Originally Posted by
Section 15
This reminds me of a scene from Ross McElwee's
Bright Leaves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_McElwee [If you aren't familiar with him, McElwee is an independent filmmaker who makes ironic, self-referential documentaries. His most well known film is
Sherman's March, in which he retraces Sherman's campaign through Georgia and South Carolina, while looking for love - really you have to see it to understand that description.]
McElwee is from North Carolina, his grandfather was a tobacco farmer and his father was a cancer surgeon.
Bright Leaves is about his family's tobacco legacy and a possible connection with a Hollywood film from the 30s starring Gary Cooper called
Bright Leaf. At one point in
Bright Leaves, McElwee's narration mentions that he wonders if his grandfather's tobacco farming was an effort to help the career of his surgeon father. --- Dark humor, I know.
Section 15
FWIW, back in my days at Duke, Durham was irretrievably identified with the tobacco industry. The move to becoming the "City of Medicine" or a "Suburb of Duke University" was years in the future. I played duplicate bridge when I was at Duke. The local group of bridge clubs was proud to call itself 'The Bright Leaf Unit," after the highly prized type of tobacco farmed in the area. And there's more, not dwelling on the fact that cigarettes were 25 cents a pack on the Duke campus -- and cartons $2.00 at the Dope Shop.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013