The Volvo Station Wagon

My freshman year college roommate pulled up in one on the first day.  My first friend had one growing up.  My husband did, too.  Some of my earliest memories are of riding in the back of my childhood friend's rust colored Volvo station wagon with the bench seats facing each other.  It was probably a 1976 model.  Nothing replaces the unique look and feel of a vintage Volvo station wagon.  I'm not the only fan:  check out what these people had to say about it.   If you add on college decals, bumper stickers or, today's incarnation, magnets, you've got yourself one nifty vehicle.

Here's one I spotted around town recently. 

I wonder if I am supposed to blacken out the license plate.  I would but I don't know how to do that.  I don't know whose car this is; just saw it around town.

My personal preference is to see dancing bears or skeletons adorn the bumper of a vintage earlier than this example (which I am guessing is a '92 model.  Someone correct me if I am wrong), but it is still a lovely specimen.

And naturally what type of music sounds best coming out of a Volvo Station wagon?  You got it.  Some good ole Jerry.  For some reason I just don't think hip hop works.

You say MOT, I say Landsman

When I learned the term "landsman" as a colloquialism for a fellow Jew, I really liked it.  For whatever reason, the more widespread term -- Member of the Tribe, or MOT -- didn't resonate as well with me.  Landsman just sounds better.

You can say landsman with a long "a" as in "Land's End" or with an "ah" sounding letter a like when you open your mouth at the doctor:  say ahhhh.

Roz Chast signing her new book

Here is a fellow landsman I met last night.  Roz Chast, illustrator and New Yorker cartoonist, came to Philly to talk about her new book Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant.  I love her work, and oh do we have what in common.  Brooklyn, Connecticut, even November birthdays!  As a landsman, she peppers in a lot of cultural Jewish stuff.  Sortof like Larry David or Woody Allen. Quite culturally Jewish.  And yet she appeals to a wider audience than just Landsmen.

Clearly from a secular background, she talked about how she doesn't believe in hocus pocus yet when she joined her children in a Oujia Board game and asked a question regarding the health of her ailing father, the board spelled out "heaven beckons."  She didn't say she's a believer because of that, but she did express a sense of "not sure how to make sense of that."  Hmm...truly a landsman with a spark inside no doubt.  Thanks Roz and way to go!

I tweeted that I felt like a youngin' among the crowd and that tweet was favorited by WHYY Radio Times.  Wow.  I am famous.