Ambassador Denise Bauer who I had the pleasure of working with to help get President Biden elected. The relationships I made working on the last Presidential campaign have been long lasting.
I started off the year by spending almost a month in England, mainly in the West End & Covent Garden in London. I have quite a lot of music friends in London, so the small acoustic pop up shows we did were a blast! Back to the beginning with my guitar and me. It was reminiscent to the coffee houses and acoustic shows I started doing when I was in Junior high. I spent the rest of the first quarter of the year at the beach, writing. I’ve been asked to write a book and have spent three years procrastinating, thinking I have nothing to say. Well, I guess at 65 years old after a long life filled with ups and downs, huge lessons and big mistakes, lots and lots of hard work and dedication, an earnest yearning to be more introspective and understand how and why my life has turned out so different than I ever could have imagined, great happiness and deep life-long lasting loves, motherhood, losses of people that I thought “would always be there”, surviving unimaginable heartache and recovering from it, being a mentor and friend, long term sobriety and all the joys of holding the light on the path for other women to find recovery. I do have a “few” thoughts that might help women who are not as far down the road as me. So, the book is happening. Luckily there is no deadline, and I am not obsessing about “getting it right”…so we will see what comes.
I am working now, helping our Democratic party win the election in November. In between, I will be in New York and also working in Paris along with doing a small show in London one weekend in October. Then to my annual trip to the Big Island of Hawaii with my husband. After the election I will be in Munich and Vienna and home in time for the holidays. It has done me good to take a break from my recording studio. After so many years, working with so many amazing musicians, it has been a real change to be in the studio with just a piano, guitar and me. I have enjoyed going back to where it all began in small coffee houses back in Detroit and Canada in the late 70s. Though working in large sessions with up to 15 musicians is fun, it can also be chaotic, so there is something to be said for slowing down and getting quiet. The time during the pandemic was very hard and also very good for me. I do not think I had ever, metaphorically speaking, sat down in 50 years. It was an incredibly reflective time and really changed me. I am happy writing my book, working on music and will look forward to the next time I am in the studio, but it will be my very calm engineer in the sound booth and me with my piano and my Jumbo Gibson with one microphone. I’ll send out news when I have more to share, but for now, I hope that we ALL GET OUT AND VOTE in November. Our life and liberty depends on it.
God bless,
Michelle Schmitt
Stinson Beach, Ca
