Good morning. It's Monday, April 20, and today's message comes from Julia Sweeney, the well-known TV actor who also likes to read (two things that don't always go together).
A decade before her celebrity in the '90s playing Pat on Saturday Night Live, Julia went to the University of Washington. "Seattle is my place. It’s my hometown, in a way," she said recently.
Even though she lives in LA now, that did not prevent Julia from attending last week's worldwide silent-reading party. In her message today, she talks about what it was like.
She talks about the sense of community at the party, something she wasn't expecting.
"I would say about half the people kept their monitors on, so you could see them reading, which I find incredibly poignant. And there's something very community-feeling about it that's even more intimate than Zoom where you're talking to the camera. And you get fabulous music. Oh my god. Paul Matthew Moore's piano music is so good."
She adds, "I'm going to try to be there every Wednesday."
Julia's TV projects these days include roles on Shrill, Work in Progress, and American Gods.
In a weirdly prescient interview with The Stranger in January, Julia predicted that a disease was going to emerge and wipe out a whole bunch of us. "I hope remnants of our civilization survive. That’s how dark my feeling is," she said, more than a month before the first coronavirus death in Washington state.
But that interview wasn't all doom and gloom. She also told a hilarious story from her UW days including a wheelchair, a slope, and a fountain.
Thank you for brightening our world with your stories and your warmth and your effortless comic timing, Julia.
We can't wait to be at another party with you again on Wednesday.
Try to find some joy in your day today, everyone.
Good luck with this week.
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Previously in this series:
