The events of 9/11 were shocking and tragic, and the visuals from New York City have become synonymous with national heartbreak and loss. In this extended episode, we look back at the wrenching photos and videos of the attack on the Twin Towers. Visuals that take us from the large-scale devastation to the individual human cost. With this episode we attempt to honour those who died, and those who survived, by broadening access to these vital images. Listener discretion is advised.
The events of 9/11 were shocking and tragic, and the visuals from New York City have become synonymous with national heartbreak and loss. In this extended episode, we look back at the wrenching photos and videos of the attack on the Twin Towers. Visuals that take us from the large-scale devastation to the individual human cost. With this episode we attempt to honour those who died, and those who survived, by broadening access to these vital images. Listener discretion is advised.
This is Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.
Christine Malec :Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt :And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashtag in description rich conversations.
Christine Malec :Atypically for this current events podcast we are going to look back today. And this episode comes from several requests. We had one particularly you jelly on Facebook was to talk about September 11 2001. And if you were alive and aware at that time, you remember it vividly, for many reasons. And just as now, we are starting to talk about the pre COVID and post COVID world, it has become very common to talk about pre 911 and post 911 because it was a day that changed many things for many people. As a blind person myself, I feel that images from that day are sort of seared into my mind, even though I didn't see them. And so, today we're going to talk about some of those, which are not easy images to discuss. But we're going to do our best and we're going to do it with the the utmost compassion. For people who lost loved ones, and the utmost respect for people who heroically gave their lives in order to save the lives of others. In some ways, the attack was done with visuals in mind. And what I mean by that is that the skyline of New York is iconic. I even as a blind person, I know that it's featured and in films and an imagery that is automatically instantly recognizable. And so that was clearly part of the intention of the attack was to make a cultural attack as well as a physical one. And so, JJ, I feel like for me, I would like to begin on September 10 2001, because I feel like it's important to understand what the New York skyline looked like before September 11, two thousand one oak. So can we start there?
JJ Hunt :Yeah, absolutely. The the New York skyline like, like many major skylines from urban centers around the world, you know, was distinctive. The New York skyline is often photographed from a variety of different places, because of the shape of the island and the the financial district and all the major buildings being so far south on the on the island of Manhattan. It's filled, it's photographed from all kinds of places. But before September 11 2001, all modern images featured the Twin Towers quite heavily. Whether they were behind the Brooklyn Bridge or just seen directly across the water, these two towers were always a part of those images. I've got a I've got a before and after shot here that I'm looking at. It's a black and white photograph one was taken in 1999, and has the twin towers and the other in 2002. And it doesn't all the other major buildings in the skyline are identical. The only thing that's different is the lack of these Twin Towers and the towers are. They're standing amidst this what looks like from this angle, a row of buildings, it's obviously quite deep. They're several blocks deep these buildings go. And most of the buildings from this perspective, they're halfway up the towers. The towers really were massive compared to the rest of the skyline. In this part of New York. None of these buildings are particularly dramatic until you get to the two very, very tall Twin Towers and it's their height that is so distinctive. And so when these two buildings are gone, the skyline it looks like there's a gap. It The skyline has a generic quality to be honest. When you compare the two images you see that it's missing so that the Twin Towers themselves the World Trade Center buildings. They were opened in 1973. One building built before the other these were buildings one and buildings two of the World Trade Center complex. And they were essentially the same height. They're a few feet off but 110 storeys tall, 1360 feet tall. At the time, I think it was building number one that had the mast on it was the tallest building in the world at the time of its construction. They're very boxy skyscrapers and they were matching they were almost identical with the exception of this antenna at the top of the one building they looked almost identical and they were kitty corner to each other. So not side by side. They had a distinctive appearance. Because of a structural element, they were clad in tall vertical columns made of steel. And these vertical steel columns were only about 18 inches apart in most places with windows in between. And there were 59 columns of steel on each side of the building. From a distance, this structural element, the steel columns on the outside of the building looked almost like very fine steel corduroy. Because of the way these stripes went all the way up from ground way up to the hundred and 10th storey, it did have a corduroy look to it. And that was what the buildings looked like, on September 10. And that's more or less what the skyline looked like a fairly standard skyline with these two very notable buildings that could be seen from everywhere.
Christine Malec :Now in 2001 images that we were getting were not as diverse as. So in our episode on Beirut Recently, there was a lot of cell phone, videos and videos from many sources. What were the first images, the initial images that were seen by people on the morning of September 11.
JJ Hunt :These days, kind of anywhere in a major city, someone's going to have a cell phone out, taking a video or, you know, taking photos and wasn't quite the same then. But early in the morning on September 11 2001, about eight o'clock in the morning. There was a crew, a firefighter crew that had a camera operator with them and they were doing I think they were doing some press some practice photography. There was a new camera operator and he was riding with this fire. fighter crew and they were just, I think they were doing some, some routine calls and no big fires think they were checking for, you know, a potential gas leak or something like that they were out on the street, and this camera operator was filming. And they heard a very loud plane overhead, which is unusual in Manhattan. You don't get a lot of big planes flying overhead for obvious reasons, of course with all these big buildings around and in a video that's posted on YouTube, that this camera operator had was filming. You hear the sound of this plane coming in and the camera searches the sky a little bit searches the tall buildings. And he points his camera up and he actually the camera operator captured the moment when the first plane, hit tower number one and this was at 846 eight And it was United Airlines Flight 11. And it hit the north side of tower one which was the North Tower. And so the plane hits quite high up in the building. And it appears to be at a slightly downward angle the plane is coming in at a slightly downward angle to fairly close to being centered on the side of the building. The left wing of the plane is dipped just a little bit lower, and the plane soars in and hits the building. And there's an immediate expanding ball of what at first looks like black smoke. And then it turns into a ball of orange flames, and then it turns back into smoke. Again, I'm not sure what's happening here chemically, but it really does look like a singular expansion. A ball of smoke and then fire and then smoke again. And these flames as fireball is is shooting out of the building at the impact point on the north side and it also was shooting out of the east side of the building because it was coming in at a slight angle. And and so these balls of flame and smoke are pouring out but the plane is is gone. It just it seems to have just vanished. There was some wreckage falling from the sky, some glass falling from the sky, but it happened so out of the blue that nothing is registering with anyone on the ground that people are starting to scream and what's the explosion and trying to find out where it's coming from. And for about 15 seconds. All you can see at the top of tower number one is this expanding fire and smoke cloud that then rises up over the top of the building and begins to dissipate and it takes about 15 seconds for it to rise and dissipate and once it has kind of risen above the impact site, that's when the camera operator gets the first real view of what has happened and that's when you can see this wound in the side of the building. It's a gash that is several storeys thick, and you can see the angle and almost you can almost see the shape of the airplane as it cut into the building. It's it's remarkably clear and there's flame brick red flames at the center of this wound in the side of the building and thick gray smoke is continuing to pour out and what appears from a distance to be almost like a liquid metal dripping down from the bottom of the cut like you can imagine if you if you had a cut on your leg and some blood was dripping down from the cut, it truly does look exactly like that it looks from a distance to be like liquid metal dripping down from the bottom of this cut. And the building continues to burn from mostly from that one impact point but also from the east side where the explosion kind of burst through the windows on the side and the smoke turns from a gray to to a thick black smoke that is that rises up to the top of the building and then is carried by the wind further south, and that is the first image that we get of the first plane hitting tower number one.
Christine Malec :It must have had the kind of quality that made you blink because you wonder, did I just see what I think I saw?
JJ Hunt :Yeah, it really did. And you can see from the initial reaction in the people in this video, of course, there are screams people don't know if this was an explosion. The plane hit so quickly and it was so out of the blue that people weren't sure what exactly had happened. Was there an explosion? Was there a bomb? The idea that a plane hit I mean, did that really just happen? It was there was a lot of confusion but at this point Cameras are starting to turn toward the sky. People are starting to film. Journalists are starting to arrive on scene. And so at 903 there are lots of cameras that are filming professional news cameras, all the major news networks, photo journalists, anyone who does have in the area who's got a camera, they're pointing it at the sky. When at 903. A second plane flies into the area and it hits tower number two. So the second plane there are many more angles and it's a little bit it's it's easier to find video to describe this scene in some detail. So this plane hits tower number two at 9:03am. This is United Airlines Flight 175 and it hits the South Side Have tower number two, which is the South building. And it hits a bit lower in the building. And it's kind of banking as it as it comes in. So it's, it's at a sharper angle, as it's coming in and it doesn't hit quite as squarely, it's a little bit closer to the corner. And as it hits the building it's, it's hard. It it truly appears to vanish on impact. At the risk of sound of making this of this sounding light and I truly don't mean it to it almost looks like a magic trick. Because the as the plane comes in and makes contact with the building, it truly disappears. It just vanishes. And what happens is on the side of impact on the opposite side of the building, The side closest to the corner because it was it was closer to the corner. There are these again, these quickly expanding smoky fireballs that shoot out on these three sides. And there's some wreckage that shoots through the building. And there's some wreckage of glass that comes shattering in falls down there is certainly is some, but the plane itself seems to vanish. It's just startling. And the debris does rain down and it's glass and it's and it's metal. It's sheets of airplane but not huge major sections of the fuselage just pieces chunks of airplane. And because there are more cameras on the streets, there are videos of people starting to scatter and scream and so many had been watching the skies. At this point in so many had been tuned into TV networks that had shown footage of the first plane hitting and explanations of what had happened, people had some understanding that a plane had hit. And this was too and this must be intentional. And so there's in the streets as this glass and debris is raining down on people and the dust from the clouds, the smoke, it's it's raining down on people there is chaos in the street. And again, the fireballs turned to black cloud, and they rise up to the top of the buildings and the two burning buildings the smoke from the burning buildings intermingles and becomes a single river of black smoke with the wind carrying it away. from both the north and south towers, and for some time, I think it was close to an hour those two buildings burned while on the street, firefighters and rescue crews and scrambled to aid whoever they could and help each other and, and just try and get control of the chaos on the ground.
