{"id":2659,"date":"2018-05-09T17:31:54","date_gmt":"2018-05-09T22:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/?p=2659"},"modified":"2022-04-24T17:29:14","modified_gmt":"2022-04-24T22:29:14","slug":"open-letter-to-sol-hurok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/open-letter-to-sol-hurok\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter to Sol Hurok"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Sol Hurok,<\/p>\n

I know nothing about you except that you are an impresario.\u00a0\u00a0I really don\u2019t know what an impresario is except to say, \u201cIt\u2019s someone like Sol Hurok.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The words Sol Hurok and impresario have been tattooed on my brain ever since they appeared on the 1976 MCAT test, an entrance exam for medical school.\u00a0\u00a0I never think of one without the other.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s 42 years ago, which makes me think you must be dead.<\/p>\n

I am at least a generation younger than you, but old enough to explore the deep mysteries of reminiscence.\u00a0\u00a0When I first said \u201c25 years ago\u201d to describe a personal recollection, I marveled at the simple fact that I had memories that old.\u00a0 Those 25 years have now blossomed to 60.\u00a0\u00a0Odd vignettes pop up and I stop to puzzle out why my brain opted to store that random piece of data.<\/p>\n

Sol Hurok\/impresario<\/p>\n

Back in the 1970s, the MCAT had a section called \u201cgeneral knowledge,\u201d presumably to weed out the savants or other social misfits.\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps a command of general knowledge would ensure that prospective medical students had some hope of developing a bedside manner, able to talk soothingly to patients about sports, culture or politics.<\/p>\n

This was where I first met your acquaintance, Mr. Hurok, on a list of people I was supposed to match up with a profession.\u00a0\u00a0Yours is the only name I recall.\u00a0\u00a0I suppose I could Google you, but I have resisted.\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t need to know anything more about you.\u00a0\u00a0Your name and occupation have served me well.<\/p>\n

Sol Hurok\/impresario<\/p>\n

I confidently filled in the little bleb that matched you up with your profession.\u00a0\u00a0Mr. Hurok, you helped me get into medical school and gave me the confidence to succeed. If I could pluck your name out of the vast unwitting lint trap of my brain, well then I could master the deliberate memorization of all the cranial nerves, the complex of little bones in the wrist and the dense wiring of the spinal cord.\u00a0\u00a0However, I would like to point out my command of General Knowledge didn\u2019t translate to a chatty bedside manner.\u00a0\u00a0I specialized in Anatomic Pathology, where patients have lost the ability to talk.<\/p>\n

Your name offered me another point of pride as a Midwesterner.\u00a0\u00a0The word impresario had an international flair.\u00a0 It sounded like the type of job only a New Yorker would have.\u00a0\u00a0I went to a boarding school on the east coast for high school. My flashy classmates could pop home to New York for the weekend, talk about the energy of New York, that it was the only place to live.\u00a0\u00a0I came from Chicago, stuck on campus.\u00a0\u00a0After I graduated, New York friends would ask when I was coming to visit, as if everyone comes to New York.\u00a0\u00a0There were never any offers to come to Chicago.<\/p>\n

Since that little bleb on the MCAT, I felt I could hold my own with New Yorkers.\u00a0 I knew something about their blessed city.\u00a0\u00a0Anybody who knew you were an impresario could not possibly be a hick from the Midwest.<\/p>\n

The General Knowledge section of the MCAT was deleted one year later, criticized as being culturally biased.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Well, of course it was. Don\u2019t take offense, Mr. Hurok, but any test that requires students to know your name and profession favors the elite New York aristocracy.\u00a0\u00a0I somehow managed to nail it, but my command of general knowledge was both my best and most questionable qualification for medical school.\u00a0 I barely scraped by in the other categories.<\/p>\n

Again, please don\u2019t take offense, but your name has never come up since, and there have been many opportunities.\u00a0\u00a0I read the New Yorker magazine and diligently do all the New York Times crossword puzzles, creating an international and multilingual trove of trivia.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cSol\u201d is a frequent crossword word, but usually clued with a reference to the musical scale, i.e. do, re, me, fa sol, la, ti, do.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I suppose inclusion in the MCAT reflects your cultural legitimacy, but if your name shows up in a New York Times puzzle, well that\u2019s something to be celebrated.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I will keep my eyes open for you.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Liza Blue<\/p>\n

ps: I succumbed to temptation and googled you.\u00a0 Condolences on your death in 1974.\u00a0 As a manager and concert promoter, you helped organize one of the first salvos in the Civil Rights movement.\u00a0 In 1939 Marian Anderson sang \u201cMy Country Tis of Thee\u201d in front of the Lincoln Memorial.\u00a0 Bravo!\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry that I relegated your name to mere trivia.\u00a0 You deserve better.<\/p>\n

pps:\u00a0 Mere days after I wrote this, I spotted this clue in the New York Times crossword. \u201cHe really gets the show on the road.\u201d\u00a0 Boom! There it was:\u00a0 Impresario.\u00a0 My heart broke at this lost opportunity to bring me full circle.\u00a0 The clue should had read: Sol Hurok.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sol Hurok\/Impresario<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>Share: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Sol Hurok, I know nothing about you except that you are an impresario.\u00a0\u00a0I really don\u2019t know what an impresario is except to say, \u201cIt\u2019s someone like Sol Hurok.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The words Sol Hurok and impresario have been tattooed on my brain … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mcsweeney-rejects"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-GT","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2662,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659\/revisions\/2662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}