Christine Malec :So once that had happened, there must have been many people filming not just the major news outlets. And so what are some of the images that became most widely circulated at the time after the plane impacts.
JJ Hunt :So a lot of those images weren't released until much later in the day or in the days and even weeks following it wasn't, you know that we didn't have the the Twitter release of photographs and, and the sharing that was going on quite in the moment. And even though those, you know, breaking news was obviously still able to be covered the sharing of those images and those videos that people were taking wasn't happening in the immediate moment. But the photographs that people were taking at street level that did come out in the hours and days following did show, they showed a lot of the firefighters gathered together and pouring bottles of water over each other's faces to wash the, the soot and the the dust off of each other's faces before going back into the buildings or people who had escaped from the towers and who were days. This is one Remarkable photo of a young woman in a in a skirt suit, who's who looks very composed and she's got with her someone who is reeling. And they are making their way down the sidewalk together and the one woman looks utterly composed and and the person she's with is, is breaking down, right you know, buckling at the knees and kind of being pulled along and and those were the images that people were taking of each other and people helping was a lot of images of people helping one another. And that's what was happening for 56 minutes until 959. And when tower two began to collapse, so tower two was the second tower hit. But the first tower to fall, it was the building where the plane had hit closer to the corner. And what happens is the the top of the building near that southwest corner, which was closest to the site of impact, it starts to buckle. So the top floors of the building, kind of separate the top of the building buckles to the side and once it starts to buckle all of the floors under it floor by floor by floor by floor collapse under the weight of what is essentially a freestanding, small building on top of the rest of the tower below. And it starts to fall straight down. And thick cloud of dust and smoke appears to rise up from the core of this building, as the top of the tower falls down and, and drops and just crumbles. And then 30 minutes later the first tower collapses. And it collapses that you can still see the antenna as it standing as it's poking up out of the top of this cloud of smoke that's still pouring from the top of the building and, and you watch some of the videos that are taken at a particular angle and you can see this antenna it just starts to drop. It's still pointing straight up, but it starts to drop straight down and the top of the building, there's no buckling at all. It just goes straight down and it appears like the building is shrinking and the dust and debris re is coming up from the inside of the building and it's almost like a pot that's boiling over. And the debris and and of the building is just pouring over the sides as the top goes straight down until in the floor by floor by floor, the building crumbles and the material that that makes up the building turns to dust pours over the outside drops to the ground, and the building collapses another floor and then another floor and then another floor. And it takes only about eight seconds for each one of these buildings to to collapse and become nothing but dust and debris. And it's amazing that that eight seconds and I've watched these videos now a number of times in the last few days and that the eight seconds is at the same time. Sure. talking really fast and almost in slow motion. You know, to have a building reduced to rubble a building hundred and 10 stories reduced to dust and rubble in eight seconds is an objectively it's it's a flash. But when you're watching it from a distance come down 1234 it just seems to happen in slow motion because there's nothing that anyone can do. The building is just coming straight down. And in each case, both with the first building that fell and the second building that fell when this this tower is reduced to dust and debris and finally comes down to street level, the resulting cloud of dust was so concentrated, it needed to spread it was being forced in all directions. And of course, lower Manhattan is a grid of buildings. So the only way for this dust and debris this cloud to disperse was to pour down these streets. And again, all of these videos and and camera operators and people with their, their personal and professional cameras are on the ground as these clouds of dust start rushing down the street toward them far faster than anyone can run. And the dust cloud that is chasing people is massive and churning and it's thick. And I saw one video. It was an amateur video. Someone's running down the street. With this dust cloud coming toward them, they're people screaming and running alongside of them. And every once in a while the camera operator turns around and films a cloud and then, you know films a street in front and then sometimes the cameras hanging at their side as they're running down the street and then they turn and the clouds closer and they run. And eventually they they find, like a bodega, a store that has a hot tables in it like a restaurant, kind of a combination restaurant and convenience store. And they charge inside, they open up to the glass door and they race into the building. And a few other people follow when they get in there and everyone's panting and they're out of breath and the camera operator turns to the street. And it's a bright and sunny day and there are people racing by and some are still trying to squeeze into the building and the dust Cloud catches up. And in seconds, the outside world goes from a bright and sunny September morning to pitch black. It is the darkest of night.
Christine Malec :Oh!
JJ Hunt :The cloud has completely taken over the street. And suddenly the lighting inside this bodega becomes apparent like oh my there's a there's a neon light in the window. I didn't even see that that was on before. You can't see a soul outside. It is pitch, pitch black and thick. And the video cuts in and out several times as some other people try and rush in. And and people are. Yeah, they're they've sunk to the floor of this bodega and they're hiding behind the the food counters and people are taking bottles of water and pouring it over their eyes because they're covered in And then eventually I don't know how long it is because the video cuts in and out but I mean it was as thick as night for minutes and minutes and minutes outside and finally they open the doors and they go outside and it's like they've stepped into a black and white film because everything is covered in several inches of grey dust. And we talked a bit about this in the in the Beirut explosion that this grade dust but it was so concentrated in Manhattan close to Ground Zero inches thick, every car, every building, every person is covered and the only other debris that is recognizable in the streets. Is paper. Not garbage but paper, because these were office buildings. And so sheets of paper are littering the ground.
Christine Malec :Oh my god.
JJ Hunt :And all over this thick, thick, thick grey dust. Oh,
Christine Malec :I go back to something I mentioned in a previous episode, which is a Mr. Rogers quote on how to process terrible things, and his mother would tell him when he was very little look for the helpers. And that's what to focus on when things are so awful, that it's impossible to know how to process them. And so I know that firefighters in particular bore the heavy burden of being the helpers in in that situation. Do you? Are there images that you have that talk about that?
JJ Hunt :Yeah, yeah, there was a photographer named Richard Drew, who was one of the many professional journalists who rushed to the area when they heard that this was happening. And he took hundreds of photos he arrived on the scene, I believe it was between the first and second towers being struck. And he was taking photographs of anything that he did that was on the ground. And again, it's a lot of firefighters helping each other and helping citizens. There's one image that he took of a group of firefighters all gathered around and they're just in their t shirts. They're not wearing their full firefighters uniforms. I'm not sure if they had to shrug them off because they were so covered in dust, but their faces are covered in dust. And there's one firefighter who's kind of on. He's in the middle of this huddle and he's on his knees, I believe He's kind of looking up. And he's he looks paint, there's a paint expression on his face. And they're, they're pouring bottled water over his eyes and they're all gathered around. It's like five or six of them gathered around this one firefighter. There were a couple of images that came out. In the days after this event, these events that were that became iconic. And one of them is this woman who became known as the dust lady. And there are a few images that we can talk about where they're the personal images that really drive home the horror, and the terror of these mass events, and the dust lady's images one of them. So the dust lady is one of these women who was trapped in in the initial downpour. dobri she had escaped from her office in the north tower. I believe when the second tower was coming down. Her name is Marcy Borders. And she's a black woman wearing a knee length skirt suit, a pearl necklace. And she's absolutely covered in dust and the entire photo has a hazy mustard yellow tint to it, because it's taken indoors inside one of these buildings. So the smoke is caught, the dust is concentrated. And so every part of the image has this hazy mustard yellow tint. And the the dust that has covered her entire body is so thick, she's clearly at some point wiped the dust away from her face. And that's the only reason you can even tell her skin tone. The only reason I can tell you that she's a black Woman is because of she's wiped away that her face. You can't see the color of her skin on her hands, or on her legs or on her arms. The dust is so thick. Have you ever been really so dirty? You've been outside in the mud or mucking around in a quinoa pond as a kid, and you don't want any part of your body to touch another part of your body. You know when you're that dirty? Yeah, yeah. And this woman, Marcy Borders has this stance where she's got her elbows out to her side, and her hand her arms are kind of forward and her she's holding her fingers spread, and her chin is sticking out a little bit and she's kind of have to turn to us to the camera. And her eyes appear a little bit swollen and above her mouth, she almost has a moustache of dust. And she you can feel how filthy and dirty this dust is all over her entire body. And this image is one of several that became iconic from this period this moment. And so she was tracked because it was such a recognizable photo and it's such an iconic photo, and Marcy Borders fell into depression after 9/11. And she suffered from alcoholism and drug abuse. And it took her until 2011 when she finally went into rehab, and, you know, she got her life back on track. This was part of her story that she would tell about her life. And then she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. And it's quite probable that the dust that had covered her entire body was at the very least a contributor to this stomach cancer. And she died in 2015.
Christine Malec :And at the beginning the one group of people I didn't mention to honor was the people who lived through it and somehow came out the other side traumatized and scarred inside and and outside. I know there's some other very poignant and difficult images that you have referenced around bringing the the larger scale down to to the personal scale. Maybe you can talk about those as well.
JJ Hunt :Yeah. So that photographer Richard Drew that I mentioned earlier. He took some really remarkable pictures. And while he was taking pictures of the firefighters and and and as you say, taking pictures of the helpers before the buildings came down some Firefighters started to yell and point and saying, Look at the buildings, look at the buildings and from the distance because he's 110 stories up. And people are several blocks away from the distance with the naked eye people on the ground were able to see what looked to be people who were trapped in the upper floors of the buildings starting to jump out of the tops of the Trade Centers, because the, where the planes had made, impacted and essentially severed all of the methods of escape. And so if you were in the buildings above those floors, where the planes made impact, you were trapped, and the buildings were actively burning. They were on fire. And so Richard drew turned his camera on the buildings as did several other photographers and people with professional cameras. And through their zooms, they were able to take pictures of some of these people who are leaning out of the buildings waving, you know, makeshift flags to try and get people's attention and people who are jumping. And so Richard Drew, snapped pictures frantically as people were falling from the buildings and then continued his continued his work throughout the day. And it wasn't until he got back to his office, and later in the day, and he uploaded the photos onto his computer, that he realized that he had captured what was to become one of the most iconic images from 911 an image that is has become known as the falling man. So, I mean, what's remarkable about this image is that... so that... the entire background of this of the frame the entire frame, the entire background of this digital photo is filled with the vertical silver stripes of the two towers, right, those external towers of steel that held up the buildings, and the entire background is filled with these vertical stripes on our left is the tower that's closest to us and it overlaps the tower which is on our right, which is a little further away. So the tower on our left is closer, those vertical stripes of silver and dark windows are a little bit clearer and a little bit more in focus a little darker and the building on our right being a little further away. is a little bit out of focus a little bit a little bit lighter in the colors. And the the image is perfectly aligned these vertical stripes they overlap, such that the the seam between the two buildings is perfectly centered vertically down right down the middle of the image. And that's the background. And the central figure of the image is a lone figure who is falling and he's upside down, perfectly upside down with his knees bent, like he's sitting in an invisible upside down chair. And he is perfectly centered at that scene that overlap seen between these two buildings. And there's no sky. You can't see the sky above. You can't see the sky to the sides. The buildings look unblemished. There's none of the no smoke. There's no damage to the buildings. It's a, it's a beautiful image, a peaceful image that has been captured in the middle of the most terribly violent moment. And it's one of these moments where a photograph can speak great truth and, and be nothing but lies at the same time. Because when you - I saw an image of all of the digital photos that drew took in this moment in these moments of people falling and when you look at them, one after the other after the other, you can see that this figure is, is tumbling, the tumbling is violent. This isn't a smooth, peaceful moment, as this man falls to his death. It is chaotic. And of course there's - we know that there's smoke and fire up above and there's chaos on the street below. It's a lie that this is a peaceful moment. But it happened within the confines of this frame. There's nothing digitally altered about this moment. He captured this. Just by sheer luck captured this precise moment this perfect symmetry, this centeredness, this calm. And it's a it's a remarkable image. And the New York Times ran it in the September 12 edition of The New York Times. And it was featured in a full page spread in Esquire magazine. That's it was the writer of that article that gave it the name the falling man. And it is, It is iconic. It is. It's terrifying and it's violent and it's peaceful and It's, it's, it's all of those things all wrapped up into this. One image that was one of thousands that Richard drew took that day.
Christine Malec :That's harrowing. I want to thank you for doing that very difficult immersion. There is a memorial now in in New York, and maybe it would be a fitting way to, to end our conversation by describing the memorial.
JJ Hunt :Absolutely. So at Ground Zero, there's now a two acre park or like a plaza, right at the site of the the two fallen buildings, and this Plaza has open paved pathways with small planted trees and several modern looking buildings, including a museum The central part of the memorial are these are two large square reflecting pools that occupy the exact footprints of the Twin Towers. And these pools are 30 feet deep and all around the outside of the edges are straight drops, gentle, perfect waterfalls, that kind of run along the ground and then run over the edge of this pool and drop down 30 feet into a square basin. And it's a I mean, it's the entire footprint of these buildings. This is a huge great big, open void. And right in the center of these pools are smaller pools so the water rushes down into the basin. goes toward the center and then drops again into smaller square pools that are 20 feet deep. And the water rushes over the edge of that smaller pool in the heart of the, of the, of the base and, and disappears into the void. And they've created this in such a way so that when you're standing around the outside, the angles are such that you can't see the bottom of that central void. The water rushes down, drops into the basin drops down again and just disappears and we can't, we can't see it. We can't see where it lands.
Christine Malec :Does it look like a peaceful place?
JJ Hunt :It does. It does. All around the outside, so lining these two square pools are waist high bronze panels and they're inscribed with the names of everyone who died in the 911 attacks and all the people Who died there was a bombing in 1993 in the World Trade Center as well and the people who died in that bombing are named on these plaques as well. And so people approach the these two reflecting pools, and they come to the edge and they find the names of the people they want to find. And there are so in there inscribed in these bronze panels in such a way that people you can take the the head of a flower and you can chop it off with just a small stem and you can stick it in and so there are often flowers that are sticking out of the people's names, or sometimes people take, I've seen people that make like pipecleaner hearts and find ways to kind of tuck them in, leave little mementos. And then all around the space in this Plaza, are these small growing trees, and they were intentionally chosen. These are white oak trees. And these are trees that grow naturally and all the places that were attacked on September 11. And these trees are all around the plaza, I think there have something like 400 of them. And, you know, they have relatively thin trunks but they're growing. And the foliage is, you know, somewhat conical in shape near the top. These are, you know, nice green trees and they're leafy in the summer. And then in the in the fall, they these these oak trees have golden reds and yellows, and they're in their leaves in the in the fall. And then there's one tree that's different. There's a pear tree. It's known as the survivor tree. Oh, and this is a little tree that was discovered in the rubble. In the days after the attack. It was it was found by recovery workers. And they uncovered this little tree and they took it off of the site, and they nursed back to health. Oh, and so in 2010, they brought it back to the memorial site. And it's now planted in with all these other trees. And so the 911 Memorial Museum they've posted a time lapse video of this tree on their website, they posted it in 2016. And this little pear trees got a cluster of tall thin branches. It's a different shape than the other trees and it's quite it's bear throughout the winter, just the you know, the bear tall, thin branches. And then in the spring, thousands of tiny little buds pop out in fast motion in this time lapse video from the tips of all of these little twigs, and the tree appears appears to tomahto almost thicken a little pale golden yellow buds and then the buds blossom into small white flowers again in fast motion and soon This tree is full and it's almost puffy and white. And then by summer it's thick and full with lush green leaves. And it's in a healthy tree, despite the the scars that it's got from it, so it's rather harrowing time.
Christine Malec :Oh my goodness, that's, that's lovely. That feels like a proper place to end that was very difficult and harrowing. And all I had to do was listen to it. So thank you, JJ for immersing yourself in the images and managing to keep your composure while you describe them. That's very precious. Thank you.
JJ Hunt :Thanks.
Christine Malec :We love making this podcast. If you love hearing it, perhaps you'll consider supporting its creation and development by becoming a patron. We've set up a Patreon page to help cover the costs of putting this show together. You can contribute as a listener or as a sponsor to help ensure that accessible an entertaining journalism continues to reach our community. Visit patreon.com slash talk description to me. That's pa t ar e o n.com slash talk description to me have feedback or suggestions of what you'd like to hear about. Here's how to get in touch with us. Our email address is talk description to me@gmail.com. Our Facebook page is called talk description to me. Our website is talk description to me.com and you can follow us on Twitter at talk description.